Reflections on a lifetime well spent in an Offaly parish Reporter: '); Born and reared where I am now in Killurin, I never left there was never a need. My father was James Howell, a Wexford man, from Enniscorthy and he met and married my mother Mary Cruise from here. My mother was 25 years younger than my father and yet he lived three years longer than her. He came from a tillage farm in Wexford so we were always self-sufficient growing our own vegetables and rearing animals. Ducks and hens were always rambling around the yard. We had to buy in very little, having a small farm growing up, we had enough to eat and we never went to school hungry. There were seven of us, three boys and four girls and I was the eldest. My siblings all moved away to different parts of the country, Westmeath, Cork, Roscommon, Dublin and Daingean.