Cause of death Pneumonia Ethnicity White | Nationality Canadian American Name James McCoubrey | |
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Born 13 September 1901 St. John's, Newfoundland Residence Walnut Creek, California Known for Second oldest verified living man Died July 5, 2013, Walnut Creek, California, United States | ||
James Foster McCoubrey (13 September 1901 – 5 July 2013) was a Canadian American supercentenarian who was thought to have been the world's oldest living man whose age has been verified (by the Gerontology Research Group), from the death of 116-year-old Japanese man Jiroemon Kimura on 12 June 2013 until his own death less than one month later. However, the subsequent verification of American man Salustiano Sanchez to have been born on 8 June 1901 meant that McCoubrey was in fact the second oldest man at the time of his death. McCoubrey had also been believed to be the oldest living man in North America since the death of 111-year-old Shelby Harris on 25 July 2012.
Biography
James McCoubrey was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, which was then a separate British colony but is now a part of Canada. As a toddler, McCoubrey and his family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. McCoubrey's father died in his thirties of tuberculosis, after which McCoubrey's mother remarried. McCoubrey and his mother moved to the United States when he was a child. They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when McCoubrey was eight years old. McCoubrey's mother "was once a house mother at Harvard University". McCoubrey met his then-future wife Rose at a canoe club in Boston, Massachusetts. He married Rose in 1923, and they remained married until Rose's death sixty-nine years later at the age of ninety. McCoubrey and his wife had one child, Pat. McCoubrey "has two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren". In his early life, McCoubrey was a motorcycle insurance broker, and he later "ran an oil delivery and oil burner business" until retiring at the age of 62. McCoubrey had hearing problems and had been sick with pneumonia, causing him to be hospitalized and placed in a rehabilitation facility. McCoubrey lived in Walnut Creek, California in the San Francisco Bay Area. McCoubrey died of pneumonia on 5 July 2013, at the age of 111 years 295 days.