A shame Ireland should never forget

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018

Peter Mulryan at the grave his mother shares with other
women from the Magdalene Laundry in Galway City

For eight years now, they have gathered in a Galway graveyard.

  

They meet at the gates, exchange warm greetings, and then walk silently past the rows of graves to an area which has become familiar over recent years.

It used to be nigh on impossible to locate these particular graves. They bore no headstones and the women buried in these plots were the forgotten, “fallen” ones. They weren’t even given the dignity of having their names put on the headstones.

Hardly anybody knew they were even there and the casual observer walking through Bohermore would not have had a clue.

The Magdalene Laundry was very much part of the fabric of my native city from 1824 until it closed as a business in 1984. Older colleagues at work used to recall the vans circling the city, collecting the dirty laundry from the great and the good.

Nobody ever talked about the women who worked there or that this asylum, as it was also called, benefited from slave labour. It closed for good in 1996 and some of the inmates were too institutionalised to leave Forster Street and form out independent lives.

It was just minutes from the heart of the city. We used to walk past it on our way to Connacht rugby games at the Sportsground or appointments at City Hall and nobody ever seemed to ask about the women who were locked up inside.

Or why their lives were deemed so insignificant, so worthless, that they were buried together in unmarked graves.

A simple ceremony with flowers to honour the Magdalenes

Until 2012. Then a small group of women came together to determine that the lives of the women of the Magdalene Laundry were worthy of being remembered and honoured.

And so began a beautiful annual event which is remarkable because of its simplicity. Caroline Stanley sings a poignant song, a poem is offered, and those who survived the laundry or whose mothers were locked up inside are invited to say a few words.

It’s a pity more journalists don’t attend. If they did, they would witness the remarkable growing confidence of the survivors, the children of these women who are coming to terms with the horrors of their youthful lives.

Two years ago, the discovery of the bodies of babies just up the road in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home brought an added poignancy to the ceremony. The Magdalene Laundry in Galway, which locked up unmarried mothers and forced them to wash clothes for the great and the good, was the nearest one to Tuam.

Some of the mothers had given birth to the ‘Tuam Babies’ before being transferred into slave labour in the city.

Two years ago, on a cold, windy day, a man called Peter Mulryan brought us all to tears. His mother was locked up in that asylum and was so institutionalised that she did not want to leave after he tracked her down and introduced her to his new wife, Kathleen, in 1975.

Years later, Peter’s life was turned upside down again when he was told that he had a younger sister he never realised he had. That sister is one of the 796 ‘Tuam Babies’ and she could be buried in a septic tank in Tuam – or she could be walking around the streets of Boston or New York, totally oblivious to where she came from.

Because the bodies in Tuam have yet to be examined or identified, Peter hasn’t a clue. It would not be a huge shock to him or other family members if their siblings were adopted, illegally, to America at a time of great hardship in Ireland.

For Peter, the annual Flowers for Magdalenes ceremony in Galway is a hugely significant event. It has allowed him to find his voice and banished the shame which used to be associated with being the child of a single mum.

He is so grateful to the women who invited him, and others, to the simple ceremony and told them that their voices were worth listening to and that they were entitled to justice and the truth about what happened to their family members.

The terrible sense of shame which hung over women like his mother should never be forgotten, he says.

This year he was the guest speaker at the event and they had a microphone at the graveyard so that everyone could hear his words.

He recalled how survivors and their families used to “hang their heads in shame” because of the stigma attached to the 41 laundries across Ireland where at least 10,000 women and girls were held against their will.

“What the mothers went through in those places, it was horrible and unbelievable,” Mr Mulryan told the eighth annual Flowers for the Magdalenes event at Bohermore Cemetery.

“When I managed to get to meet my mother there in 1975, a woman who was 65 years old, she looked like she was 80 from all the years of working so hard, washing clothes. I’ll never forget how she had blisters all over her hands and how she was so shabbily dressed.

