Onie Pounder, oldest Florida resident, dies at 112

Onie Ponder, Florida's oldest resident and one of the oldest people in the world, has died. She was 112.

Ponder died Friday at an Ocala, Fla., hospice after a brief bout with pneumonia, said her son Carswell.

According to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, Onie Ponder had been the oldest person in Florida and one of the 25 oldest people in the world. She was one of 1,000 subjects in the New England Study of Centenarians, conducted since 1994 by Boston University's College of Medicine.

"The good Lord had something to do with it. He treats me pretty well," Ponder told the Ocala Star-Banner at her birthday party in September.

She would tell stories about her childhood in Ocala, when every family on her street put up fences in their yards to keep children out of the cows' way, her son said.

"They used to have cattle drives down the center of town. There were dirt roads, and everybody walked most everywhere," Carswell Ponder said. "She attributed a lot of her longevity to that, all that walking."

Ponder was born Sept. 3, 1898, in Ocala. She lived most of her life in her hometown, though she attended high school in North Carolina and spent a short time working as a bookkeeper in Boston.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Onie Pounder at a birthday party for his 112th birthday. Credit: Associated Press