102-year-old born during the pandemic, dies during the pandemic
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Cape Elizabeth, Maine (WMTW) — At his daily press briefings, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Nirav Shah often says each person who dies from coronavirus complications is not just a statistic and that each one is someone meaningful to someone else.
One of those people who recently passed away was Frances Jordan Banks, who celebrated her 102nd birthday this year. She died from COVID-19 on June 2.
She was born in 1918 at the very end of the first World War, and enlisted in the Army as a nurse during World War II. For a time, she was based at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth during the war.
Jim Rowe of the Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society interviewed her in 2016 and recalls her wry sense of humor.
“From Cape Elizabeth, she joined the Army to see the world, and her first assignment was Fort Williams in Cape. I think she spent less than a year there, eight to nine months, then she shipped off and then got to see the world, but that’s kind of a funny story,” Rowe said.
Her life was marked by some of the most historical events over the 20th and early 21st centuries.
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