Boston University has a term for those who make it to 100 years old without showing any outward sign of dementia or any other clinically demonstrable disease: “escapers.”

It’s a reference to how, as one inevitably approaches the limit of the natural human lifespan, morbidity is something to be “escaped.”

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the beloved unofficial mascot of Loyola University and its basketball team who died Friday at the age of 106, was a veritable Houdini.

It’s axiomatic that people today live longer than in the past. Still, it is easy to overstate your odds of getting to 100, let alone 106.

Your chances of making a century are only about 2% to 3%, with more women at the top of that range, of course. The odds on making 106 are even more remote. The 2020 census found there are

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