Garlic holds key to long life for 101 year old Galway woman!

A South Galway native who celebrated her 101st birthday recently has revealed the secret to long life – hard work and a clove of raw garlic every day!

Margaret O’Connell – known to one and all as Margo – must have known she was destined for longevity; although she was a familiar site behind the wheel of her Mini, she didn’t pass her driving test until she was in her eighties!

She was surrounded by family and friends as she marked her milestone birthday recently at the Little Flower Nursing Home in Labane, where she has lived for the past four years.

Margo received a letter and a beautiful silver medal from President Michael D Higgins on the day sending her his ‘warmest personal congratulations and most sincere good wishes’.

She was born Margaret Glynn in Cahermore, Kinvara on May 18 1915 – meaning she has lived through the 1916 Easter Rising and the War of Independence, as well as both World Wars.

Born one of 13 children, she was no stranger to hard work from an early age. She worked on the family farm, taking care of the pigs and fowl which sustained the whole family.

She has often told stories of how each morning she would help her brothers lift two big metal pots, from which the animals were fed, before she went to school and they went to work.

She married Jack Connell and moved to Ruanmore, Ardrahan, where they ran a farm. When Jack died in the early 1980’s, she continued to run the farm on her own.

It was only in her later years that she learnt to drive and she was a familiar sight driving the road from Ardrahan to Gort in her little brown Mini – and later, a blue one!

In 1990, she decided she needed to be closer to the town and build a house in Ballyhugh, Gort, where she settled until she moved to the Little Flower Nursing Home in Labane on January 6 2012.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.