“Those women were forced to work for nothing, for whatever ‘sins’ they had committed. I will never forget how badly they were fed and how little respect they were shown in that institution.”

Mr Mulryan said that events such as the annual memorial in Galway, a simple ceremony featuring poetry and song, had given survivors and the children of the Magdalene Laundry women self-respect and allowed them to speak out for the first time.

He first spoke publicly about his own experience of finding out he had a younger sister he had never met, who is now known as one of the 796 ‘Tuam Babies’, at the Galway event two years ago.

Calling out the names of the Magdalenes in Galway

“Events like this have given us survivors a new lease of life and we can now hold our heads high,” he said. “The Church and State looked down on us for decades, but it’s great to see that the wheel has turned, that ceremonies like this can show us and our mothers the respect they were denied during their lifetimes.”

Mr Mulryan said that he recently began speaking about the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in schools throughout Co Galway and felt it was important to educate the younger generation about Ireland’s shameful past in terms of how it treated its women.

One of the organisers, Ann Irwin, said it was great that the event in the graveyard gave the survivors a voice and noted that they have only had the confidence to speak out over the past two to three years.

“The idea is to remember the women with the respect which was denied to them when they were alive. There are people who come here every year who have a direct connection with the Magdalene Laundry. It gives them a great sense of solidarity to put flowers on the shared graves,” she told The Irish Times. 

“We have been doing this since 2012. The survivors did not speak in the first few years, because of the sense of shame. We really encourage people to speak. They can feel the solidarity. The faces are becoming familiar now, because the same people come here every year.”

Afterwards, Mr Mulryan called on the Irish Government to respect the wishes of the survivors of the Tuam Home by carrying out a full exhumation of the site, analysing DNA samples, and giving the children dignified burials.

“The State and the Church still have not come out with an apology to us. We are entitled to a full public apology. They are making no effort whatsoever to offer us an apology,” he said.

“They are holding up everything that should be done. They need to do a proper investigation, get a DNA done, and give those children a dignified burial. In my opinion, they are afraid of taking DNA samples because it will show up so much stuff, that the children died of starvation, neglect, or stress. They are continuing to put obstacles in our way.”

--  * Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award in October. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com. A former newspaper journalist, he is seeking new opportunities in a digital world. 

No ordinary friend

Brave meningitis survivor Liam Cullinane

A few weeks ago, on a glorious Saturday afternoon, I met an old friend for a cup of coffee outside a café in the centre of town. He might not realise it, but meeting Liam is almost always an uplifting experience.

On this particular day, his positivity was unreal. He was more animated than I had seen him in months.

He had just emerged from an oxygen chamber, where he had been getting daily treatment for a few weeks. As I sat down across from him, he raised his right hand.

“Watch this!” he exclaimed, loudly.

He picked up a cup with his right hand.

The tourists at the next table looked up momentarily, curious as to why this middle-aged man was so animated about picking up a cup outside a Galway city centre café.

He paused.

“I haven’t been able to do that for the past 25 years!”

He was so thrilled, his enthusiasm was infectious. Suddenly, a hundrum afternoon in my home town had been transformed. The significance of the gesture was lost on the people sitting at the nearby table.

I wanted to shout out, to tell them if only they knew what this man had been through. Instead, we just sat there, beaming.

It was the first time he had been able to pick up a cup or a glass with that hand in 25 years. This was not some small little victory. This was a triumph and we were both thrilled.

Six weeks earlier, he had discovered a new oxygen treatment facility in Galway. Both of us are trained professional scuba divers, but it was news to me that privately run hyperbaric chambers are now being used to treat multiple illnesses, infections, and diseases across the world.

I had only really associated them with divers and ‘the bends’, even though I knew the chamber at University Hospital Galway was used for non-diving injuries.

If only the people at the next table could understand. My old buddy had been diagnosed with a deadly form of meningitis way back in 1993. This man had lain in a coma in Scotland for months, he had had to teach himself to walk again, to brush his teeth, and to move around.

