From this week’s Galway City Tribune – After working her entire life on a farm and raising a family of seven, Ann King would have been perfectly entitled to put the feet up in her latter years.

But this 85-year-old dynamo of energy is not one to take the easy road.

The oldest volunteer in Cope Galway where she has helped prepare dinners for the last 15 years, she also volunteers with Cheshire Galway, which provides services to adults with disabilities who have high support needs. Once a week she hosts a wheelchair-bound woman in her home for three hours’ respite.

The native of Ballyglunin in North Galway, who has lived in Doughiska near the Galway Clinic since she got married in 1967, Ann clearly remembers the day she vowed to get her first paid job at age 54.

“The youngest was in secondary school, the others were either in college or working and I was standing at the range, only answering questions for an hour about where this one’s jeans are, where the other one’s top is. I said there’s more than this – I’ll go get a job washing pots in Supermacs.”

Ann had never gone to secondary school because she had to work on the family farm in Laraghmore. Her seven brothers had emigrated across the water and it was down to her and her sister Teresa to work the land with her father.

She moved from home to John King’s farm in Doughiska when they got married six months after first dancing in the Hangar in Salthill.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, see the March 29 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.