BACK CHAT - Lough Owel Lodge

22
SATuRdAy, MAy 31, 2014
WWW.WESTMEATHEXAMINER.IE
BACK CHAT
THe
BACHelor
Knights aplenty for
Kilbeggan Festival
THE Kilbeggan Knighthood Festival has
become one of the most entertaining
events in the midlands since it started in
2012. The third year of the event, which
celebrates the knighting of Thomas
Cuffe, innkeeper in 1773 by Lord Lieutenant Townsend, is on from Friday
May 30 to Sunday June 1.
The event begins with the now
traditional and popular parade on
Friday at 7pm with the emphasis on
period clothing.
It will be led by Grand Marshall
Pat Lynagh and will include sporting
bodies, ethnic communities,
agriculture, business, cartoon
characters, children, and the finalists
for the Lord and Lady competition.
The feature on Saturday May 31 is the
selection and knighting of the new
Lord and Lady with a special rendition
of the story, but in a day of activities,
from 9am, the highlights will be the
large market in The Square, dog show,
soccer blitz, art exhibition including
students, history exhibition include
WWI Exhibition, historical town walk
and down by the river from 2pm events
for kids from Mad Hatter’s Tea Party to
ribbon workshop by Firemonkeys plus
fancy dress and competitions.
On Sunday June 1, the Lord and
Lady will appear at Family Fun
Day at Kilbeggan Races. Other
highlights include a special tug-o-war
competition, a céilí evening and a finale
on The Green on Sunday night.
Music on The Green from Friday to
Sunday will include Conor Quinn and
White Chalk, Mercury, Celtic Blondes,
and The Lols. The full programme of
events is on the Kilbeggan Knighthood
Festival website or the leaflet in
circulation.
Forget Dublin: do
Mullingar!
FORGET the Dublin mini-marathon: the
Westmeath mini-marathon is where it’s
at! No hassle getting parking, no early-
morning start, no battling city centre
traffic, and no long drive home afterwards. The North Westmeath Hospice
has, for the last several years, been running an alternative mini-marathon on
the June bank holiday Monday – and the
big difference between it and the Dublin event is that it’s not a women-only
run/walk. Says Tina Kellegher: “This
is for the entire family – men, women,
children – even the family pet!”
Registration for the event begins at
10.15am at Dunnes Stores car park with
the event kicking off at 11am. Those
who have been collecting sponsorship
don’t need to pay to take part; others
are asked to make a €10 donation
– all of which goes towards funding
the invaluable work of the North
Westmeath Hospice.
“It’s a real social occasion,” says
Tina, adding that after the event,
refreshments are served in Kerrigan’s,
and lots of people stay around mixing
and mingling and enjoying the buzz and
atmosphere.]
Anyone who has T-shirts or high-vis
jackets from previous events is asked to
wear them.
This Friday, the North Westmeath
Hospice is also holding a summer
sunflower evening, with a mini
barbecue at Miller and Cook from 710pm. At just €10, it promises to be a
great night, with food, music and fun.
It’s also a chance to meet some of
the faces who do so much work for the
you have a local story?
 Do
Contact: Tel: 044-9346741
[email protected]
Ruth Gallagher (16) models ‘Pine-aColadas’ designed by Mullingar girls
Emma Kinsella and Jane Wallace, who
attend Our Lady’s Bower, Athlone.
hospice – both the hospice nurses and
the voluntary committee, headed up
by Veronica Larkin – who fundraise to
keep the service running.
‘Fleadh out’
in Moate!
THE Leinster Fleadh Cheoil committee
are busy as the date of the event – taking
place this year in Moate – draws closer.
“Moate is almost ‘purpose built’
for a Fleadh,” stated Padraic Keena,
cathaoirleach of Westmeath County
Board Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann at
the recent launch of the fleadh.
The three event venues, Moate
Community School, Tuar Ard Theatre
and Moate Community Hall, are all
within walking of each other for events
on July 11-13.
