MARIA McQUILLAN thanked God for “a clear mind” as she blew out the candles on her 107th birthday cake yesterday.
There was no secret to her longevity, she said, other than avoidance of the drink, cigarettes and only ever having “the one man”.
“I just live from day to day. One day passes and another one comes. Before you know where you are it’s your birthday.
“Then you keep going and it’s another birthday and they soon mount up.”
Mrs McQuillan, a great- grandmother and a widow since 1966, was quietly feted at the City Way Day Centre in Belfast’s Sandy Row where she attends for lunch three days a week. She still lives in her own home nearby, supported by her son Billy and a care package from social services.
“She applied for a home [for the elderly] in 1999,” said a representative of the day centre, “but she hasn’t taken it up yet.”
“Her eyesight isn’t what it was, she’s lost a little hearing and she takes to the wheelchair now and again,” she added. But otherwise Maria, born in 1902, gets on with what is a long and eventful life.
She has witnessed two world wars, one Easter Rising, Partition, various bouts of the Troubles, five British monarchs, 18 US presidents and 10 popes.
Originally from the north of the city, she admitted: “I loved school, but as soon as I was 14 I was taken out of school and sent into the weaving factory at 6.30 in the morning. My first week’s wages were four shillings. I don’t think I got keeping it.”
She worked at Adams weavers for 46 years until she retired at 60.
In a warm yet low-key celebration, Sinn Féin lord mayor Tom Hartley congratulated her while cards were received from Queen Elizabeth and President Mary McAleese.
The lord mayor, playing down the presence of a Sinn Féiner amid the Union flags of the loyalist heartland, said the visit was not about him.
“It’s not about me in Sandy Row. It’s about a 107-year-old citizen of Belfast. I stand in awe of her life. When she was born Queen Victoria had just died, there was a Kaiser, a Czar. Cars were just coming on to the streets of Belfast, airplanes hadn’t been invented. Belfast was at the height of its power.”
Not keen to talk about the darker days of Belfast’s history, Maria recalls briefly her relatives who left to join the royal navy. “My brother served in the navy and my in-laws were all navy men, but they’re all dead now and I’m the only one left.”
It “feels good” to have lived so long, she said. “I thank God my mind’s clear. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I never smoked and I’ve only had the one man.”
Good fortune has played its part. “I’m very lucky. I’m very happy, my family’s been very good to me.”