Jonas Dennis of Port Arthur, Texas, may be the world's oldest amputee. Born November 24, 1897, Jonas has seen the turn of two centuries and the beginning of a new millennium. He was alive before the Wright brothers began the age of aviation, and he has seen man go to the moon and beyond. He has lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, and the dawn of the nuclear age.
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| Photos courtesy of Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics Inc. |
Jonas was an amazing 102 years old when he underwent amputation of his leg below the knee due to circulation problems. And at the age of 107, he is still young at heart and going strong. No wheelchair for Jonas! He adamantly refuses to use one, although he does use a walker.
He is currently enjoying a new, very lightweight prosthesis designed by Kevin Carroll, MS, CP, FAAOP, vice president of Prosthetics for Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, Bethesda, Maryland. The prosthesis weighs a mere 1.6 pounds and incorporates a Dycor single-axis foot, an Alps EasyLinerTM, and Otto Bock SoftTouch cosmetic skin.
Jonas lives with his daughter Lillie Mae Lambert and her husband Wilbert and does all the activities of daily living. He accompanies them to church each week and on occasional trips to his hometown of Bunkie, Louisiana.
Five Generations of Love
Jonas enjoys a large and loving family. He married his wife Alma in 1916, and they became parents to ten children - five boys and five girls. Although two of the children died in their 50s, the rest of the family lives reasonably close around Port Arthur, Houston, and Dallas. "The family all come for the holidays and birthdays," says Lillie. "When they come, the streets around here have to be blocked off, because there are so many of us."
Lillie continues, "We figured up a few weeks ago that Dad has 111 in the family from children to great-great grandchildren - four generations from him - and some more on the way." And that doesn't count nieces and nephews.
Hardworking Life
Jonas has much to remember over his long life. "Dad tells stories all the time about when he was a boy," says Lillie. He was 18 and Alma was 14 when they wed. He worked in a liquor store washing out empty whiskey bottles and sweeping floors to save enough money to get married. He was paid 50 cents a day.
When Jonas was growing up, his family had no phone, car, or electricity. He wasn't able to go to school, but learned to count money and acquired other skills, managing all these years without a formal education.
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| Kevin Carroll, CP, FAAOP, fits a liner over Jonas Dennis’ residual limb as his daughter Lillie Mae Lambert watches. |
Jonas worked hard at a variety of jobs to support his family. He cut logs, worked in a rice field, worked on railroad gangs, and farmed other people's land for half the profits of whatever the fields produced. He raised his own hogs and chickens. Alma milked cows for other people, which is how she also obtained milk for the family. Jonas also had a smokehouse for curing and smoking pork for both sale and family consumption.
"Our house had wooden windows - no glass panes," remembers Lillie. "We had no electricity, so we used kerosene lamps for light and heated with wood in the fireplace. Our family went to church in a horse-drawn wagon."
Technology Changes
Among the many technological changes Jonas has seen in his long life involve communications. Just a year before Jonas was born, Nikola Tesla patented the first radio system. In 1901, the US Navy adopted a wireless system. It's hard to imagine now, but up to then, the Navy had been using visual signaling - and homing pigeons - for communication. Guglielmo Marconi established international wireless communication between Britain and the United States, earning him the Nobel Prize in 1909.
Jonas has thus seen technology advance from the first radio transmissions to communicating almost instantaneously via the Internet and satellite with people anywhere in the world and even outer space.
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| Carroll and Chris Harrigan, RTP, display Jonas’ new lightweight prosthesis. |
When Jonas was younger, the family enjoyed listening to a battery-powered radio on special occasions. But one of Jonas' favorite modern inventions came about in 1925 when Scotsman John Logie Baird invented television, building on previous discoveries. Says Lillie, "Dad loves television. His favorite shows are Oprah Winfrey and western movies." Jonas also loves the stories on the daytime soap operas and watches them every day.
Aiding Longevity
To what does Jonas credit his long life? "He has always remained active," says Lillie. "He gardens a lot. We really don't have the space for him to have a garden," Lillie continues, "but we turned our backyard into a garden for him." Jonas also likes walking and enjoying the outdoors. Healthy eating too has contributed to his longevity. "Dad has always grown and eaten his own vegetables," says Lillie. "He hunted and fished and raised his own meat."
Although much of Jonas' life may seem rugged and hard to many in our softer modern age, it seems reasonable that contentment, interest and enjoyment of life, and a large, close family also have contributed to this remarkable man hitting the century mark and beyond.
