We had the honor of speaking to one of the oldest people on the SouthCoast this morning.  Dominga Ramos from New Bedford's South End is celebrating her 100th birthday this weekend.

Incredibly, Ramos still lives alone. She has refused her son's invites to move in with him and his wife, choosing to continue to remain independent. We were thrilled to get a chance to sit down with Dominga to talk about her long life here in New Bedford.

Ramos shared a bit about her early childhood with us. She says she graduated from Roosevelt Middle School, then went on to Voc-Tech. She was forced to end her education when her father lost his job during the Great Depression and the family needed money.

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"At the time, things weren't too good, there weren't too many jobs. My father was out of work so I had to leave the school to get a job and help my mother out," Ramos said.

We asked Ramos for some advice for all of us trying to just live a life.

"I mean, I think of the younger people now, that's who I think of mostly, and I'm saying and I just hope that they won't go in what is ruining young people of today are drugs," she said. "So the only major life advice for everyone today is, don't do drugs."

Ramos does admit to us, though, that she did have a smoking habit for a few years when she was a teenager, but stopped. Since then she has been completely smoke-free.

She told us that her biggest regret in life was not learning to drive. However, remarkably, in 100 years she has never dyed her hair because she never went gray.

We marveled at Dominga's endless energy and made her promise that we could spend time with her again next year when she turns 101.

READ ON: See the States Where People Live the Longest

Stacker used data from the 2020 County Health Rankings to rank every state's average life expectancy from lowest to highest. The 2020 County Health Rankings values were calculated using mortality counts from the 2016-2018 National Center for Health Statistics. The U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey and America's Health Rankings Senior Report 2019 data were also used to provide demographics on the senior population of each state and the state's rank on senior health care, respectively.

Read on to learn the average life expectancy in each state.

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