Dun just keeps Looking Forward

Feakle man Dun Purcell, 90, is Looking Forward to many more years of positive aging, socialising and meeting his many friends both at home in East Clare and those he knows across the globe.
Following Positive Aging Week earlier this month, Dun has been recognised by Bluebird Care as one of the finest examples in East Clare of positive aging. 
Dun celebrated his 90th birthday on Friday, October 11 with family at home in Feakle and on Saturday he was joined by his family and his friends at the quarterly Looking Forward gathering in Bohan’s Bar in Feakle. 
There, he was joined by several of his peers in their 90s, where the group enjoyed a night filled with free entertainment, music, song, refreshments and most importantly of all, laughter.
Bluebird Care in Clare congratulated Dun, “who is a perfect example of what positive ageing is all about” and presented him with a special birthday cake, which was handmade by The Pastry People in Mountshannon and had an edible photo frame with a picture of Dun out in the fields capturing Dun’s farming life. 
Streaming down the side were the lyrics of the song When We Were Young that he used to sing with his late wife. 
In his speech, Dun recognised the important work of Bluebird Care for thinking of him and commented that “if he had two women like Kay and Breda looking after him he would live forever”.
Dun is responsible for setting up the Looking Forward gathering, together with TJ McGuinness and it is a free social event organised four times a year for both young and older members of the East Clare community at Bohan’s in Feakle.
It started out as a night out for people in the area who were lonely and didn’t have a partner to go out with. 
“Looking Forward is something for everybody, everyone that comes along enjoys it and it is attracting young people and aged in the community. Everyone is welcome.
“It is just something to get people together, people dress up and get the hair done, it’s good for older people and I enjoy seeing other people enjoying themselves, it’s the atmosphere that is the secret of its success, I think,” Dun explained.
Dun has also taken an interest in young people in the area and is very involved with the Living Scenes project at St Joseph’s Secondary School in Tulla, which involves older members of the community working together with transition year pupils on projects.
Dun says he really enjoys Living Scenes and it gives him something to do, where he is out and about and keeping his mind active.
“I’m here most days with nothing to do and I’m here trying to find somewhere to go every day before I go mad, whether that’s meeting people or getting phone calls, it’s all in a day’s work to keep yourself happy and to keep connected with people,” he said.
Dun’s daughter, singer Kate Purcell, said she and her siblings are always “commenting on how lucky we are, his good health and that you can’t get him but for on the mobile, he is gone all the time. He is extremely independent and self efficient”.
“He takes such an interest in Feakle and the people around and he has such a circle of friends and diverse friends, a friend of his came from Germany for the birthday, he is a ship’s captain and he could call him on his birthday any given year from anywhere in the world.
“He has friends from all over, he met a lady from Kuala Lumpur on a bus and she keeps in contact. He makes friends very easily and has such a circle all over the world. Another is a sculptor in an island in the Pacific,” Kate said.
One very special visitor Dun had at his birthday was one of his old neighbours in Feakle, who travelled from Germany for the celebrations.
“Gerhardt lived in the house next-door to me a few years back and he walked in the door on the October 12 and said ‘hello, Mr Jones can I have a cuppa tea’, that was what he would call me, and I said ‘where in the name of Jesus did you come out of’.
“He told me ‘I’m going home this evening, I started in Hamburg at 6am and I came on to Dublin and got a car in Dublin and I’m here now’. I said where are you staying and he said ‘I am here to go to your birthday tonight and whatever time your party stops I’m going back to Dublin and I’m taking a plane at 6am and working at 4pm’. I was shocked to see him. I couldn’t get over that,” he said.
Mass was held by Fr Harry Bohan for Dun at the family home on Friday and a host of his friends and musicians turned out for him at his birthday celebrations that Saturday night.