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Vera Bullen

Vera Bullen (born 18 April 1909) is an American supercentenarian currently unvalidated by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG).

Biography

Vera Bullen was born in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana on 18 April 1909. She had seven siblings, and when she and her husband Willard lit out for Los Angeles while the Great Depression was still casting a big shadow (along with the looming clouds of World War II), a passel of Cannons followed. By the 1950s, the family was officially anchored in the Golden State. Vera and Willard settled in the Willowbrook neighborhood, next door to Watts. Where their house used to be is now a concrete shadow of elevated on-ramps mainlining Interstate 10, the Santa Monica Freeway. Willowbrook, which is only 13 miles from downtown L.A., had a large population of expats from the American South in the 1930s and 40s, and everyone brought the culture with them. After the war, the orange groves and bungalows of old Los Angeles were being bulldozed for the freeways, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at the yard attached to the Bullen abode on 15th Street. Vera filled the yard with fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Southern delta firmly planted in SoCal soil. She and Willard were never blessed with children of their own, but there were plenty of nephews and nieces to stand-in. They loved spending time with the funny, lanky lady they knew as “Aunt V.” Lloyd Cannon, a nephew who now lives in Morgantown, spent many a weekend at that wooden frame house in Willowbrook. “We all loved going over to Aunt V.’s, ” he said Thursday at Mapleshire, as he smiled over at the guest of honor. “It was home.”

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