At one stage, the only parts of his body that he could move were his eyes. The prognosis was grim. And now, a quarter of a century later, he had picked up a cup with that hand – without shaking – for the first time.

He has been blown away by what the anti-inflammatory oxygen therapy has done for him for the past few months.

“It seems to be working away at reducing the inflammation in my brain and body, and the results so far have been excellent. After the very first treatment I noticed increased flexibility and slept really well that night,” he told me this week.

“I awoke feeling energised the following morning. After six weeks of treatment, the tremor in my right arm reduced to such an extent that I was able to drink a glass of water using my right hand without any spillage for the first time in 25 years!”

A meeting with an old friend for coffee on a Saturday afternoon had become a thrilling moment of jubilation. I was delighted, but not surprised.

Because, like so many people I know, I have been inspired by the battling qualities of Liam Cullinane ever since we met as teenagers in school over three decades ago.

Liam was a tough young adventurer, who left school in Colaiste Iognaid with just one mission on his mind. A star of the victorious school rugby team, he wanted to join the French Foreign Legion.

A lot of Galway teenagers spoke with bravado about their plans to leave our small city behind them in the recession-hit 1980s. Only Liam was as good as his word. As soon as he finished school, he hit for Corsica and enlisted. He ended up staying in the French Foreign Legion for seven years, including three years skydiving with the Parachute Regiment.

If he showed a spirit of adventure in his youth, it was nothing compared to the bravery he has demonstrated to all of his friends and family members over the past 25 years.

When he left the legion, he never wanted to live in Galway. He wanted adventure in sun-kissed lands far from the wet and windy west and was looking forward to new adventures when he trained to become a commercial diver in Fort William, Scotland.

Only Liam, more than anyone I know, discovered at an early age that life does not always follow the best-laid plans and that nothing should ever be taken for granted.

If, like Liam, you jump out of bed with that attitude every morning, it’s amazing how much your life can be transformed. No matter what the ailment or problem.

In Scotland, he had just finished the diving course when disaster struck. His landlady found him lying in a coma after he should have left his flat. He had made light of what he thought was a headache or a very bad flu.

Aged just 26, he had contracted a rare and deadly form of listerial meningitis which normally only affects the elderly or babies under three months old. He was given very little hope of a long or healthy life and it took months before Liam was well enough to be transferred home to be near his family in Galway.

Sometimes the true value of a person is not in his job, or career, money in the bank, or sporting prowess, but in the example he sets to others.

Ask anyone who knows Liam and they will tell you the same thing. The man simply inspires, because the thing he values above everything else is the kind of thing we all tend to take for granted. A walk in the wind, a cycle along the promenade, a visit to a friend’s house, an independent life . . . all things which seemed impossible for Liam during his long spell in hospital in the 1990s.

I don’t know anyone else who knows and understands the value and importance of the simple things in life. The fun of ‘slagging’ a group of old friends, the social side of enjoying a cup of tea, and especially the importance of good health – which is something many members of our generation rarely put a value on in our younger years.

A quiz for Liam takes place on Thursday night

The determination this man has shown to build an independent life has been nothing short of inspirational.

He managed to get a Council house from Galway City Council because he did not want to be a burden on his family.

He persuaded a friend to build a custom-built tricycle, which gives him the freedom to move around. He’s as well known as the Mayor as he bombs around the streets of Galway.

And, indeed, when he had a problem with a spout of dampness in his house, he had no qualms about calling the current Mayor of Galway, Niall McNelis, to make sure he helped him out!

And, above all else, he has sought out a healthy lifestyle. Whatever treatment possible which could help him strengthen his limbs and boost his independence, Liam has tried it. He has travelled far and wide and often doctors, overwhelmed by his spirit of determination, have befriended Liam and decided to waive their fees.

He has travelled to Australia, to visit his brother. He joined ultra-marathon organiser, and Galway native, Richie Donovan on a trip to the North Pole.

