Friends reunited

“None of us last Friday night was the same person that first walked through the doors of Ballinrobe Community School”

Speaker’s Corner
Denise Horan

NOT until someone said it aloud did it register: 17 years had passed since we first entered the gates of the new building that was to be our home away from home, our prison, our personal entertainment centre and our playground for the next five years.
Last Friday night’s gathering in the Valkenburg in Ballinrobe was the first official rounding up of all the past pupils of the community school that opened in the town in September 1990. Not everyone attended, but all who did were familiar faces and, while we all were naturally drawn to the same friends we had during our school days, there were no inhibitions about talking to people who had towered over us as Leaving Certs when we were in first year. Nor was there any hesitation in engaging with teachers who once seemed to delight in berating and humiliating us. In the adult world, we are equal now. No monsters, spoilt brats or bullies. Just people, all of whom made mistakes in the past, are grappling with the complexities of the present and have dreams for the future.
None of us last Friday night was the same person that first walked through the doors of Ballinrobe Community School.
My memories of Ballinrobe Community School are almost all good. Knowing long before I entered that I wanted to be a teacher myself when I grew up, I always tended to be on the teachers’ side. Thus I had a good relationship with all my teachers and cannot remember one with whom I clashed significantly.
But there are four who stand out in particular. Maureen McGuinness and Carmel Heneghan (now both retired), through their own grá for the language, reinforced a love of Irish that had been born in me in primary school. Billy Horan – spectacularly defying the received wisdom that teachers must be all-singing, all-dancing entertainers with mesmerising charts and psychedelic hand-outs in order to be effective – made learning English a joy.
The fourth is the late Jimmy Grimes. For someone who was considered reasonably bright at school, I made the not-very-wise decision of doing Woodwork for my Junior Cert, the only girl in my year to do so. I did well in the end, but not without nearly sawing off my finger a few times, building an aeroplane that was crashing while everyone else’s was taking off and almost always planing every piece of timber to a depth that didn’t fit. Through all my disasters, Jimmy Grimes – not generally noted for his patience – displayed endless patience with me, never once raised his voice and invested far more time than he needed to in righting my woefully crooked attempts at every assignment.
The impression all four made will stay with me forever.
We had great sporting success in Ballinrobe Community School during my time there. The boys’ senior football team won the All-Ireland ‘B’ championship in the school’s first year, with almost the entire school – and half the town - in attendance at the memorable final in Sixmilebridge. Weeks later, the girls’ senior team won the first of five All-Ireland titles in a row, when seeing off Salesians of Cahercon in the final, while All-Ireland basketball glory came the way more than once.
For all the success, however, there was heartbreak too, with the tragic loss of several students and teachers. Beautiful Veronica McAndrew was the first student to pass away, while just a few months later the teaching body was robbed of its first member when Richie Bell died suddenly. More deaths were to follow in a short space of time, leaving the school numbed.
But, just as we had united in joy and elation at our sporting successes, so we united in grief each time death visited. Everyone wanted to go to school in the days after those tragedies because we needed the strength of the school community to get us through, and that community never let us down.
An era has ended in Ballinrobe Community School with the retirement of Louis O’Malley as principal and Sr Brenda O’Shaugnessy as vice-principal. Their stewardship saw the school through 17 great years, full of milestones and memories. All of us past pupils owe them a huge debt of gratitude for their leadership.