Remembering Athy's Ned Conway and Honor McCulloch

MY friend Ned Conway died last week. He was a patient in St Vincent’s Hospital for some years, and it was there that I visited him and my old classmate John until I fell ill a year and a half ago.

Ned was born in 1931 and lived at Inch in what he described as the last house in the Parish of Moone. He attended secondary school in Athy and walked to school every day until he left at sixteen years of age.

Ned, whom I interviewed in 2018, spoke highly of the teachers in the Christian Brothers School.

He remembered his classmates Rickie Kelly, Seamus Hayden, Pascal Miley, Sam Ward, Denis Smyth and my eldest brother Jack. Ned remembered the day Jack broke his arm playing Gaelic football in Geraldine Park during a practice session organised by the school.

It was apparently a very bad fracture with the bone sticking out and required an immediate transfer to the then County Hospital in Kildare Town. There, the surgeon indicated that the arm would have to be amputated but my father refused to allow this. Fortunately, the arm was saved.

Ned left school at sixteen years of age to work in the IVI. His wages were ten shillings a week of which he gave seven and six to his mother and was delighted to be able to buy four pints of stout for the remaining two and six.

He later worked in Bord Na Mona for six years before emigrating to England in 1956.

He settled in Birmingham working as a construction worker for many years. Ned was justifiably proud of his footballing ability for, before emigrating, he played Gaelic football for both Athy and Castlemitchell.

It was as a minor player that he togged out for Athy in the minor semi-final of 1947. Following Athy’s progress to the minor final Ned was approached by Jimmy Donnelly of Castlemitchell to play for the Castlemitchell second team in a challenge match. Having played for Castlemitchell, Ned was not allowed to play in the minor final.

He then transferred to Castlemitchell with which club he played for the next six years. Almost seventy years later, Ned recalled the Athy club officials who voted to exclude him from the minor final and was grateful to John W. Kehoe and Joe Murphy, the only two officials who supported his selection.

Ned was member of the Castlemitchell team which won the intermediate championship in 1953 following which the club was promoted to the senior football ranks.

He recalled for me what he termed ‘All Ireland Day’ when the following year Castlemitchell played Athy in the first round of the senior championship.

Scheduled for Geraldine Park, the game was transferred to the Kildare Town pitch on the application of the Athy club officials who felt that Geradine Park was not sufficiently secure to protect players against a possible pitch invasion by team followers.

Castlemitchell won the match by one point. In that match, Ned played centre field and was marked by Athy’s Michael Noonan.

In or around 1953, Ned won a number of tug-of-war medals with Burtown Tug of War team which he delighted to tell me consisted of four Walls, four Bolgers, two Dempseys and Ned Conway.

The team practised on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and Ned recalled how heel tips were turned around so that they could be used to dig into the ground.

His medal tally was added to when he won several medals for exhibiting gun dogs in the annual dog show in the RDS.

In 1954, Ned was selected for the Kildare county senior team along with Castlemitchell players, Peadar Dooley, Jimmy Curtis and Mossie Reilly who played alongside Seamus Harrison of Monasterevin, my hero of the 1956 Leinster Championship victory.

While in England, Ned played Gaelic Football for the Tara Club in Warwickshire and featured as centre half back in the Junior All-Ireland Final which Warwickshire lost to Mayo on 20 September 1957.

Ned was Captain of the Tara Gaelic Football Senior Team when they won the UK Championship that same year.

Ned returned to Athy in 1975 and having bought a shop in Duke Street, formerly Molly Bradley’s, he operated the shop for approximately seven years.

Thereafter, he worked as a painter and general handyman. Ned was a gentleman whom I jokingly told him did not quite fit in with the tough uncompromising Castlemitchell players with whom he played with in the 1950’s.

He was a good-humoured person whose cheerfulness was brought to every occasion. He cherished friendships and his friendship with me is something that I will remember for the rest of my life.

On the same weekend that Ned died, I attended the interment of Honor McCulloch’s ashes in the local St John’s Cemetery. Honor, who was a generous benefactor of Athy’s Heritage Centre, first wrote to me many years ago from her home in Buckinghamshire. Her father, as a young man, lived in Sawyerswood and her great-grandfather was Alexander Duncan owner of the department store now occupied by Shaws.

Honor and myself quite frequently corresponded with each other and during later correspondence, she indicated that she had a 1902 Arrol Johnston vintage motor car which her father had rescued in Scotland and restored.

It was at that time in an English Museum and Honor offered to donate the car to the Heritage Centre. I was of course delighted and remember the day the car arrived and was deposited in Emily Square prior to its entrance into the Heritage Centre.

It was a day of great excitement, and I am delighted that the vintage car is today one of the many important exhibits in the Shackleton Experience.

Honor, who later came to live in Athy, will be remembered for her dedication to maintaining St John’s cemetery where her great-grandfather Alexander Duncan was buried.

Honor was a lover of local history and shared family histories with me over many years. She was a wonderful person who involved herself voluntarily with the Heritage Centre and was of great assistance to the late Margaret Walsh, manager of the centre.

The gathering in St John’s Cemetery was led in prayer by the Methodist Minister as Honor’s ashes were deposited in the Duncan family plot.