OKLAHOMA CITY — A 111-year-old Oklahoma farmer recognized last May as the world's oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records has died in a nursing home, a spokesman for the home said Monday.
Benjamin Harrison Holcomb died peacefully in bed on Saturday as his daughter Leona Ford, 84, sat by his side, Brent Busby of the Carnegie Nursing Home said.
"He'll be missed dearly," Busby said. He said he did not know the exact cause of death.
Holcomb came into the spotlight when he was named the world's oldest man in May at age 110.
Holcomb was born July 3, 1889, in Robinson, Kansas, and for most of his life farmed wheat and cotton and raised cattle near the town of Apache in southwestern Oklahoma.
He escaped the 20th century's two greatest armed conflicts, being passed over for World War I because he was a farmer with four children and again at the outbreak of World War II because he was too old at 51.