Lifestyle

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A SAMARITANS volunteer for 19 years, at the end of this month Gerry Dobbin will step down from his three-year stint as director of the Clare branch. The Belfast man, who has lived in Clare for 33 years, says he cannot adequately give back to the organisation what the Samaritans have given to him.

AS Pecker Dunne was being laid to rest in Burrane graveyard, Killimer, last Saturday afternoon, the foghorn on the Killimer-Tarbert ferry echoed across the estuary. Kilrush parish priest Fr Michael Sheedy had been the chief celebrant at the 79-year-old singer/songwriters funeral mass in St Senan’s parish church, Kilrush before he was brought to Killimer for burial. On approaching the graveyard, which faces the North Kerry coastline, Pecker was led to his final resting place on a horse-drawn carriage.

THE people of Clare have helped to give some very special Christmas presents to the poorest of the poor in Ecuador this year. Former Ennis priest Fr John Molloy is continuing his mission in South America and he explained donations from his supporters have been used to give better lives to poor families in his parish.

THE Soloheadbeg attack on a group of RIC officers escorting a consignment of explosives is generally accepted as the start of the War of Independence. There may have been some earlier incidents, including an attack on an RIC Barracks in Kerry but Soloheadbeg was the first occasion in which firearms were discharged and where there were fatalities. Members of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA led by Sean Treacy, Dan Breen and Séamus Robinson shot dead two members of the RIC.

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FOR those who knew Robbie McMahon or who had the pleasure of hearing him sing, he needed no introduction.

JIMMY Smyth is rated by his peers and by journalists as one of the greatest hurlers to play the game. His hurling career began as a youngster in Ruan and later at St Flannan’s College. Selected at corner-forward on the Munster Millenium team in 2000, evidence of his greatness is the fact that when hurling people speak of him in the vernacular, they only have to say “Smyth” and it’s understood who they are talking about.