Daily 5km walk helped Mountcharles’ Mary Meehan reach 105, funeral told

Mountcharles woman Mary Meehan, who lived to 105, put her longevity down to her diet and a 5km daily walk, mourners at her funeral have been told.

Mary, who was from Glencoagh, Mountcharles, passed away on July 26.

Last October she marked her 105th birthday with a coffee morning in Donegal Town which raised more than €2,000 for Donegal Community Hospital and Donegal Hospice.

Originally from Kilcar, the place “she loved and longed to be”, Fr Patsy McDermott told mourners at her funeral Mass at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Mountcharles how she met Willie, her late husband of more than 60 years, when she worked in a bar in Donegal Town.

The couple married in the UK in 1947 before returning to Donegal in the 1970s where they set up home in Mountcharles and raised their three daughters.

They set up businesses in Donegal Town and Killybegs.

Gifts brought to the altar during the Mass represented her religious devotion, her love of baking and her joy from playing cards.

Fr McDermott said her longevity was attributed to a healthy diet and exercise which included a daily 5km walk from her home to the post office in Letterbarrow which continued long after she reached the age of 100.

The funeral heard how she “idolised her grandchildren”, had a love of ballroom dancing and storytelling and in her later years regularly attended social events and social lunches.

She was predeceased by her husband Willie, her parents John and Mary Gillespie and seven brothers and four sisters.

Mary is survived by her daughters Carol, Marie and Margaret, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and her sister Susan in Chicago.