Laura Mezzanotte never smoked and never drank. Yet even she was surprised she made it to 102. Her son Richard explained she had developed "a little dementia," and when she couldn’t remember how old she was, he would remind her of her birth year and the current year and make her do the math. She would say: "How did I live so long?"

Mezzanotte, who had moved from Syracuse, New York, to Port Orange with her son and his wife seven years ago, died May 18, from complications of COVID-19. She was born Laura Spetrino to Italian immigrants in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on March 3, 1918, the year of the last major pandemic to sweep across the United States.