There in times of need While his life interests are varied, John Egan is best-known for his work with the Order of Malta in Knock The Interview Michael Commins FOR almost 35 years, John Egan has been in charge of ambulance services at Knock Shrine. And with in excess of one million visitors to the village each year, that’s a daunting responsibility on his shoulders and that of his dedicated team. He takes it all in his stride. Two of his call-outs with the emergency services over the years were to members of his own family. Life is still the best teacher of all.
John Egan was a child of the sixties. He grew up on the sounds of showbands. He got to know many of the big names from the era. Today, his knowledge of that era is in a league of its own. “My cousin John Kelly from Knock was the lead singer with the Niagara showband. John Conway from Ballyhaunis was playing keyboards with The Riviera. I used to look after some of the dates for them and travel with them on many trips to England. I’ve very fond memories of the Ard Rí in Manchester, the Shamrock in Birmingham, the Galtymore in Cricklewood, and up and down this country. We were young and carefree and didn’t give a hoot.”
John is in nostalgic mood as he reminisces on the showband era. “When I started working first, it was as a driver for Willie Creighton and the family bakery in Claremorris. Willie was a brother of Andy who was manager of the Royal Blues so I had associations with the band business from an early stage.
“I befriended lots of people in the showband business. I have 3,300 showband tracks on the computer here, original recordings by the bands. My main interest is in the showband stuff from the 1960s and ‘70s. I have stuff going back to Johnny Quigley from Derry in the 1950s. Derry was a great place for bands.”
John married Mairéad McGarry from Claremorris and they raised a family of four, two daughters, Amanda and Linda, and two sons, Shane and Daragh. In recent years, Mairéad has become a budding artist and some of her works are on display this week at the Cúram Exhibition in Claremorris.
Much of John’s working life has revolved around being a sales representative for various companies, including medical supplies. But his extraordinary commitment to the voluntary sector through the ambulance service in Knock is what he is best known for, and is quite remarkable. It all goes back to the early 1970s.
“The Western Health Board at the time gave an ambulance to Fr James Horan. He thought he would be able to get the Fire Brigade to staff it along the lines of how things were run in Dublin at the time. It didn’t work out and because of insurance problems he had to have specific people to do it. So I was asked would I get a group of people together.
“The very first man I asked was Michael Rattigan from Liscat and he’s still with us after all that length of time. We never had a row and we never fell out. Michael is not the kind of guy that will fall out with you. “We set up a branch of the Red Cross at the time. Tim Duffy from Kilkelly knew a guy called Jim Lavery who was the National Organiser for the Red Cross. After two years, we got another ambulance. The Health Board had no money to give us so we borrowed £600 from the bank in Claremorris. We got it for a year and myself and Michael had to sign for it. We paid it back in three weeks.
“We decided to run a concert in Claremorris and Big Tom [McBride] was the headline act. From once we had him, it was a runaway success. It was packed. We had Magic and the band, the New Blues, and several other bands. We later held regular concerts in Knock and they were hugely successful. The Champions, Shaun O’Dowd, Gene Stuart, Brendan Shine, and many others, but Big Tom was always our focal man. He came down almost every year. Big Tom was the man who got the money for us to buy the first ambulance in Knock so we are, in many ways, eternally grateful to him.
“The Health Boards got a few extra pounds in later years and supported us and Msgr Horan bought an ambulance for us in 1985. Msgr Dominick Grealy, with the help of Joe Kennedy, purchased one for us in 1998. And next week, we are getting another new one with the help of a 70 per cent grant from Minister Éamon Ó Cuív. The rest is from our own funding and Msgr Joe Quinn.”
During the 1980s, John moved to the Order of Malta and is the current Ambulance Officer and training officer at the shrine. He has served in various capacities, including officer in charge for many years, a title which now rests with Michael Rattigan. Dr Diarmuid Murray is the Medical Officer and is responsible for advice on medical matters.
“We have a small team. We cover the shrine, we cover emergencies in the village, we have assisted the Health Board with many incidents, being called out to many road traffic accidents. They use us quite a bit to back them up.
