HE grew up in England aware he was adopted, but Simon Edwards never looked into his origins until after his own children were born.
When he did he unearthed an incredible story, as he was the result of Clare liaison between Rosemary Ruane and the legendary US boxing commentator Bob Sheridan who died last year.
Sheridan, also known as the Colonel, was a boxing Hall of Famer, who called over 1,000 world title fights in an amazing career.
He was at ringside for nights like the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manilla and was in Tokyo for Buster Douglas’s sensational KO of Mike Tyson.
Younger boxing fans may have heard his commentary on fights involving present-day stars like Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez and Anthony Joshua.
For a period in the 1970s and 80s, Sheridan, himself the son of Irish emigrants to the US, lived an incredible double life. He would spend much of the week farming in Clare, before jetting off to call major fights around the globe at the weekend, before coming back to the land for another week of work.
In the early 1980s, Rosemary Ruane was a manager at the Shannon Shamrock in Bunratty where she encountered the charismatic American.
Reflecting on their relationship shortly before his death, Bob said, “She was the manageress at the Shannon Shamrock Hotel and I met her there when I was single.
“She gave me a free room there whenever I wanted it because I spent so much at the bar. We talked a lot and were great friends and eventually had a love affair.
“That must have been when Simon was conceived. She hadn’t told me she was pregnant. She couldn’t have an abortion as she was Catholic so she went to England and had Simon.”
At the time, keeping the child in Ireland also wasn’t an option for Rosemary; in the early 1980s, single mothers were barely tolerated in an Ireland where mother and baby homes were still very busy.
That was the environment in which Simon was given up for adoption and Rosemary died five years later.
Speaking to The Clare Champion recently, Simon said he didn’t think very much about his background as a young person.
“I just grew up normally. I was adopted but I never looked into my history at all until recently,” he said.
“Since then my life has been a whirlwind as you can imagine.”
He fully understands why Rosemary opted to give him up, at what was a very different time. “Absolutely. She came from a large family with seven sisters and a brother,” he said.
“A large Catholic family, and having a baby out of wedlock wasn’t a thing then. It makes more sense when I look into it, whereas growing up it didn’t make much sense.”
He found out that Rosemary had another son, and while Simon made contact, that man does not want to meet.
“Maybe that’s something for the future,” says Simon.
While he wasn’t agonising about it beforehand, he is glad that he knows about his biological parents.
“The main thing is understanding your roots and understanding yourself better,” he said.
One of the most celebrated commentators in the history of boxing, the Colonel had a unique, fantastic voice, while he worked hard at preparing for fights, and his ability to convey what was happening in the ring and the atmosphere around it made him a legend of sporting commentary.
It also saw him become a multimillionaire, and the inheritance he left has set Simon and his family up for life financially. Simon loves sport himself, and it’s obvious where that has come from.
“I’ve always loved boxing. Cricket, rugby and football are my favourite sports, but boxing is a big passion of mine as well, and snooker and horse racing,” he said.
“I love Guinness and I love my music. I obviously got my love of sport from my biological father.”
After they connected, sport was always the first item on the agenda between father and son. “We got on very, very well. We just spoke about sport the whole time basically,” he said. “We just clicked. Obviously, we’re both very passionate about sport.”
The Colonel was at all the biggest moments in boxing history and made friends with an array of champions from Ali to Tyson, as well as Irish legends such as Steve Collins and Barry McGuigan.
When he spoke to The Clare Champion, Simon was looking forward to meeting Eminem, the world famous American rapper and music producer, a huge boxing fan and someone who had been a friend of the Colonel.
“When you look at it, they were two of the greatest wordsmiths America has seen,” he said.
“Obviously Eminem is a massive boxing fan and I’m looking forward to hanging out with him and hearing stories of my Dad. They used to bounce off each other.”
In what would prove to be another amazing twist of fate, the Colonel found out about his only son on the day of his wife’s funeral.
In an interview with The Sun newspaper in 2022 he recalled the moment. “I had just buried my wife. I was besides myself when the chaplain from my military regiment said to me ‘I know you feel cheated by the Lord, but remember he only gave his own son 33 years on this Earth’,” he said.
“I got home and had a Guinness and I really felt like I had nothing left in my life.
“Then I got a call from an agency saying, ‘You have a 41-year-old son, and I said ‘are you sure?’
“They said all you have to do is see him once and you’ll know he’s your son. He looks just like you, he’s a great athlete like you.
“I was thinking, an hour ago I had nothing to live for – now I have a son.
“I asked how did this happen? Then I remembered this lovely girl I had been dating before I met my wife.”
While there were reports that Simon had inherited some £200 million sterling at his fathers death, he says that this was hugely exaggerated, with the real figure having been about a tenth of that. “It’s still a lot of money, don’t get me wrong, but it was very exaggerated. There was property as well and stuff, but it wasn’t £200 million! The papers exaggerated it a lot.”
Indeed, Simon didn’t realise until just a few years ago that he had any tangible links at all to this country.
“My blood is 100% Irish on ancestry.com so I class myself as Irish born in England,” he said.
“I’m very pleased and very happy. I love coming to Ireland. I have a place there now and the Irish are wonderful people. They’ve a great sense of humour, they like Guinness like me.”
Since then he has met with many of his relations on Rosemary’s side of the family, while he has visited Bunratty on a number of occasions, where she met the Colonel.
“The hotel [the Shannon Shamrock] is closed but I took a few photos, went to the castle, there’s a pub next door where I had a few Guinness. I’ll be back in Clare later this year, I tend to go each year now as a remembrance now. I visit my Mum’s gravestone too,” he said.
Simon is now taking his first steps as a sporting commentator, while there is talk of a Netflix series about the story.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.