Irishtown struggling to come to terms with tragedy

MARK OF RESPECT Flags fly at half mast in Irishtown as Kitty Fitzgerald’s coffin is carried to her final resting place, followed by her husband Tom’s coffin. Pic: Paul Mealey

Michael Commins

THE news spread rapidly in this corner of Mayo that rubs shoulders with Galway a few hundred yards yonder at the little bridge of Dunmacreena. The Roscommon border is just a few good kicks of a ball over the way. This is three counties territory where talk of GAA and football is ever to the fore.
But the talk was of a much more solemn nature all last week. Every conversation was peppered with the words ‘shocking’ and ‘beyond belief’. It was like a return to one-channel TV land as there really was only one story making the headlines around here. You could not get away from it.
Knockadoon is just a mile from the village of Irishtown, famous in the agrarian history of Ireland as the place where Michael Davitt held the mammoth Land League meeting in 1879. Today, Irishtown proudly adds the tag: Cradle of the Land League.
Now, the village had been catapulted into the national limelight in the most unlikely scenario imaginable. Only two days earlier, Kitty sang in the church choir as she had done so faithfully over the years. Tom helped out at the collection in Irishtown Church.
No one could have visualised the devastation that was about to descend on this community. The sight of a squad car in Knockadoon is rare at any time but neighbours knew something was amiss as Gardaí and emergency services passed along the quiet road.
Disbelief rolled over the countryside, a stunned silence in its wake, the shock leaving people lost for words. Tom and Kitty Fitzgerald, heart and soul of the community for years, dead in tragic circumstances and their son Paul in a critical condition was just too much to comprehend.
Tom served as chairman of the Community Council for some years. He was a passionate supporter of Mayo and Davitts GAA Club over the last few decades.
He featured with the local drama group and was a man who loved literature and reading. He was a Minister of the Eucharist in Irishtown Church and a central player in the pastoral and community life of the region.
Kitty was formerly Coughlan from Curraghadooey, Crossboyne. She had a vibrant and bubbly nature and friends around Crossboyne recall her life-long love for music and song.
“Kitty had a fine voice and loved to sing. The Boys From The County Mayo was a song she rendered many times in her young days. Tom and Kitty lived for ten years or so in Crossboyne during the 1970s,” said a former neighbour.
Paul attended the local Irishtown NS and later Dunmore Community School. He helped out with various ventures in the community and his artistic flair was well known. This later saw him pursue studies in artistic design in Galway.
Tom, a former pupil of St Jarlath’s College, worked in the office at Tuam Sugar Factory after college. While he also took good care of the farm in Knockadoon, painting houses had become his career of choice for many years. Paul was a dab hand at the painting too and only ten days earlier, Tom and Paul were busy doing a job just outside Irishtown.
As reality began to take hold, the community rallied around and put in place arrangements for the funeral ceremonies when Irishtown would again be in the national limelight.
“Everything that we can do to help ease the burden in any way on the Fitzgerald and Coughlan family circles will be done,” said local man and family friend, Billy Freeley, just before the arrangements were made known. “Tom and Kitty would have been to the fore in doing the same for any other family in the parish. It is such a heartbreaking tragedy that no one could ever have envisaged in any circumstances.”
Close friends of the family, Frank McGrath and Ger Conroy, were among the many others who joined in the tributes to Tom and Kitty while conveying good wishes to Paul for a full recovery.
The eerie silence that had thrown its mantle around the crossroads village of Irishtown all week saw an added hush on Sunday evening as hundreds gathered to pay their respects at the Community Centre. 
The moon hung high in a Mayo sky as temperatures dipped on a crisp and frosty night. Little blue lights on all the four roads to the village alerted any strangers of the funeral in progress. Reverence was the tone of every conversation, words whispered like quiet prayers in the soft tones of the West.
The community of Irishtown and Ballindine and the neighbouring villages carried the anguish and sadness to the church on Monday. Heavy hearts reflecting on all the times that Kitty and Tom came through the doors of this church which was so central to their lives. Locals almost expected to hear her voice amid the choir one more time.
Fr Martin O’Connor, PP, and chief celebrant at the Mass, has represented his community with amazing grace and dignity over the last few days. He has managed to carry the burden of his people with a gentle calmness that has helped to soothe the hearts of many floundering in a sea of disbelief.
American and English accents during the liturgy readings anchored us again to our great Mayo song which opens with the words: ‘Far away from the land of the shamrock and heather ... and we think of the land where we once had a home’.
The going and the coming home, keeping bonds and friendships in place, that was what Tom’s brother, John Fitzgerald, did for many years from his home on Long Island. John compiled the New York Newsletter for The Western People, a popular feature in the newspaper for close on three decades.
John, like the rest of the family, can find no rational explanation as to what led to the tragedy in Knockadoon. And neither can their friends and neighbours whose lives were so intertwined and where people look out for each other.
Yesterday, the Fitzgerald and Coughlan families showed the greatest of dignity as they shared a sorrow almost beyond the borders of comprehension.
John McHugh, the nearest neighbour to the Fitzgerald family, could never in the wide earthly world have envisaged a week like this. Outside Irishtown Church, he slowly settled down on a chair brought to him by one of the stewards. He wore a cap that was such a part of rural life some decades ago.
As the coffins came out from the church into the early winter sunlight, he removed his cap in a final salute to Kitty and Tom with whom he shared so many good times down the years. There was no need for words. The face of John McHugh reflected the heartbreak of a rural community lost in the despair and absolute sadness of a week that shook the region.