"My heart's best treasure is no more"

+R.I.P.+

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song....

My beloved husband, Jim, passed away peacefully on Sunday June 23 2013. I am going to post here the eulogy our daughter, Anne, delivered at the funeral and then I will take a break from blogging for a while.  Jim and I were a team and it's hard to carry on with the best man down.

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What can I say to you about my lovely father, Jim Cogan?

 He grew up in Cork, the son of an English mother and Cork father, the second youngest of 4.  Jim’s mother was a convert to Catholicism and had all the zeal of a convert.  The family was a religious one.  After school, Jim entered the SMA order.  They had a church near his home in Cork.  For a while, Jim was happy in the order and he made many lifelong friends during his time in Galway, Dromantine and UCC.  But religious life was not for him and he had the courage to leave 6 months before ordination.  Jim had many fond memories of his time with the SMA.  It was always part of who he was.

Jim got his first temporary teaching job in Scoil Mhuire, Kanturk where he met Mary, the love of his life.  That was his first step towards the Kerry border.  In the Summer of ’73, he saw an ad. in the paper for a Science Teacher’s job in St. Michael’s, Listowel – a place he couldn’t even find on the map.   He made his first trip here for his interview with Father Diarmuid O’Suilleabáin.  Those were different times.  The interview took place in the principal’s house.  Interview over, Jim was told he had the job and Father O’Sullivan asked him to stay for tea which he cooked for him himself.  So began Jim’s long association with Listowel.   

Father O’Sullivan recognized the counsellor in Jim and he retrained as a Guidance Counsellor.  Subsequent principals & colleagues in St. Michaels did everything they could to make life easier for Jim.  In his time in school, Jim touched many lives.  Only Mary knew the enormous effort it took on cold wet mornings to get himself to work, but with characteristic determination, Jim pushed himself to give his best effort always.  It gave him enormous pleasure to get an email from a past pupil and he loved to hear that a man he had helped had done well and gone on to be happy in life.

Jim was hopeless at remembering names.  When he and Mary were out walking, if she saw someone whose name he should know approaching, she would say ‘Let me take your photograph with… announcing the name loudly and clearly.  All that photograph taking was only a ruse.  Jim became the most photographed person in Listowel.

Jim was at the head of every technology curve.  He was one of the first with a home computer, and an electronic organizer.  He embraced the ebook which changed his life.  He inspired the rest of the family towards technology which is a lasting and fruitful influence on us all.  Mary, who is famous in our family for once turning over a CD to play the other side, is now the unofficial Listowel blogger thanks to Jim.

Jim was always fascinated by new inventions and gadgets and he shared that passion with his late brother, John.  As soon as his disability began to affect his everyday life, John stepped in to invent and adapt simple things to help with everyday tasks.

As his disability increased, so did his determination to find new technologies to help him overcome these disabilities.  Everyone who knew him was familiar with his mastery of hands-free devices.  He was an expert on voice-recognition software and few things gave him more pleasure than the discovery of a new piece of software that enabled him to do something for himself.  A friend of ours tells a story of the day that she and her young son visited our house while Jim was on his computer.  When they got home, Padraig, aged four at the time, sat in front of his computer and issued the commands ‘Wake up’ ‘Mouse Up’ ‘Mouse Down’ and was so disappointed when his mouse wouldn’t obey as Jim’s did.

My father was a ladies man.  Most of Jim’s best friends were women.  Apart from Mary, some other women had a special place in his heart.  What would he have done without Joan, Helen, Breeda & Eileen?  His advancing disabilities brought even more ladies into his life.  Jim had PA’s, home-help, Cathy Corps and the twilight service, and the Community Care team.  These all enabled him to live at home to the end.  His final days were spent in the Bons, Tralee where he was given exceptional care and attention by all the friends he had made over a very long association with that hospital.  It gives us, his family, great consolation that he was able to be at home with Mary for so long and his last days were in familiar surroundings among friends.

Faced with battle after battle in his 65 years of life, Jim Cogan’s quiet courage and resillience is an inspiration to us all.  Coming to Listowel, and particularly Cherrytree Dr. was to be one of the better moves of his life. But by far the best move he ever made was in marrying Mary Ahern from Kanturk.  He drew love and strength from their relationship, and she was his very own Listowel Connection for over 40 years. I know that he would want me to thank her for absolutely everything.

In Listowel, he found himself among a supportive community of neighbours, friends and colleagues. Throughout his life Jim had a wonderful capacity for making and keeping friends. He was a wonderful father and grandfather.  He was very proud of us and we are very proud of him. Thank you.