He has travelled to the US, Holland, Dublin, and London for different types of treatments.

He has travelled to Thailand on his own, even though walking can be a challenge.

And he has kept in touch with a huge circle of friends, each and every one of us inspired by his determination to be healthy and to make the most of life.

He has befriended and become something of a model for ACT for Meningitis in Galway, the charity set up by a young mum who lost her little daughter to the deadly infection.

It can be truly uplifting to see how Liam inspires the families of people who have lost youngsters to meningitis, or how he helps the ACT women in raising awareness for families as to how they should look out for the symptoms.

Four years ago, when I had taken voluntary redundancy and picked up the MRSA bug in University College Hospital, I was seriously ill for seven months.

The illness only added to my worries about an uncertain future after leaving a full-time job in the newspaper industry behind. I was filled with fear. 

Any tendency I had towards self-pity would evaporate whenever I arranged to have a coffee with Liam (only he would drink tea, because his super strict diet includes a ban on caffeine!).

He would show me that it’s not what happens to you in life (relationships, jobs, careers, set-backs, whatever) that matters, it’s how you deal with it that counts.

Because nobody else I know has staged such a long and brave battle just to have a full and independent life.

Now he wants our help.

The hyperbaric oxygen therapy which has transformed his life in recent months is costly.

Liam is a daily user of the OxyGeneration clinic in Galway, and he wants to continue the treatment until the end of this year.

The treatment involves breathing almost 100% oxygen in a pressurised room. It is considered a medicine, but is not covered by the public health care system.

A group of his friends have come together to raise funds for Liam’s treatment at Crowe’s pub, Bohermore, Galway, this Thursday, October 11, at 8pm. Entry costs €40 per table of four.

If you cannot make the quiz, you could also support Liam at: https://www.gofundme.com/oxygeneration-liam-cullinane

Because the value Liam Cullinane brings to the people who know him cannot be measured in monetary terms.

He’s still battling, after 25 years, and the money raised from this quiz will help to transform his future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_KYE0pDHjQ

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, seeking new opportunities in the digital age. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

This blog is a finalist in the 2018 Irish Blog of the Year Awards

Remembering the 'Maggies'

It is hard for people of my generation, or those younger than us, to imagine the terrible stigma which was attached to single motherhood in 20th century Ireland.

A beautiful ceremony in Bohermore yesterd

It’s only now we are waking up to what a terrible institution the Roman Catholic Church was and the awful, disgusting, inhumane ways in which some religious orders and individuals treated some of the most vulnerable members in our society.

There was no joy, no sense of fun or adventure, in post-colonisation Ireland. Beautiful people were locked up for decades because the most natural thing imaginable, having sex, was turned into a dirty, rotten crime.

The children of single mothers were branded as “illegitimate” and “bastards”, leading to the kind of terrible attitudes which allowed 796 of them to be buried in a septic tank in a so-called ‘mother and baby’ home in Tuam.

They were seen as less than human, the devil’s spawn, and harsh treatment of them was seen as the norm.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during my University days, I had quite a few friends who were single mums. I don’t think I – or even they – realised what amazing ground-breakers they were in terms of social change in Ireland. Had they been born a decade earlier, they might have been incarcerated for life by nuns.

How guilty were Irish families – and all of Irish society in general – for allowing young women to be stolen from them, locked up for life while their children somehow ‘disappeared’?

Well, we remembered those women in Galway yesterday.

How strangely appropriate – and deeply poignant – that an event had been organized to honour the women of the Magdalen Laundry in Galway yesterday of all Sundays.

The event took on a whole new significance following the shock revelations about the discovery of the bodies of 796 babies in a decommissioned septic tank less than an hour up the road, in Tuam.

About 100 people took part in the moving ceremony in which the names of each of the women buried in Bohermore Cemetery were called out before flowers were placed on their shared graves.