“The big thing is getting volunteers. It’s much harder than it used to be. We are now training people to be EMTs and cardiac first responders and they are getting a professional qualification for a volunteer which is hard going as a lot of time goes into it. You are getting the same standard of training as people who are getting paid to do the job. So you are taking quite a bit on your shoulders. I’m training 16 cardiac first responders for the shrine this week from their own staff.”
Knock Shrine remains their focal point. “There’s over a million pilgrims who visit the shrine every year and many of them are quite ill coming here. Nearly all our Sundays during the pilgrimage season are confined to the shrine. Occasionally, we might be on call for football matches or the Reek Sunday climb down in Murrisk but generally the shrine is our main event.”
John still manages to remain philosophical about it all. “If I was getting paid, I suppose I’d be out on a pension now. The rate of pay is the same for us all … nothing. There’s no one fighting about the overtime because that’s nothing as well!
“Many of the people who started with us are still with us. There is great commitment from the volunteers. The same hardcore number of people have been very loyal to us.”
John was chairman of the medical committee for the visit of Pope John Paul in 1979. It was a massive undertaking as 350,000 people descended on the village. “I was ably assisted by Lieut Col Michael Walsh, an Army Medical Officer. He was very good and a great support. We put a plan together with the Red Cross, Order of Malta and Civil Defence from all over Connacht and a good few from the North of Ireland as well.
“Pope John Paul had a special place in our hearts and it was a wonderful thing when he came to Knock. We went to Rome for the Jubilee Year in 2000. The Knock Order of Malta were among those doing duty in Rome for a week towards the end of the season. During that time, Dr Murray got to meet the Pope and presented him with a statue of Our Lady of Knock at the public audience. On the Saturday, I attended Mass in his private apartment and had an audience with him afterwards. It was a great experience. He was very charismatic to us and we’ve lots of good memories of him.”
Lourdes is close to John’s heart too. He’s been there 32 times. It was John who organised the first ever broadcast of Mass from the shrine in Lourdes direct to Ireland. Mid-West Radio here in Mayo facilitated the broadcast, which was engineered by his cousin, Sean Egan, a few years ago.
“Mass on the radio is a very important feature to a rural community in the west of Ireland. The people who go to Lourdes are a different kind of people. I’ve never met anyone yet who said they had anything but good memories of Lourdes. People love to go back time and time again. They have a great affinity with the place.
“I’m the pilgrimage director with Knock Shrine and organise the September pilgrimage single-handedly. We have over 200 people travelling with us this year from Knock Airport and on Sunday, September 7, Msgr Quinn will celebrate Mass in Lourdes and we hope that Mid-West will broadcast it again. Lourdes is not all about cures, it’s about healing and accepting the problems that you carry with you.”
Back on the emergency call-out circuit, reassurance is the key to dealing with people in emergency situations, says John. “Part of our training is to be cool, calm and confident. And yet, be very much aware of the emergency you are dealing with. I did my advanced first aid with the Army in St Bricken’s Hospital in Dublin. That was good training. I’ve gone through the various courses down through the years.
“At emergencies, you go in and you do the job. If you start to get dithery, forget it, you are not going to succeed. The important thing in dealing with any patient who is injured or who is seriously ill is to always reassure them. If you are giddy, you are not going to transfer that kind of vital confidence to them. The confidence you can instill into them is often half the medicine really.
“I have come across some very harrowing sights in my years but you learn to deal with them all. I was called out the night my own father died in Knock church where he had a cardiac arrest. I didn’t know who it was until I got to the church. I was called out the night my son Shane had his bad accident at the corner in Ballyfarna. He was later transferred by helicopter to the Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. You can’t allow yourself to have too much empathy with the situation. You have to do the job. I have attended everything from suicides to very very bad road accidents.”
Looking back through the mists of time, John recalls his earliest inspiration in the field of voluntary medical service. “Tom Smyth from Killeenfarna, Claremorris was the man who encouraged me to get involved in the first place. He was my big support in the early days. He was a steward in Knock. Fr Horan made me responsible for providing the service at the shrine. Now 35 years down the line, I’m still doing the same job.”
On behalf of the countless people you and your crews have assisted over those years, well done John.
