Rock and roll kids return to Bunratty

THEY were classmates at De La Salle College in Waterford but 17 members of the class of ’61 returned to Bunratty for the sixth time when they held their latest reunion at the weekend.
They have been holding an annual weekend get-together each November since they all met up at the official 30th anniversary event, which was held in Waterford in 1991.
“We all got along so well together then that we decided to hold assemble in November each year and this year was the 18th event and next year’s weekend in Skerries has already been arranged,” said Aidan White of Shannon.
With his background in the hotel and catering sector, the retired banqueting manager with Shannon Heritage and Banquets has been organiser-in-chief of the reunions held in Bunratty.
In clocking up its eighth reunion last weekend, Bunratty moved further ahead of Kenmare, the venue for five events, with Blarney on two and the others hosted at two County Wexford locations and one in Tullamore.
“While there was a total of 60 boarder and day-boy students in the various Leaving Cert classes at De La Salle in 1961, it was a sporting bond that connected our group,” Aidan White explained. “As well as being classmates, we were also team-mates on Gaelic hurling and football teams, handball teams or athletics teams,” he added.
Drawn from counties in the south and South-East regions and now in their mid 60s, the classmates ended up in many walks of life. Waterford native, Philip Ryan was the director general of the EU office in Dublin and now lives in retirement in County Carlow; Tipperary man, John Blackwell is still a lecturer at Carlow Institute of Technology; Michael Dwyer from Castlecomer runs a nursing home in Waterford; Peter Griffin, brother of the Wexford hotelier and All Ireland hurling winning manager, Liam, is an accountant in Waterford; Cork-born Tom Monaghan is a retired bank manager; Jim Faulkner runs an undertaking and limousine business in his native Waterford; Michael Connor-Scarteen is an auctioneer and building society agent in Kenmare; Jim O’Connell has a dairy farm at Gowran in his native Kilkenny; Des Olohan from Wicklow is the former head of Golden Discs and Lionel McCarthy’s was involved in the family business at The Embankment in Dublin.
This time round, the group set up a new headquarters at the Bunratty Manor Hotel, having spent five previous weekends at the Bunratty Shannon Shamrock.
Assembling from Friday evening, the group attended the Bunratty medieval banquet that night. Weather conditions ruled out a planned Saturday golf outing to Spanish Point but instead the classmates and their spouses split into two groups with one touring West Clare and the other visiting the Burren and Doolin.
The Saturday night programme consisted of dinner at the Bunratty Manor Hotel followed by a sing-song.
“And it was right back to the rock and roll years which has just erupted in the late ’50s and early ’60s,” Aidan White said. “It was all the Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and the Comets, Eddie Cochrane and the Big Bopper that turned the clock back until almost four o’clock in the morning.”
“Probably the biggest reason for the success of the yearly reunions is that our wives all get along very well together and they have formed firm friendships themselves while their husbands go back to being teenage boys for a weekend,” Aidan concluded.