THE OLDEST woman in Wales died on Thursday September 9 at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr Hospital in Ystrad Mynach after testing positive for Coronavirus.
Amy Winifred Hawkins was aged 110, making her the oldest woman in Wales, and the sixth oldest in the UK.
Born in Cardiff on January 24 1911, she grew up in Newport with five brothers and one sister.
She rose to fame after her great-grandson Sacha Freeman, 14, posted a video of her singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ to TikTok and it went viral, having been watched over 150,000 times.
The great-grandmother lived in Monmouth with four generations of her family. Mrs Hawkins spent time as a window dresser and married sign-writer George Hawkins in 1937. She served as a fire-watcher during World War Two.
Her husband died in 1996 after which Mrs Hawkins moved in with her large family in Monmouth, including her two grandchildren Tamzin and Hannah.
Her daughter, Rozi Morris, said: “We all got Covid but mum didn’t have any symptoms. She’d been going downhill for a couple of months really.
“She was there (in hospital) for a week and we went to see her on Wednesday afternoon and she was struggling then. We said ‘goodbye’ and cwtched her and then in the early hours of Thursday morning the hospital rang and told us she’d died.
“I’m not sure she died as a result of Covid really. She has never had any illness all her life. She couldn’t eat terribly well in the weeks before her death, which probably contributed more [to her death].”
Rozi also thinks that the passing of Amy’s sister may have had an effect on her. Rozi says that she was happiest when in the company of her sister. Her sister Lillian lived until 101 and died in May.
“After that was probably when she started to go downhill. She went to see her every week and they were very close. It’s nice really that mum didn’t have to go on too long without her sister.”
Previously, when she and her sister Lilian were asked about the secret of their long lives, she said: “Never go to the doctors.”
Rozi described her mother as: “Indomitable. She was lovely and she just cared about other people really more than herself. She was great.”
