Illa Tompu, the world’s oldest Estonian woman, who celebrated her 108th birthday on October 26 last year, has died in New Jersey, USA, the Tartu Postimees newspaper reports.
Illa Toompū was born in St. Petersburg in 1912, graduated from the gymnasium in Narva, and in September 1944 left Germany from the port of Tallinn with two sons, where she spent five years in the Kempten Displaced Persons Camp. In 1949, she moved to the United States, where she worked as an accountant and bank clerk in New York and was actively involved in the life of the Estonian community, and was a co-founder and conductor of the Estonian Choir in New York.
Since settling in Lakewood, New Jersey, known as an important American Estonian center with the Estonian House, since the mid-1970s, she has become an Estonian school teacher and accountant, sang in a choir, and learned to drive at a fair age.
Tompu was officially recognized as the world’s oldest Estonian seven months ago, when her peer Marta Kiwi, a former teacher from Saaremaa, passed away forever.
One of Tompu’s two sons is alive – a former U.S. Air Force analyst in Admiral Karem, now 85 years old.
It is not yet clear who will inherit the title of the world’s oldest Estonian after Tompu’s departure.
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