By JENNIFER AMATO
Staff Writer
NORTH BRUNSWICK — Catherine McCann’s apartment looks like a typical apartment: family photos hanging on the walls, a vase full of fresh flowers sitting on the dinette table, an angel hanging above the bedroom door.
Nothing seems out of the ordinary, except for the woman residing within: McCann, who turned 100 years old on Feb. 7, lives there completely independently. She cooks for herself, takes her own showers, does her own laundry, dusts and vacuums, uses a cell phone and takes a car service to go food shopping.
“I’m going to get up when I want to, go to bed when I want to, I don’t have to eat at a certain time,” McCann said of refusing to live in a nursing home or assisted living facility. “I have my place to hang up what I want.”
McCann was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. She was the middle child of five Gallagher siblings who were born during World War I and lived through the Great Depression. Her father died of a heart attack when her youngest brother was one month old.
“Back then, it was tough,” she remembered. “I had to mind my brother when [my mother] went out.
“[My sister] Mary had a good education, but I had to raise my brother.”
In her late 20s, McCann “danced all over.” She would dance at her parish every Saturday night.
“We all knocked down the house. We liked it very much,” she said. “I entertained the whole neighborhood. On Friday, I helped out with the ballroom dance.”
She loved tap dancing, the tango, the rumba, the waltz, the Irish jig and even belly dancing. She said that the monsignor at her church asked if she would entertain a crowd and when she asked if she could do a belly dance, he said, “Why not?”
She even appeared on Broadway in “Kiss Me, Kate.”
“Everybody is nice on Broadway shows,” she recalled.
And she got to dance once with Elvis.
“He was very nice. He liked the way I danced,” she said with a big smile. “He told me, never give up my dancing. … He was very refined.”
She also proudly displays a hat Rosie O’Grady gave her when she went to hear her sing.
“My Irish eyes are smiling,” she said.
McCann married her husband Thomas in 1942 when she was 25 years old — and they were married for more than 50 years before he got very sick. She said Thomas worked for the government in a top secret job that he never revealed to her.
They originally lived on the 21st floor of an apartment near Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) Airport in Queens.
“I had a good time,” she said. “We danced in the hall. Back and forth. I put the radio on.”
She loved shopping at the Gimbels department store, and always wore nice clothes and had her hair done.
“I’d go to Manhattan to get my hair done. They don’t know how to do hair around here,” she laughed.
They loved to travel, especially to the Pocono Mountains.
“We used to walk down the hill for milk,” she said.
And she had stories to share about commuting in New York.
“One time, the F train was coming in. I had high heels on, and I fell,” she said. “My mother said, ‘Dammit, I told her if she ever walked by the subway never to wear heels.'”
Catherine and Thomas had three children, Tommy, Robert and Dennis. She has seven grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. Her granddaughter Kate is following in her footsteps, wanting to be a dancer.
She has lived in Florida and Hillsborough, eventually settling in North Brunswick at the decision of her children.
“It is a beautiful town,” she said of Brooklyn. “I don’t know whatever brought me to Jersey.”
Yet she continues to live on her own, dancing every step of the way.
“I’ve done a lot of exercise,” she said, pointing out specifically a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Hillsborough. “I did my old-fashioned Irish jig. I put my tap shoes on.”
McCann continues to follow a daily routine, beginning with breakfast and followed with praying the Rosary twice for policemen, firefighters and workers. She’ll get in some phone calls or take a car service to go out. Then she’ll visit her neighbors.
“I get up in the morning, have my two cups of coffee, a little reading,” she said, followed by a cupcake or Danish. “They pep me up.”
And every night, she talks to the guardian angel hanging above her bedroom door.
“Every night I say goodnight to my angel. I say if anything ever happens to me, send for help.”
McCann celebrated her 100th birthday on Feb. 9 with 80 fellow residents and staff members from the North Brunswick Senior Housing building, in addition to her son Robert and granddaughter April.
Although she danced with Jeanne Selby, manager of the building, at her 99th birthday, she enjoyed being serenaded at her most recent party instead.
“She shut me down,” McCann said of April asking her not to move around too much for fear of her safety. “I wanted to get up and dance.”
McCann said the key to a long life is walking. She would walk up flights of steps to her apartment when she was younger, and continues at her age to walk around the apartment building as much as she can. She never smoked, she never drank, she does not take any medication — and she never dyed her hair. She said she has strong lungs, and only remembers having gall bladder surgery.
Although she has fallen a couple times, she said she has not broken any bones because she is made of “good Irish.”
“And it pays to say the Rosary,” she said.
She has also refused to wear hearing aids.
“If they want to talk about me, I won’t know it,” she explained.
McCann still keeps active, has a sense of humor and always smiles.
“My mother always told me my smile was going to get me in trouble,” she laughed. “It’s like a medicine, laughing at everybody.”
She also lives a life of compassion.
“When you see a war veteran outside, give them a dollar,” she said, thinking of her brothers who died during World War II. “Or, when you see a beggar, there’s something wrong.”
McCann noted a recent television segment in which women said they all wanted to live past 100.
“Then you better walk, right?” she advised. “When you live six flights up in a walk-up, that’s healthy.”
Contact Jennifer Amato at jamato@gmnews.com.