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Among the many messages of condolence was this lovely one from Jim's old friend, Bernard Lynch

"I am so sorry to hear the sad news of Jim's passing. If Jim is not with God, then there is no God. Ever since I first met him in 1965 I found him to be one of the most transparently credible human beings I have ever known.

In Jim's eyes the difference of social position, of intellect, of culture, which different people exhibit, and on which they so fantastically pin their pride, was so small as practically to vanish. For him, as I knew him, all that remained was the common fact that here we are, each of us pent into peculiar difficulties, with which we must struggle by using whatever fortitude and goodness we can summon up. He was more lovingly aware than most of the depths of worth that lay hidden in each person's life.

To paraphrase Yeats

                                Rich memories, nothing but memories

                                But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed

                                The certainty that I shall see that man

                                Leaning or standing or walking

                                As in the first loveliness of his youth

                                And with the burning fervour of his youthful eyes

                                Has left me muttering like a fool...."

  

U12 Shannon Gaels,

Now who have we are?
 This GAA team plays football, not in Listowel, not even in North Kerry but in New York. These lads are the Under 12 Shannon Gaels Champions 2013.

They will be in  Listowel  on Aug 18 th at the  Tim Keneally U12  Tournament in Frank Sheehy Park. The boys are  sons  of  Irish emigrants  from all over  Ireland  and  several with Listowel and Kerry Connections. They are coached   by Robert Corridan and  Breffni Smith .

 

Peig Sayers; a Listowel connection

This book has been much in the news recently. The co-author, Michael Carney, is the last person born on the Great Blasket, the only inhabitable one of the 6 islands, to write an account of life there. The Blasket islands have been uninhabited since 1953. Only 10 native islanders survive and all are very elderly.

Michael Carney was born on the island in 1920 and lived there until he was 16.

I read a review of the book by Darragh MacManus and that review has spurred me to read the memoir itself. When Mike was growing up on the Great Blasket , the island people had no post office,  no shop, no car, no electricity, no phone, no running water, no church, no doctor or nurse, no horse, no proper roads, no machinery and no pub .  They literally had nothing.

It was the tragic death of Mike's brother, Séanín, which led eventually to the complete evacuation of the last remaining 22 citizens in 1953.  In 1964 just before Christmas, Seainín ÓCearna contracted meningitis. The weather was too bad and the sea too rough to get him to the mainland or to bring a doctor from the mainland to him.  His preventable death and the subsequent delay in getting to the mainland for a coffin was the impetus the islanders needed to put pressure on the DeValera government to relocate them.

Mike says " Some people cannot get the island out of their system. I think about it every day and still dream about it every night. I am an islandman at heart and will be until the day I die."

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People often marvel at how Listowel has produced so many writers. Even more extraordinary is the number of writers produced by one small isolated island off the west Kerry coast. The Great Blasket at its peak  had only 176 inhabitants in 1916.

The most famous of the chroniclers of life on The Blasket was Peig Sayers.

This rare photo of Brendan Behan and Peig was posted online by a Michael Murphy.

Recently I discovered that a Listowel family have a close family link with Peig.

In her biography, Peig describes 2 periods she spent "in aimsir",  i. e. working as a servant girl. The first of these tréimhsí was spent  with a family in Dingle. Peig describes her time in the Curran house with affection. The bean an tí, her boss, was kind to her and  she loved the children, particularly Seáinín.

Now for the Listowel connection. This Curran family is the family of Anne Moloney of Cherrytree Drive. Unfortunately, Anne has no photo of herself with Peig since she was very young when Peig died, but she secured from another member of her family this photo of Peig with them.

1936 approx.

Standing back L to R : Mary Curran ( Anne Moloney's grandmother) , Ogie Mehigan ( Anne's first cousin) Eileen Scully nee Curran (Anne's mother)
Seated L to R: Fr Morgan Curran and his sister Sr Felicitas Curran ( Anne's uncle and aunt)  Peig Sayers, "Auntie" Ciss Mehigan nee Scully
Front L to R : Gussie Mehigan, on Peig's lap, John Scully ( known by Peig as Seáinín) ( Anne's eldest brother)
We're not sure who the boy with his back to us is!

Since Anne was not born when Peig was in her family home, her memories of Peig are as an old lady. Peig Sayers spent the last years of her life in Dingle hospital. We know from her own account that Peig had "galar an tabac" and was once reduced to filling her dúidín (clay pipe) with tea when she was gasping for a smoke and no tobacco was to be had. But our Peig was no saint. She was also fond of a drop. Anne remembers being sent up to the hospital with a naggin of whiskey that some kind benefactor had bought in Currans for Peig.

