Incredible Offaly man celebrates 104th birthday at special party with family and friends

There were great celebrations last weekend as Paddy Claffey, joined by family, celebrated his 104th birthday in Killeen’s of Shannonbridge.

Born and raised in Noggus just outside Cloghan on the Ferbane border, Paddy’s family and relatives gathered around him to help him celebrate this wonderful birthday.

Paddy was in top form, shaking hands with everyone and had a word of greeting for all too with a big broad smile that lit up his face. He’s a familiar figure in his wheelchair or his mobility scooter around the town where he knows everyone and everyone knows him.

Keeping out and about is his aim and doing as much as he is able is also important as he keeps a very positive outlook on life. He loves meeting people and having the chat and people calling to the house to see him. He can still turn the turf with a rake as he slowly navigates the bog on his quad and has the work around the farm yard down to a fine art as he goes about feeding the calves and helping out without ever leaving his seat.

His only regret is that he didn’t get the knees “done” when he was younger as he said himself, “I’d be able to go better now if I had”.

Paddy loved dancing and last November he attended an Olivia Douglas dance in Cloghan Hall where people danced around him as he sat in his chair in the middle of the hall soaking up the atmosphere.

“I have a great memory and I can go back to when I was five years old,” he announced happily. He proceeded to tell a story of how when he was a young lad, food was scarce and bacon was very expensive. A woman he did some odd jobs for, gave him his dinner of bacon and cabbage. Paddy said that he brought some of the bacon home for his mother because “she might be longing for it when I told her my story,” he said.

He clenched it in his hand so tightly so he wouldn’t lose it, that the drip ran out of it and covered his hand. He marvels at the fact that he never had to wear glasses and can read even the small print.  “All the rest of the family had to wear them but I never had,” he said.

Paddy is very disappointed about all the trouble in the world saying “it’s terrible” before he explained what he earned as a young man. He went to work as a machine operator on the Brosna and was earning great money of six pounds one and three halfpenny a week.

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“It was great money at the time,” said Paddy. Later still he got a job “in Williams potato store in Belmont for two pounds. Sure I thought they were making a mistake giving me all this money,” he said. Listening to him recall times from a totally different era to what it is today, it is very obvious that Paddy had a wonderful nature and kindness for his parents and his family and in later life that very same nature held true for his wife and his own children. His son Pat paid a lovely tribute to his father when he said that Paddy to this very day would be looking out for them all and trying to help and support them in life. “He’d want to be minding us,” said Pat “instead of us minding him”.

But he has a wonderful family too who care deeply for him. Since his wife died 21 years ago, Paddy hasn’t spent one night alone.

Before delving into birthday cake and a cuppa, Paddy quipped that he now has more medals than Pat Spillane, “but I don’t want him to hear that” he said with a cheerful laugh and a mischievous look in his eye!

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