Happy 100th: Dublin centenarian celebrates his birthday

Jack Downs cast his beady eye over the luscious birthday cake, festooned with strawberries and encircled by lady finger biscuits, that nursing home staff had just presented to him.

There was a pause.

"If there's a mess to be made," he pronounced in his slightly shaky 100-year-old voice, "I'll make it!"

Earlier, Jack listened as his son Paul read a letter from Michael D. Higgins, Ireland’s ninth president (Jack knew every single one of his predecessors) who wished him a very happy birthday as he celebrated a life “rich in accomplishments”.

"You have lived through remarkable times in the history of Ireland, " wrote President Higgins, enclosing also the standard centenarian's bounty cheque for €2,540. "May you be surrounded today by the warmth of happy memories and secure in the knowledge that you continue to make this world a better place for all who love you."

And surrounded he was yesterday by the love of his son and daughter-in-law, Judith, and the staff of the Gladys Nursing Home in Harold's Cross where is has lived for the past five years.

“We’re all mad about him,” said Ros O’Byrne, the director of nursing. “He has a great sense of humour and is always great with the ladies.”

Jack began life on September 5th 1914 – the First World War then a month old – at his parents home in Kilmacud, a rural place some miles south of Dublin, where his father was a market gardener. In later years he looked after his parents there, before moving to Grantham Street in the city where he helped look after his parents-in-law.

Paul is his and his late wife Kathleen’s only son but he has two grandchildren, Robert and Emer.

A hoped-for career as an opera singer was denied by glandular fever. He worked instead advertising as a copywriter and account manager, then in printing, setting up Ace High Press (still going) and later Academy Press.

He wears lightly the burdens of very great age, smiling easily and chatting to those with whom he is familiar. Paul puts his longevity down to a life’s devotion to walking and to “healthy eating, healthy living and all things in moderation”.

Jack's friends among the staff try to coax a little of a favourite song from him, I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen.

He looks about the room.

“There are eight men here,” he notes accurately. “None of them have an idea!”

And he smiled a big cheeky smile but thought better of trying the song himself.

“Too long,” he said, “too cumbersome and it won’t work.”