Fortunately for me, having been taught at home and being already older, I was considered suitable for Senior Infants and after a few weeks with the ‘babies’ I was moved on to Sister Coleman’s. She was a dear and I thrived there. My poor sister Patsy hated school from day one!
School Days
Starting School
I was almost six years old when I started school. I don’t know at what age my aunt proposed sending me but in any case I was spotted by a couple of Walking Nuns from the Convent of Mercy, out doing their Sunday calls, and me just playing harmlessly in the street. They followed me home and upon enquiry, were horrified that I had not started school at my age!
Childhood Years
Although I was reared by my aunts, prior to their relocation to Dromalane my parents lived only five minutes walk away and I was a frequent visitor. They had no radio so we made our own entertainment, with regular singalongs in the evenings. My father had a lovely tenor voice and he and mother knew all the old Irish melodies, as well as the songs of the day.
Money from England
Newry suffered very little over the Second World War years. I remember going with my aunts to be issued with my Mickey Mouse gasmask. I can still smell the rubber from it. Of course we never had to use it in earnest. We were also issued with identity cards and ration books.
Maura: Grandparents’ deaths
My earliest memory is of waking up in the pram and being given a bottle. I also remember being carried downstairs each morning in my pyjamas to get a miniature cooked breakfast with the family.
I recall having measles, with the lights out to keep the room dark and a tilly lamp burning (the same tilly lamp I keep today). I was bundled in a quilt on the armchair and constantly fussed over.
Communion Choir, 1976
The young ladies pictured here will soon be approaching that dreaded ‘bump’ birthday of forty! Then they were attending St Joseph’s School where the Walking Nuns taught them well.
The 150th Anniversary of the Mercy Nuns coming to Newry is currently being celebrated with an exhibition in the Catherine Street home. Don’t miss it! Also purchase their commemorative book, The Walking Nuns which is on sale there, and will soon be reviewed here (when I get time to browse it!)
How many faces can you put a name to? Answers on Guestbook, please!
War is Over!
Eventually the war was over. Everyone was delighted, with the obvious exception of those who had lost their sons and loved ones (see Newry’s War Dead, reviewed here).
Brother Lynch’s Class
I was exchanging e-mails with my new mate Deano (Jim Dean) about the identities of that host of thumbnail photos of past Abbey Boys, when he recklessly decided to send me photos of himself and his good wife then and now (at marriage 1972, and after 30 years of wedded bliss in 2002). I say recklessly for your editor tends to upload such photos as ‘timely lessons’ to the young: examples of what can happen if you ‘let yourself go!’.
Anyway it was dwelling on the ravages of time caused me to recall that I had failed as yet to upload to the new site, that most popular of photos from the old: the Brother Lynch class that included such miscreants as Gene Falloon and Davy Hyland, not to mention Donal O’Hanlon. So here I go again!
St Joseph’s Winning team
It would not have been an area of expertise for which the boys of St Joseph’s Secondary School Newry was especially renowned in 1966.
It was our fortune that year to have a number of loquacious and competent speakers. Yet we were serious underdogs when we travelled to Lurgan for the Schools Final. The home team had won the previous two years.