Eva’s secret to 100: “hard work and plain food”
EVA Cunningham can remember her mother’s worry over the Black and Tans on the home farm in Mayo almost a century ago.
She was born in the final throes of World War I on the 13th of November 1917 on the family farm in Carrowkeel in the parish of Kilfine, County Mayo, the sixth of seven children.
She’s delighted to have reached the grand old age of 100:“I feel great that I’m so healthy. I’ve had a hard life in many ways but I’m just very happy to reach that age. My memory is good and I have good health in every shape and form,” she told The Sligo Champion.
Tragically, her father died before Eva turned four. Her earliest memories are of picking potatoes and running around in her bare feet helping her mum, “quite happy.”
“We’d get down on our knees each night to say our prayers before we went to bed and we’d be in a big hurry to get to bed and she’d say ‘come back and say them properly’,” she laughed.
There were two uncles in the house, her father’s brothers who helped her mother run the farm. “She had to pay men to come all the time and do the ploughing. It was tough but we didn’t realise it because we were young and happy and never hungry,” said Eva.
Her mother always made homemade bread and Eva’s job was gathering up sticks to light the fire in the morning.
“I remember my mother saying to my uncle, ‘ the Black and Tans are gone down the road to Ballycastle’ and we were a bit worried about that.
During World War II, Eva said the rationing in Ireland was tough but they used to sing “God bless De Valera and Sean McEntee for the black flour and the half ounce of tea!”
Eva moved to England on D-Day in 1944 and worked at a children’s home in England before she returned to Ireland and met her husband Eddie on a visit to Collooney.
She married in 1953 and has two daughters, Jeanie (Govan) and Carol Cunningham and two grandsons, Adam and Joseph (who now lives in Chile with his wife Claudia.)
Last Saturday a thanksgiving service was held in Holy Trinity Church, Ballisodare at 12.30pm followed by a reception at the Salley Gardens.