Galway native celebrates 107th birthday after surviving hospital stay during Covid
A proud Galway native who survived six days in hospital at the height of the Coronavirus crisis was back home to celebrate a major milestone at the weekend – her 107th birthday.
Bridie McMorrow, originally Bridget Mannion, was in the townland of Curhownagh at the western tip of the little peninsula of Errislannan, about five miles from Clifden.
As she says herself, she was born, quite literally, in the second house from the Atlantic.
Her long life means that Bridie has witnessed some of the most turbulent events in twentieth-century Irish history.
She remembers, for example, the excitement after Mass on Sunday, June 15 1919, when Alcock and Brown crash-landed in Derrygimbla, about three miles from her home, after the first transatlantic flight.
Pieces of the plane were picked up by neighbours and some remain in the locality to this day.
The plane landed very close to the Marconi Radio Station, built at great expense to send radio signals to America.
It employed some 300 people at its peak – and Bridie remembers some of the children of British engineers and craftsmen attending her national school in Ballinaboy.
She also remembers the time that the station was burned by Anti-Treaty Forces during the Civil War.
But for 70 years her home has been in West London, where she married Leitrim native Denis and reared her family – always with one eye towards home.
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