Listowel Town Park, A Listowel chaplain in WW2 and a Church Street landmark gets a touch up

A Great Tit

Photo credit: Graham Davies

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Childers' Park

Pedestrian entrance to Listowel Town Park with Dandy Lodge in the background

The newly enlarged entrance from Bridge Road

Sign flattened by the elements

1916 commemorative garden

Dandy Lodge

Listowel Community Centre

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Listowel Parish commemorates The Holocaust

This is Fr. Michael Morrison who was born in Listowel in 1908. He was a chaplain who attended at the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp at the end of WW2.
His story is here

 BBC Archive; World War 2 People's War

Photo: Kerry's Eye

At Sunday mass in Listowel on January 28 2018, Holocaust Memorial Day, Fr. Morrison's grandnephew, Finbarr Walshe of Tralee presented an icon to Listowel parish. The family believe that the icon was made by inmates in the concentration camp.

The Bergen-Belsen camp was built to hold 10,000 people, but on the day it was liberated 60,000 were crammed into appalling conditions. An estimated 50,000 people died there between 1941 and 1945.

Following the war, Fr Morrison served as a parish priest in Australia, before eventually returning home to Ireland, where he died in 1973.

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Plasterwork getting a Facelift

A little touching up to the famous plasterwork was in progress as I passed by on Church St. in January 2018.

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The Success of Sive in 1959

Some more newspaper cuttings from the Sive 1959 archive. Thank you, David O'Sullivan.

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Listowel in 1968

Newsbeat came to town to see if it was snobbery that was keeping local girls from applying for lucrative jobs in a new local factory. The interviewer was the late Bill O'Herlihy.

Newsbeat in Listowel

Colm Cooper in Woulfe's, Memory of My Mother and Jowika in Germany

Wintry Morning in Listowel

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Colm Cooper in Listowel

Never meet your heroes, they say. People were not taking that advice in Listowel on November 17 2017 as we waited for Colm Cooper, one of the greatest footballers ever to wear the green and gold, to arrive in Woulfe's Bookshop.

These little boys waited patiently at the head of the queue for their hero to appear.

Brenda, Kevin, Maura, Mickey and Mary were also waiting patiently as the VIP guest was being given a tour of the racecourse by David Fitzmaurice. Colm hopes to be able to come to Listowel Races next year, an outing he has missed through footballing commitments for many years.

The queue was 3 deep snaking through the shop by the time Colm appeared escorted by Stephen Stack, an old friend and footballing and banking colleague.

Stephen introduced the footballer turned writer. He had to have his list of Colm's achievements written down for him for it would be difficult for anyone, even Colm himself, to remember them all.

Stephen told us a story that was related to him by Shane Quinn. Shane got the job of marking Colm, then only 18, in a local game. Shane was taken off at half time as it was clear that he couldn't cope with the rising star of Kerry football. 
"How did you feel about being taken off." 
According to Stephen's story, Shane said that his head was in such a reel that he climbed over the wall and went home to bed.

Colm didn't delay us long with speechmaking.

Colm was here to sign his book and sign he did, patiently and tirelessly and he was more than willing to chat to everyone, to listen to stories, to send greetings to friends and to pose for endless photographs. He is a lovely man.

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A Poem for November 

We all have memories of our mothers. In my mind I can hear my mother singing 

"Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim

He doesn't care for me and I don't care for him."

or the plaintive Teddy O'Neill

as she went about her daily chores.

Patrick Kavanagh's poem recalls the simplicity of rural life and the 'countless, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" that we can all recall about our mothers.

My final choice from The Irish Hospice's Stories of Love and Hope is

In Memory of my mother

Patrick Kavanagh

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay

Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see

You walking down a lane among the poplars

On the way to the station, or happily

Going to second mass on a summer Sunday

You meet me and you say,

“Don’t forget to see about the cattle.”;

Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland

Of green oats in June,

So full of repose, so rich with life-

And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after

The bargains are all made and we walk

Together through the shops and stalls and markets

Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O, you are not lying in the wet clay

For it is harvest evening now and we

Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight

And you smile up at us – eternally.

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Jowika in Germany

Philomena Moriarty Kuhn recently posted some photos on Facebook. They were taken on a trip by workers at Jowika Listowel to Germany. I'm sure many of my blog readers will recognise people. If you see your self or someone you know, I'd love to identify people.

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Holidays are Coming

Free Parking in Listowel from Friday 1st to 16th Dec from 1pm each day, then Free Parking from Monday 18th until Monday 1st Jan subject to a 2hr parking limit in a parking space.