PHOTOS: Vincent Dransfield was so famously resilient that when he passed away at home in Passaic County, three months after celebrating his 110th birthday, it came as a surprise.
“It was very unexpected,” said his granddaughter, Erica Lista.
Even among world’s few hundred supercentenarians, the term for those 110 or older, Dransfield stood out as an anomaly.
He lived alone at a house in Little Falls, his home for 79 years, remained on the roster of the fire company where he served as fire chief from 1958 to 1965 and continued to drive his Hyundai sedan on local errands, his granddaughter said. He died June 26 at home, three days after an upbeat final visit with Lista in which he perused photos of his great-grandson’s high school graduation. She said she brought him some cream for his joints because knee pain was one of the few things that ever slowed him down.