While the search for a photo of Peig with the Curran family was going on, Kay Caball, Anne's sister in law, came up with a photo of Peig with the Moloney family of Listowel.

Back L to R
Micheal O Guithín, Peig Sayers, Dan Moloney
Front L to R
Unknown, Margaret Moloney

The photos were scanned and sent by Maeve Moloney, Anne's daughter, and she tells me that she has been motivated to re read Peig's story.

Maeve found the following interesting titbit in Wikipaedia:

The book was for a long time required reading in secondary schools in Ireland. As a book with arguably sombre themes (its latter half cataloguing a string of family misfortunes), its presence on the Irish syllabus was criticised for some years. From 1960 the Irish population was urbanising, a process that led to the "Celtic Tiger" economy in the 1990s, and Peig's tales of woe in rural surroundings confirmed to many students that Irish was a language of poverty and misery, while English was considered the language of science and commerce.

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Corpus Christi Procession, May 2013 and JFK visit

Here are a few more photos of local people at the Corpus Christi procession in May 2013.

This photo shows the procession at the end of Library Road. The other photos I took from the gate of Gaelscoil Lios Tuathail, at Denis Kelly's Corner.

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Only in Kerry

Sign on Listowel Tralee road

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Because of The Obama family visit and the Kennedy clan gathering in Wexford JFK's visit has been much in the news lately.

Ah! I remember it well.

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Pat Healy is in Royal Ascot

John B. Keane, Flavin Sweeney wedding 1946 and Listowel shops 2009

This following is an article from a recent edition of The Irish Independent.

She gave Dad his best lines

ANDREA SMITH – 09 JUNE 2013

'I often say that if my mother got six weeks at the economy, she'd straighten it out," laughs Billy Keane, eldest son of Mary, 84, and the late, great writer, John B Keane. "She is amazing with money and would cut out all unnecessary spending, but she also has a great heart. I may be running the pub, but my mam is still the boss and she has a great work ethic. I always say that I'd give her redundancy, but I couldn't afford it as she's been here since 1955."

'I often say that if my mother got six weeks at the economy, she'd straighten it out," laughs Billy Keane, eldest son of Mary, 84, and the late, great writer, John B Keane. "She is amazing with money and would cut out all unnecessary spending, but she also has a great heart. I may be running the pub, but my mam is still the boss and she has a great work ethic. I always say that I'd give her redundancy, but I couldn't afford it as she's been here since 1955."

He's only joking, of course, and indeed the fun flows throughout my gorgeous lunch at the family-run John B Keane pub, in Listowel, Co Kerry. Then again, laughter is fitting as it is here that some of the funniest and most moving plays in Irish history were written including plays like The Love-Hungry Farmer which returns by popular demand to the Gaiety.

The warm and welcoming Mary lost her beloved John B to cancer in May 2002, and Ireland lost one of its most celebrated writers. And none felt it as keenly as his wife, three sons Billy, Conor and John, and daughter Joanna.

"He was too good to lose, which made it very difficult," says Billy, while Mary says that John B was her best friend and they were inseparable in his final years. They met at a dance at the Listowel Races when both were 20. He was a chemist's assistant who also wrote poetry, not that Mary knew that when they met. Her dad had a shop, selling everything from bread to methylated spirits, and she worked there, and also went on to train as a hairdresser- cum-beauty therapist.

"I thought John was fine," she said. "People said to me, 'Do you know that he's a poet?' and I said 'What?' And a while later, a girl at work said, 'There's a poem in The Kerryman today and you're mentioned in it'. That was the only paper that would take him, but he used to write lovely poetry. He wrote very nice letters to me, and one day he asked why I never wrote back, and I said, 'Sure what have I to say to you?'"

Eventually, what she did say was yes, of course, and they were married in 1955, the year they bought the pub, which is also their family home. Mary grew up just outside Castleisland, as the second-youngest of Cornelius and Bridget O'Connor's five children, but her mother tragically died in childbirth aged just 36, when Mary was two.

"My dad was always crying after her, so I didn't know what marriage between a man and woman was like," she recalls. "The first argument I had with John was a fine one, and I said, 'Oh my marriage is gone. It didn't last long at all.' But we made up and it lasted another 47 years."

The first child, Billy, was born in 1957, a lively child who hung out with boys from local families like the Sextons (he is godfather to rugby star Jonathan Sexton.) "We were cracked young fellas," he says. "My mother wasn't that strict and my dad wasn't strict at all. He had a bit of a temper, but never with us and he never slapped us. Although he gave me a mild kick in the arse when I came home at five in the morning one Christmas Eve. Mam called the shots and she was, and still is, a great businesswoman. I think she wanted to be the best mother in the world because she grew up without her own mother, and she did a great job. She is very funny and comes out with amazing statements, and I always think my dad plagiarised some of his best lines from her."