The Flowers for Magdalenes event was planned weeks in advance to give a dignity in death which had been denied in life to the Galway women who had been imprisoned in the city centre laundry.

Until the closure of the laundry in 1984, ‘fallen’ women who became pregnant outside marriage were locked up and forced to work in the premises in the heart of Galway City.

The Magdalen Asylum, as it was known, was run by the Sisters of Mercy from 1845 until its closure. There were 41 such institutions across Ireland in the late 1800s.

Placing flowers on the shared graves of the Magdalene women

Women who became pregnant outside marriage were taken away from their families and placed in the laundries, along with their “illegitimate” children.

They were separated from the children, many of whom were moved to another institution across the city, called St Anne’s. If they were not given up for adoption, they were allowed to see their children once a year.

The inmates, known as ‘Maggies’, had to wear ‘penitence caps’, large boots, and heavy skirts down to their ankles. They worked in the laundry and slept in dormitories. They were never allowed out of the Forster Street premises.

The last resident died in the laundry in 1995, just one year prior to its closure, and Sunday’s remembrance ceremony was attended by women and adult children who had been confined to the home.

It was really moving to hear graveside testimonials from a former Magdalene Laundry resident, a woman who worked there as a teenager, and a man who had been sent there with his single mother.

The sixth annual 'Flowers for Magdalenes' event
took place at a Galway graveyard yesterday

One 70-year old lady, who left a comment on my Facebook page, summed up the heartbreak we experienced as we listened to the stories being shared by former residents and their adult children.

“I cried today for those women. I thought about the time after your baby is born,” wrote Mary Lyons.

“I thought about how you wanted to be treated as the most precious woman in the world as you had carried and produced this other little human being.

“You wanted warm baths, comfortable clothes, plenty of sanitary stuff and loads of praise.

“But not in the Magdalene Laundry. No, you had to swelter in the heat of a laundry where you washed and ironed the clothes of the rich and the linen from the local hotels.

“Why? Because the Catholic Church had such a hold on everyone, they fostered the idea that sex outside marriage was worse than if you committed murder.”

As Mary pointed out, there was a huge irony in young women being locked up and made to feel guilty by religious people who participated in, or covered up, the terrible abuse of Irish children.

Yesterday, former resident Peter Mulryan broke down in tears as he recalled his difficult childhood in a home and how he used to look up at the stars and dream of another life as a youngster.                                                          

Mr Mulryan has taken a High Court action in order to obtain information about a baby sister he never knew from Tusla, the Irish child and family agency.

"It's an insult the way these women are buried in on top of each other,” he said, as he surveyed the shared graves at Bohermore.

Mr Mulryan said he had never been able to trace his little sister. For years, he didn’t know if she had been buried in the mass grave in Tuam, as he believed she had been confined there, or whether she had managed to escape and make a new life in the United States. 

He has since found out the truth.

“My sister was buried in that so-called grave, that septic tank, in Tuam," he said. “She was only nine months old."

He was given a huge round of applause for his bravery, as was a former Magdalene Laundry resident who described how harsh life was for the women in the Galway facility.

“I knew many of these women here,” she said, with tears in her eyes, looking out over the graves.                                                                            

It was the biggest attendance yet at this annual event

Another lady, who worked there as a 13-year old, said she wanted to re-assure family members present that the lay staff who worked there – apart from the nuns – had treated the women well.

Flowers were laid on each of the graves and afterwards poet Sarah Clancy and singer Caroline Stanley dedicated a poem and a song to the Magdalenes.

Sarah read an angry poem, ‘A Prayer to St Bridget’. You can view Sarah's poem here.

One of the organisers, Ann Irwin, said she was taken aback by the numbers who attended the sixth annual Flowers for Magdalenes event at the graveyard. Only three women attended in the first year.

“What happened on Friday was totally coincidental, but it was important that we provided an opportunity for people to congregate and to tell their incredibly poignant stories,” she said.

