Massachusetts’ oldest person dies at 113, survived Jim Crow era

“When I went to high school, I never had the chance to go to college,” he said in an interview earlier this year. “I was happy to gift them money to go to college.”

The cause of death was not immediately available.

Born in Piedmont, WV, which was heavily segregated before World War I, Senhouse moved to Woburn to live with his aunt in 1927 for the chance to finish high school and go to college. Since childhood, she was fascinated by the functioning of the human body and dreamed of becoming a nurse.

Senhouse set his sights on Boston Medical Center, then known as Boston City Hospital, a block-by-block row of brick buildings on the city’s South Side. City Hospital was a hangout for Boston’s poorest residents; that was where they would go for care, and by the time she was ready to apply in 1931, she had recently opened a nurse training program for Black women.

Senhouse rarely ventured out of Woburn on his own, but he was determined. He found the bus to the big city and walked to the hospital on the South Side, eager for the interview.

But that’s all he can do.

“They were only admitting two Black people at City Hospital,” he recalled quite matter-of-factly in a Globe story last year.

“I was told when I went there for an interview.”

An administrator said those two slots were filled for the Black nurses’ training program. The hospital had a quota, that was it. There is no information on when another slot may open. There is no information available on when you can check back.

Senhouse continued to work as a servant for several families and became a beacon in society for many black youth.

And today, the hospital that turned Senhouse away more than 90 years ago will benefit from his kindness so that scientists can one day help others live as healthy and long lives as he did.

That’s because Senhouse was 105 years old. New England Centennial Survey at Boston Medical Center. (Boston City Hospital was the forerunner of the medical center.)

The century-old study, now conducted at Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, is the oldest and largest research program of its kind in the world. This includes several long-running studies, as well as tens of thousands of pieces of data collected over decades from more than 3,000 centenarians and their children, including data from blood samples, cognitive tests, brain scans, medical records, and in-depth interviews.

The aim of the studies and data collection is to identify the genes, proteins, lipids and other valuable substances in the biological mixture of rare spirits such as Senhouse that ensure their longevity. Our hope is to capture the secret medicine sauce that can help others live healthier lives for much longer.

Professor of medicine and founder of the century-old study, Dr. “It was an incredible gift to have her so close and to be able to visit,” Tom Perls said.

“He could never say anything bad about anyone, he was always very kind and gentle and always saw the positive side of things,” Perls said Monday. “It was impressive and inspiring.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

You can reach Kay Lazar at [email protected]. @GlobeKayLazar.