English Harbour centenarian dies

Antigua and Barbuda has lost another centenarian this week. 
Lucille Augusta Benjamin of English Harbour, who celebrated her 100th birthday on May 17, died at the Mount St. John’s Medical Centre on Monday evening at about 8 o’clock.
 Her daughter and caretaker, Hazaline Marsh, told OBSERVER media yesterday that her mother was rushed to the hospital via ambulance on Sunday with what doctors diagnosed as pneumonia.
“She was just there, the doctors said it was bad, they did a chest x-ray and they didn’t expect her to live out the week. They admitted her on the ward on Sunday night, I visited her and she died about 15 minutes after I arrived on Monday night,” she said.
Marsh said her mother’s breathing became laboured and she stayed at her mother’s side until she departed earth. The doctor joined the grieving woman in the room where they examined the English Harbour woman and pronounced her dead.
Benjamin’s ailment followed a bout of cold and flu-like symptoms in September which caused the centenarian to be hospitalised for four days, then again in October for two weeks.
“I said I wasn’t going to take her back to the hospital, but she was looking so frail and I decided she should go back,” Marsh said. 
Benjamin was born in Antigua on May 17, 1918, and was never married.
A mother of nine – Joseph, Carrie, Ruth, Henry, Sylvester, Ursula James and Hazeline Marsh, and Percel and Calvin Howell, only six of Benjamin’s children are still alive. She was also the grandmother of 18, great-grandmother of 28 and had 12 great-great-grandchildren.
God-fearing, dependable, good-hearted, well loved, kind, nurturer, loving and well-loved were several adjectives used to describe the family woman.
The funeral service is tentatively planned for no later than December 4 at the Baxter Memorial Methodist in English Harbour.
Benjamin died the same day that centenarian Mary Winspeare of Old Road passed away. Unfortunately, Winspeare did not join  her guests to celebrate 
her 100th birthday on Monday because she died at Bishop E Knight Nursing Home two hours before the celebration.