“The stories that people told this year were nothing but heart-breaking, really. People have told their stories before, but not to such an extent. They were so beautiful and so brave to tell their tragic stories.”

She said it was important to call out the names of each of the women out loud, to give them a dignity which had been denied them in life.                 

It was a poignant, emotional ceremony in Galway

“It was important that everybody said their names together. It was important to hear the testimonials of survivors and that these things are said,” she added.

Ms Irwin said it was important not to forget how women and children had been treated when they were confined to the Magdalene laundries all across Ireland.

“It’s a very, very recent history, but it’s a history we have swept under the carpet to such an extent. If it wasn’t for events such as today, people would turn a blind eye. It’s so important to keep it on the agenda and not to forget these women.”

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can check out his Facebook page here

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Lessons learned from a local legend

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The Buzzcocks played a storming set at the Roisin Dubh on Thursday night. The place was packed, it was great to see a full house for a visit by veteran punk rockers to a Galway venue, and there was a real sense of nostalgia in the air.

But there was one face missing from the crowd. I kept glancing over to the top corner, to the left side of the stage, where I expected to see a man in a trademark hat, festooned in badges, wearing a trench coat, bopping around. He always seemed to be in that corner for a gig like this, immersing himself in the music, seemingly without a care in the world.

On top of the world: Mark Kennedy
climbing Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo

                 
When you met Mark Kennedy at a punk or metal concert in the Roisin Dubh or Sally Long’s, he would never cease to inspire.

He showed people much younger than him that it’s possible to have a great time without alcohol and that you should never feel too old to lose yourself for an hour in punk, ska, or metal mayhem.

For me, Mark – who passed away last week – was an admirable figure. He was cranky and cantankerous, but he got things done, enjoyed a good laugh, and had a heart of gold.

I used to think I was one of the oldest rockers in Galway when I’d join the wonderful lunacy at a concert by the likes of Belfast band And So I Watch You From Afar and then I’d see Mark, 30 years my senior, going absolutely mental over in the corner to their guitar-driven fury.

If ever a man disproved the theory that Irish people tend to become boring or conservative or lose their sense of adventure once they pass 40, it was the late Mark Kennedy.
He taught me (and many others) some really valuable lessons for life.

Here are just a few of them . . .

You can turn your life around: When I first met Mark, he was homeless and drinking every day on the streets of Galway. He used to bed down for the night in shop doorways or down behind the railway station and his situation was all the more tragic because I knew he had a family and an amazing story to tell.

Not many Galwaymen earned a living writing for the stars in Hollywood in the 1960s and not many Hollywood writers would have survived a few winters on the streets in my wet and windy native city.

I had managed to secure a job as a reporter on the local ‘paper in 1992 and regularly met Mark and his colleague, Niall Rivers, as they made a documentary in which they chronicled how the homeless were being marginalised in favour of big business in our native city. They called the video ‘Clear the Streets’.

They weren’t the most professional film-makers, but they highlighted a side of Galway which never made it into the tourist brochures. They gave voices to people who were seen as nothing more than an inconvenience by the ‘powers that be’ in the city.

Homelessness in Galway, November 2016

Mark and Niall were before their time in recognising how ordinary people were of little importance compared to profit in the minds of many businesses and those who ran local government at the time.

After five years of living on the streets, Mark was a wreck. And then, one night, he had an epiphany. Finding himself alone next to St Nicholas’ Cathedral, he put down a bottle of tonic wine and swore he would never drink again.

He completely turned his life around, becoming a campaigner for the elderly, the homeless, and emigrants in Ireland.

In an interview with me last year, he recalled putting down his final bottle of Buckfast at Church Lane in 1992, the horrible depression which followed over the next two years; and the slow process of putting his life back together, and finding a home.

“I never made the mistake of isolating myself. I knew I had to get up and go out and walk and meet people. Be around people. It’s the kindness and goodness of people who, even if you have lost faith in yourself, they haven’t lost faith in you,” he said.