Billy studied law after school and became a solicitor, but found that it wasn't the career for him. He took over the running of the pub at 34, and is married to teacher Elaine. Of their four children, Anne, 26, and Laura, 24, are studying law, while Lainey, 21, is training to be a teacher and educational psychologist. John, 17, is still at school.

Billy also writes, and is a newspaper columnist.

"Billy is a great son, and I love him dearly, like the others," says Mary. "He is maturing to my satisfaction," she adds, while Billy says that the process will probably be complete by the time he's 98.

John B famously wrote 18 plays and 32 works of prose and poetry sitting in the corner of the bar. His first break came in 1959 when the Listowel Drama Group won first prize at the All-Ireland Amateur Drama Festival with his play, Sive.

"John always wanted to be a writer, but had no luck at all at first," says Mary. "We went to a play and afterwards, he felt he could do better than that, so he got a copybook and had Sive almost ready in a week. He sent it to The Abbey and they wouldn't look at him, but when it won the Esso trophy, it changed our lives."

Billy says that he got his imagination and ability to move on from the past from his father, as well as his sense of fair play and anarchic sense of humour. His dad was brave, he says, often taking stances on political issues, while his mum was tough and he attributes his ability to see things through to her.

"There is great humour in his plays, such as The Love-Hungry Farmer, and at the time my father felt that Ireland was a sexually repressed society," he says. "While he sometimes got himself into bother with his stances, he realised that laughter was the best weapon. He and my mother were always out for the underdog, and you couldn't meet two more decent and generous people."

Des Keogh will return to the Gaiety Theatre for one week only in 'The Love-Hungry Farmer' from June 17.

Tickets: 0818 719 388 or www.ticketmaster.ie.

Visit John B Keane's pub, 37 William Street, Listowel, Co Kerry.

Irish Independent

Mary Keane at the door of John B.'s

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Businesses no longer in business

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Flavin Sweeney wedding  1946

 2nd, lL to R, Maureen Flavin Sweeney Blacksod Bay, 5th L to R Theresa Flavin Kennelly Knockanure, 6th L to R, Peg Connor Moran, Knockanure 

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Signs of hope!

This sign which was just being put up beside The Mermaids said Fantasy Room. It appears to be a new function room.

Mr. Signs, Martin Chute was painting a new sign at Fitzgeralds.

McKenna's Social, Corpus Christi and a Moloney family from Duagh

 McKenna's Social from Junior Griffin  (continued)

At the request of the staff members I organised another trip in 1963, this time to Galway taking in Salthill also. The new Galway Cathedral was almost completed at that time and we spent a long time walking through and admiring this beautiful church.

My most abiding memory of that day was our stop in Ennis.

Through our then local travel agent, the late Michael Kennelly  I had organised lunch at the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis and on arriving we all trooped in.There was many non staff members on this tour  also and I finished up at a table with just Tim Shanahan and myself. Many will remember Tim from the paint department and from the glass cutting at McKenna's.

We were all viewing our menus when the swing doors from the kitchen area were literally burst open and in a John Wayne like swagger, what I would call a portly, pompous gentleman wearing a dickie bow  confronted us.

Standing in the middle of the room and clapping his hands he exclaimed, "Attention please, who is in charge here ?".  I'm afraid the eyes of my colleagues turned to me and like a frightened school-boy and putting up my hand I retorted, "I am sir". Turning to the waiter and clicking his fingers and then pointing towards me , "Waiter," he said, "that gentleman  is free"

Yes, I did get my free lunch but it proved to be a costly one  for many years to follow, as when any discussion of food came up at shop level Tim Shanahan would always remark;  "Ah, you did me out of a meal. If you had said that I organized that trip with you, I would have got a free meal that day above in Ennis as well."

Just a few memories of days gone by, as said previously our staff social went from strength to strength for many years after, even getting tickets for McKenna's social at times were harder to come by than a ticket for a  Kerry/Dublin All Ireland final. 


Thank you Junior for those lovely memories

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Some more photos of people walking in the Corpus Christi procession 2013

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Fr Denis Moloney with  his sister and his father, John Moloney of Islandanny, Duagh.

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Update

Máire MacMahon's picture is quite a talking point. Maura Brennan of Colbert Street and now New York contacted Margaret Dillon to give us 2 extra names.

Back Row second from left is Sheila Brosnan of Woodford.
Second from right is Noreen O'Connor McAleer of Ballygologue and now Chicago