Jack not looking back through rose-tinted glasses

MOST 100-year-olds tend to have trouble removing the rose-tinted glasses. In fact, there are plenty of people who fall well short of 100 years old maintaining that their young days were the “good old days”.
Kilrush centenarian Jack Dunleavy isn’t among the county’s century-old citizens who thinks that everything was better in his day. The good old days, he maintains, never existed. Jack definitely can’t recall them.
“They’re a myth and as you go along, it’s the same story. It’s a repetition. They were never good days. They were the same always. Always the same to my mind,” he told The Clare Champion at his home in Moore Street, Kilrush last week.
Jack is surrounded by birthday cards marking his 100 years, which he hit two weeks ago. Through his living room window he can view Kilrush and his native street, both of whom are central to who he is.
“I was bred, born and reared in Moore Street. Never outside it. To me, it’s the same old Kilrush. Strolling away. I don’t miss Glynn’s Mills or Ryan’s industry or any of them. They fell apart but still the town survives. But I’d say there were more pints drank in those days than there is now,” he laughed.
Later, Jack claimed that he never drank but just as he spoke, his daughter Phil was passing. She disputed her father’s assertion, saying that he downs the odd glass of port or Guinness.
“I don’t know what she’s saying,” Jack said eventually, suggesting that he couldn’t hear his daughter before he subtlety modified his position.
“I never drank a pint, as such, in my life,” he said.
Jack worked in the family shop with his mother for years and farmed land left to him by Neddy Callinan, his grand-uncle. He also loved sport in his hair oil days.
“I was the devil for everything; football, hurling and boxing. I was a fairly good runner over 100 yards. We lived for football down in the Cricket Field. I was a half-back. There was a junior team one time and a senior team. The juniors were able to beat the seniors and the seniors were county champions. They lived for football here,” he reflected.
Jack can’t believe that he has reached 100. Still, he’s not getting overly excited about it. Such calm perhaps comes with age.
“I don’t realise it. I just take it day by day and carry on. When you have enough of the road seen, you don’t bother too much. You know that ’tis there. When you get old you don’t worry too much,” Jack concluded, not looking too worried at all.
Another Clare man, 101-year-old Peter Marrinan, from Ennistymon, has been honoured by the Springfield Police Service in the US. He is the city’s oldest living retired police officer and retired more than 40 years ago.
He recently received a surprise visit from Police Commissioner William J Fitchet.
Meanwhile, 108-year-old Clare woman Margaret Kelly, who was born in 1902, marked her most recent birthday in Queensbury, New York recently.
Margaret lived with her daughter, Margie Drum, in Queensbury, until last month, when her health finally made it necessary for her to move into The Pines Nursing Home in Glens Falls.