For those of us lucky enough to know Mark in more recent years – and the demons he had dealt with in the 1990s – it was uplifting to see how comfortable and happy he was in his Renmore home. He used to thank God every day that he had a lovely, warm home.

“The little kindnesses you get from people more than make up for sleeping in a doorway and shivering your nuts off and ending up in the hospital,” he told me. “Killing yourself with drink is not actually an adequate response to a hypocritical society.”

You can rage against the machine: Why lose your sense of idealism just because you get older? If you protest against injustice when you are 17, why shouldn’t you when you are 70?

Mark shared my sense of anger at the injustice and inequality which is at the heart of Irish society. Instead of trying to kill himself with booze, he grew old brilliantly – fighting for the right of pensioners to serve on juries, highlighting the appalling level of homelessness in Galway, and getting a reluctant city to build a fitting memorial to those who lost their lives in the Great Famine.

When Mark found out that people aged over 65 were not allowed to serve on juries, he had the balls to ask why and to start a nationwide campaign. When old people marched for greater recognition across the country in 2008, it was fitting that Mark was one of the leading lights for campaign group Age Action.

He loved black humour, too, such as when one of the “ould stock” – as he used to refer to older Galwegians – gave him a right good telling off after being disgusted by a call-up for jury duty. The old fellow told Mark he should have left well enough alone.

If anything, the homelessness situation in Ireland in 2016 is far worse than when he made ‘Clear The Streets’ in 1992.

Mark and Niall Rivers predicted the bank ‘bailout’, the logical conclusion of a capitalist system in which ordinary people became mere fodder for a tiny elite. Once he sobered up, and got a decent place to live, Mark became a force for good in his native city. He has left a lasting legacy in the form of the wonderful Celia Griffin Memorial Park, which opened in 2012.

Celia, a six year old girl from the Claddagh, died in the Great Famine. Many Galway people would prefer to forget this awful period in their county’s history, but Mark shone a light on issues others just wanted to ignore.

He reminded us that so many people from our region set sail for the Americas in the ‘Coffin Ships’ in the 1840s, when they barely had enough money for the passage to America and knew they’d never be able to come home.

He knew all about the pain of forced emigration, because he had been an emigrant himself when Galway offered no opportunities to a young man from working-class Bohermore in the 1950s. On his travels in the UK and USA, he met many impoverished Irish people who had been scarred by their childhoods back home.

The Celia Griffin Memorial Park in Salthill:
Mark's wonderful legacy to his native city

Why should you act your age? In Galway, people tend to become very sensible once they pass a certain age. If you loved heavy metal as a youngster, you are supposed to eventually learn to sit at home and leave all the fun of a live gig to the young ones. Not Mark Kennedy, though.

He didn’t care too much about what anyone thought of him. If he wanted to go to a punk or a metal gig, he didn’t care if he was the oldest person in the pub or club. His love of metal in particular meant that he had a wonderful circle of younger friends from attending gigs at venues such as Sally Long’s and the Roisin Dubh.

Sometimes we can forget that life is for living. Mark, who conquered the demon drink after five years on the streets of Galway, showed us how you can never be too old to have a good time. He also showed it’s possible to go out and have fun without alcohol, which can seem almost impossible in Ireland at times.

He loved gathering friends around him and his birthday became a wonderful annual pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, the holiest (and most spiritual) place in the West of Ireland, over the past nine years.
If Mark could touch the sky from the top of the mountain until he was well into his 70s, he appreciated the pilgrimage all the more because he had reached rock bottom at a different stage in his life.

“I had five winters on the streets of Galway. I knew that if I had another winter I was dead. There was no question about it, but I came to see that, in a way, I had to be in a place where I had nothing left to lose.”

May he Rest in Peace.

Reaching the stars at the holiest place in the West of Ireland

Thanks to William Geraghty of Galway Video News for filming my interview with the late Mark Kennedy.

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