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World’s oldest person wants Barack Obama to attend her 117th birthday party

An Arkansas woman who has become the world’s oldest person wants President Barack Obama to attend her 117th birthday party on the Fourth of July, the Daily Mail reports.

At 116, Gertrude Weaver was already the oldest person in America.

With the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan on Wednesday, Weaver became the world’s oldest person, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group.

The staff at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in Camden, about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock, said Weaver is in good health.

They say she attributes her longevity to treating others well.

Weaver would like to meet the president at her birthday party because she has voted for him twice.

‘I treat everyone the way I want to be treated,’ Weaver told reporters on her 116th birthday when she received a letter from President Obama.

Weaver, born on July 4, 1898, exercises in her wheelchair three times a week and eats three meals a day at the facility’s dining room.

The daughter of sharecroppers was born in Arkansas near the Texas border and worked as a domestic helper.

After retiring, she lived with her granddaughter and moved to Silver Oaks Health & Rehabilitation Center in 2009 when her granddaughter had health problems, the facility’s administrator Kathy Langley said.

Weaver’s 93-year-old son visits her on a regular basis.

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