Quilty’s Sarah celebrates 100th birthday in company of her clan

BORN in the early weeks of the Irish Free State, Clare’s latest centenarian puts her longevity down to her strong faith and love for traditional Irish music.

Last Monday, January 23, dozens of members of Sarah Ryan’s family came together in Quilty to celebrate her 100th birthday.

Her son John Joe also has his birthday on January 23, and he turned 77, having been the first of 13 children that Sarah gave birth to.

He said there was a fantastic family celebration this week. “It was huge. The family are well spread and it’s large, there were 70 or 80 relatives, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great children, a massive crowd.

“We were very lucky with the day we got as well, it would have been awkward if it was a bad day. On her 90th birthday we went to the Armada but at her age now she wouldn’t be leaving home.”

Sarah is still in good health and living at home. John Joe said that this year it was decided that her birthday would be marked on the actual day rather than at a weekend.

“We would have tried to facilitate the relations on other birthdays and have it on the weekend before or something like that, but this time we said we’d have it on the day of the birthday. It worked fine, everybody organised themselves to be there and it was nice.”

Both Sarah and John Joe’s father Paddy were in the UK during World War II, but love struck when they were both home for a visit.

“She was a student nurse in Birmingham during the war, in 1944. Dad worked in London at that time. The funny thing about it is they didn’t meet there. They were both home from England for Christmas in 1944 and they met on Christmas morning.

“Dad saw her and he asked his friend who that girl was. Neither of them went back and they were married four months later.

“That was the end of her nursing days, she had enough on her hands with 13 of us!”

Did Sarah take exceptionally good care of herself?

“I don’t know how much minding of yourself you could do with 13 children! She just got on with it, as simple as that. Dad worked for the ESB, he worked on the installation of electricity in the village actually.

“He worked for Bord na Móna after that, during the early war years they cut turf for the county council, that’s what they used for hospitals and everything during the war years, because you couldn’t get coal.

“A lot of men from this area and other areas in Clare, I would imagine, worked in the bogs around Lissycasey cutting turf.

“When that emergency was over he worked for ESB on the construction of the local power station in Miltown Malbay. Then he went for training to Portlaoise, and he worked in the station in Miltown Malbay all his working, and Mam carried on looking after us all at home.”

John Joe says that while his mother was always very busy, theirs was a very happy home.

“She didn’t have much time for anything else rearing that crowd! There was constant washing and feeding. She’d bake all the bread for the following day every night time when we were gone to bed. It was a military operation to look after that number of children.

“But you did what you had to do, she was always happy. You know when you’re growing up if your household is happy or not.”

Having a very large family was much more common in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.

“Everyone had big families that time, maybe not quite as big as ours, but everyone had big families. We lived by the sea which was a fantastic place to grow up, especially in summer.

“When she was young, and even when I was young, we had a train station in the village, a cinema, a dance hall, a bakery. It was a really busy little village before the West Clare railway shut down.”

John Joe does remember his mother enjoying set dancing and people calling to the house looking for her to go dancing.

“I often remember someone would come to the house and say ‘Sarah, we’re short one for the set will you come?’. She’d say ‘I can’t look at all the children I have here’, but that’d be sorted out and she’d often be swept off.”

While she has enjoyed a long and largely happy life, she did have to deal with the loss of a beloved child.

“My youngest brother Declan was killed in a car accident when he was only 16, he was the youngest of the family. That was a tough and hard time in my Mum and Dad’s life, they would have had more time for the younger members of the family because the rest of us were gone by then. It was a very sad time, still is when you think about it. Those are the blows you get in life sometimes.”

Seventy-seven years of age himself, John Joe is still very active in the local community.

He is President of the Kilmurry Ibrickane GAA club and plays a hands-on role also, helping to run the club Lotto. He has also been very involved in the provision of the local Credit Union.