Almost until the end, Mary Josephine Ray would take song requests, crooning traditional Acadian tunes from her childhood and Tin Pan Alley standards. From her New Hampshire nursing home, she played cribbage with a youthful zeal, tallying every point herself. At 106, she shrugged off hip replacement surgery like she had skinned her knee.

She said the rosary, watched her soaps, and cheered on her beloved Red Sox. Hershey’s Kisses were always close at hand. Sometimes, so was a dainty snifter of port.

Ray, who died in her sleep Sunday at the age of 114, had been widely acknowledged as the oldest person in the United States and the second-oldest person in the world. As she climbed the ranks of the world’s most aged, she would say she owed her longevity to God alone. But another reason, her family believes, was that she welcomed each day with gratitude and wonder.

“She always lived in the present, every day,” said her granddaughter, Kathy Ray. “She took each day as it came. She lived in the moment and never gave a thought to dying.”

Happy birthdays

Mary Josephine Ray, a mother of two children who lived most of her life in Maine, also reveled in the attention that came with her advancing age. She loved her birthdays, which reunited far-flung family and featured a barbershop group that would serenade her a cappella. Now and then she would get letters from strangers who wanted to meet her or an autograph request.

Ray was just a few days younger than the oldest person in the world, Kama Chinen of Japan, who is 114 years and 303 days. There are now 75 people aged 110 or older in the world (known as supercentenarians), according to the Gerontology Research Group in Los Angeles. All but three are women.

Neva Morris, of Ames, Iowa, is now the country’s oldest resident at 114 years and 218 days old. Ray lived to 114 years, 294 days.

Geriatrics study

Ray was taking part in the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center, the world’s largest study of the possible reasons behind centenarians’ longevity. Thomas Perls, a geriatrics professor who directs the study, said Ray’s mental abilities remained remarkably strong in her final years.

“She was amazing,” he said. “Her long-term memory was very good.”

While centenarians have become relatively common in the United States, with 74,000 now and a projected 600,000 by midcentury, supercentenarians like Ray remain incredibly scarce. Just 1 in 7 million people live to 110, Perls said. They are considered medical marvels who seem almost impervious to the normal aging process.

“They markedly delay the onset of any age-related diseases,” he said. “To get to 110, there’s a really strong genetic component.”

In Ray’s case, her powerful genes seemed to bestow remarkable vitality. In 2003, she attended her first game at Fenway Park and was invited to lead the crowd in a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”