There has been much ado over the recent release of the 1926 Irish Census.
Nancy Lally is certainly paying attention. She is in it. And she is in it with five years to spare.
Nancy is one of a number of "Census Centenarian Ambassadors." These are folks born before April 18, 1926, the day that the first census in the still young Irish Free State was taken.
On that day Annie Byrne (Lally would be her surname after marriage and she would also use the name Nancy) was five-and-a-half years old.
She is now 105 and living in Roselle, on the western edge of Chicago.
Nancy's story is a reflection of many of her fellow Irish men and women born in the first half of the twentieth century - a story of emigration and the establishing of a new life in America.
Where the precise reflection ends is with the length of Nancy's life. She is the second oldest of the centenarian ambassadors. The oldest lives in County Wexford and arrived in the world six months before Nancy entered it by way of Dublin's Rotunda Maternity Hospital.
Now while most people who have lived for a century plus five might be having difficulty speaking about their lives, this is not the case with Nancy.
Before she was interviewed by the Echo we were told that Nancy's health is "enviable" and that she is an absolute "firecracker."
This was clearly evident in the interview conducted last week via a video link.
Nancy is, to be sure, a little hard of hearing. Beside her during the conversation was her grandson Kelly, a retired sergeant in the Chicago Police Department.
If Nancy did not fully hear a question posed by the Echo, Kelly would lean towards her and repeat it.
And boy, the responses flowed.
Nancy was born on October 13, 1920. As anybody with an interest in Irish history knows, this was not a quiet time in Ireland. The war for independence was raging. The Black & Tans were rampaging. Nancy's parents had to be wondering about the world that their daughter had just arrived in, what sort of world all their children would be inheriting. Nancy would be one of eleven.
A few years later the census taker, a Garda officer, would have had a busy time of it taking down all the details of the Byrne family. The family, at this point, was living in bucolic County Wicklow.
The county known as the Garden of Ireland might have been Nancy's home for all her years but America called.
She and her now husband, John Lally, sailed for America on the Cunard Line's SS Franconia in 1953. First landfall was New York but the couple moved on to Chicago where there was already a family member who acted as a sponsor for the new arrivals.
And so began Nancy's new life, her American life.
During the interview Nancy sat straight in her chair, clearly alert but at times silent as Kelly passed on questions, or answered some of the more general ones.
Then she would burst into words. Clearly, during those moments of silence, Nancy was reaching back into her past. And once she had retrieved one or more memories, out they poured.
She listed all the areas of Chicago she and her husband and children had lived in before moving to Roselle in 2005.
"I have always loved Chicago," she said.
"People were always nice and welcoming. We had freedom and entertainment, dances every weekend. Dances at the church, or some organization. We were always on the move. and people were coming and going all the time."
Though she was busy and clearly in a fast moving social whirl, Nancy does admit that she was homesick "for a long time" in those early American years.
"We became citizens in 1959," she said.
With that big move behind them Nancy and John took a trip back to Ireland.
Back in Chicago, and like so many Irish immigrant households at that time, Ireland was recreated.
"Our house was as Irish as it gets," Nancy said.
"Roast potatoes on Sunday. A fried breakfast, an Irish flag in the basement."
Being on the west side of Chicago's South Side, Nancy's family inevitably went for the White Sox as opposed to the north side Cubs.
She has noted that Pope Leo, a south sider, is a Sox fan too.
"It's great he's a Sox fan," she says.
"I like him. He's good for our church."
Nancy is a great-grandmother. This is a source of enormous pride. She has two surviving siblings: a brother, Lawrence, in Carlow and a sister, Teresa, in England. Hers is a classic far flung Irish family.
Like so many of her time and generation Nancy Lally has gifted America with the very best that Ireland could give: children, grand-children, and those great grand-children.
She would change nothing.
"Ah, but I miss the dances."
The 1926 Census can be viewed at https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/
