Nun who lived through Spanish Flu: 'Vaccinate a young person or frontline worker before me'

Sr. Colette Hickey. Picture Dan Linehan

A Cork-based nun who is just a few days shy of her 103rd birthday believes a younger person should be given the Covid-19 vaccine before her.

Sr Colette Hickey was born on January 31, 1918, just before the Spanish Flu pandemic struck. 

As we face the biggest global health issue since then, she has questioned “if it would be better to give the vaccine to a younger person first” ahead of having her scheduled jab on January 11.

“Would it be a waste on me? I'd prefer if it was given to anybody younger or somebody on the frontline first,” she said.

Sr Hickey, who was born near Clonmel, Co Tipperary, maintains that if somebody in greater need could get it, then they should. The inaugural winner of the Cork Person of the Year award in 1993, she is being looked after at the Bon Secours Care Village, Mount Desert, on the Lee Rd in Cork after getting pneumonia last January.

She said she didn't really know about the Spanish Flu “because we didn't get any news then like you have now".  

However, she remembers the Second World War “because there was nothing; commodities were very scarce".  

She had already entered the Good Shepherd order of nuns in Limerick four years before that war broke out, and had transferred to Cork in 1938.

Sr Hickey remembers the polio outbreak in Cork in 1956, not because of news broadcasts, but “because a neighbour got it".

She attributes her longevity to “a fairly good sense of humour". 

“There's no sign of me going yet," she said. 

"I don't know how the Lord has left me here so long. I was always happy and contented in myself and I've had very good health, thank God.” 

The Good Shepherd nuns were an enclosed order, and Sr Hickey only made contact with the outside world in 1972 when she helped found Edel House as a refuge for mothers and children in abusive situations. She became the first Cork Person of the Year for this work when the awards were inaugurated in 1993.

Sr Hickey was presented with her award by then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

“I was delighted to do it. It could have been me [in Edel House] only for the grace of God. There were some wonderful women who came to that refuge. It was very sad to see them and their children crying. I was the first [nun] to sleep there, and I'd have to get up any time at night when the guards brought people there,” she said.