America’s Oldest Man, Who Lived Until 110, Avoided Bottled Water As He Thought It Was 'Poison'

At the age of 100, Morrie Markoff was fixing a bathroom tank when a copper float caught his attention. To his curious, artistic eyes, the pleats in the ordinary copper piece looked like a ballerina’s tutu. He cut the piece in half, did some soldering, and ta-da, there was a sculpture of a ballet dancer practicing an Arabesque in her little poof of a metallic skirt. This was just one anecdote that highlighted Markoff’s zippy demeanour, an unflinching lust for life, and an attitude of lifelong learning that reflected from his subscription to Scientific American.

When he passed away on June 3rd, 2024, at the age of 110, it seemed the spirit of his curiosity got passed on to the scientists. When scientists studied Markoff’s brain, they were stupefied to notice that it didn’t reveal any signs of cognitive dysfunction typical of aged persons, such as dementia or impaired memory. The supercentenarian’s brain displayed an unusual lucidity that piqued the interest of the scientific community, who requested that the brain be donated for research. When asked what Markoff did to have a brain fit as a fiddle, his daughter replied that he kept a good distance from bottled water, per The New York Times. “My mother would say, ‘Don't drink bottles [of water],” Markoff’s daughter recalled.

“They believed those bottles were poison. When public health concerns about some bottles began to arise, he called me and said: ‘J, did you read the newspaper? We were ahead of our time.’ Judith Markoff Hansen, Markoff’s daughter, told the New York Times. “Mom shunned that whole fad of bottled water. They drank a lot of water but always from the tap,” she added in an interview with PEOPLE. Hansen said her mom had “an instinct about plastic.”

In addition to avoiding bottled water, the secret of Markoff’s robust brain lay in the daily walks he took with his wife, Betty Goldmintz. They had been married for 81 years when Betty died in 2019 at the age of 103. At age 108, Markoff was interviewed by Spectrum News. He shared with the reporters that during the COVID-19 pandemic, he would walk around his kitchen table five times, and if he felt really energetic, he added a leaf. Plus, both he and Betty ate healthy vegetarian meals, they avoided too much soda or processed foods, and rarely drank alcohol, in addition to steering clear of the plastic water bottles

When Markoff passed away, scientists gave the name “super-ager,” referring to a person over 80 years old whose brain seems decades younger. “Scientists believe this is the oldest cognitively healthy brain that's ever been donated. So, that's quite a thing,” Tish Hevel, CEO of the Brain Donor Project, told PEOPLE. Markoff spent the last moments of his life in his home in downtown Los Angeles, where he worked as a scrap-metal sculpture artist, photographer, and blogger, probably the world’s oldest blogger, who lived his life to the fullest and ate pies, as he shared in a photograph on his blog.

When Hansen donated his brain for science, scientists jumped with excitement, because they didn’t know what they would end up finding inside. “They're hoping they can learn what allowed this man to live so long at such a high-functioning level, in case there are things that we can do,” Havel told PEOPLE. Hansen believes that the discoveries made through her father’s brain would unlock a potpourri of cognitive secrets that could help others live such a happy, healthy, longer, and exuberant life, too. While Markoff rests in heaven, his brain resting in the laboratory is a key that could potentially reveal a treasure trove of neuroscience mysteries.