The céílí dancing competitions are
on Friday July 11 at Moate Community
School, along with the céilí bands
on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13, while
music, singing and comhrá Gaeilge
competitions will be based in rooms
all over the school on the Saturday and
Sunday. Tuar Ard Theatre will host
the sean-nós dancing competitors on
Friday evening along with the sound
of button accordions on Saturday and
Sunday. Moate Community Hall will
host the set-dancing competitions on
Friday evening as well as grupaí cheoil
over the weekend. Meanwhile, the
committee is hosting The Fleadh 5K
Road Race/Fun Run/Walk in Moate on
Monday June 2, starting at noon.
For more information, contact 087
9372361. Great prizes on offer.

Mullingar girls
in Junk Kouture
JANE Wallace, daughter of John and
Helen from Ballagh, and Emma Kinsella, daughter of Pauline and Declan
from Lynderry in Mullingar, were selected as the overall winners in the Junk
Koture 2014 national finals on Friday.
Jane and Emma are students of Our
Lady’s Bower in Athlone, and along
with fellow schoolgirl Ruth Gallagher
who modelled their ‘Pine-a-Coladas’
design on stage at The 02 for the
Grand Finale of Junk Kouture Recycled
Fashion Competition 2014, they beat
off students from across Ireland by
storming the catwalk in front of a sellout crowd.
The outfit made from rope, pine
cones and dried pineapple, took first
place, winning a cash prize of €2,500
for their school.
Jane Wallace and Emma Kinsella also
won a mini iPad each, a course in the
LA College of Creative Arts in Dublin
and €500 in cash. Their teacher Una
Kelly was also awarded with an iPad
mini for her efforts.
Want to wish someone well? Contact The Bachelor:
email: [email protected], call 044 93 46746
My MeMories... Marie Cox
Marie: remembering how husband Harry put Kinnegad on the map
THE joke in the house of Marie and Milo
Cox, as they raised their family of 12, was
that “‘my’ children and ‘your’ children
are fighting with ‘our’ children!”.
Marie, widowed at just 32, when her
beloved first husband, Harry Dunne
died, had six children. Milo was also
widowed young, and had a son, and
when Marie and Milo married they went
on to have five more children.
“But there was never any distinction,
like, if someone said to me: ‘your halfsister’, or ‘half-brother’, I’d never think
that way – we’re all brothers and sisters,” says Aideen Ginnell, second eldest
of the brood, who range in age now from
60 down to mid-40s.
Marie, matriarch of the Dunne and
Cox clan, a beautiful and lively 87-yearold, with a sparkle in her eye, highly recommends having a large family.
“I don’t know why people don’t have
big families, because they rear themselves – and they’re good company for
each other, and it’s nice to have them in
your old age,” she says.
Marie’s first husband was ‘the’ Harry
of Harry’s in Kinnegad. His name is back
on Kinnegad’s main street thanks to the
present owners’ decision to return to
the name that put Kinnegad on the map,
something that has delighted Marie, who
still gets emotional talking about the
man who wooed her, wed her, and then,
tragically, was stolen from her by cancer.
Marie was born in 1926, at Knocknacreeve, near Sonna, to Annie (nee
Cleary), from Cloughan, and Michael
Casey, from Bryanstown, Ballinea.
Four and a half months later, the family loaded up a pony and trap, and made
their way to Cloughan, to take up a new
life as publicans and farmers, and Marie
went to school at Loughegar, before
heading to board at a convent school in
Navan, which she loved.
“I wanted to be a hairdresser, but
my mother wanted me to be a nurse,
and she had a priest friend in Leeds, Fr
Casey, and she arranged it all, and I went
there for three years to train,” she says.
The war was just over, and many of
the patients were German prisoners of
war, brought to St James’s Hospital as it
was the first to offer plastic surgery. The
nurses weren’t supposed to speak to the
prisoners of war.
Marie Cox: looking back on a life welllived.
“But I used to feel sorry for them,”
she says, adding that when she could,
sometimes she’d sneak a bit of fruit in
to them.
After her training, Marie returned
home and spent a year doing midwifery
in Holles Street before taking up a job
in ‘the county’ [hospital] in Mullingar,
living with Bella Kilmartin – an aunt of Fr
Michael Kilmartin’s – over what is now
Eason’s.
“I was only three years working as a
nurse here, and you had to leave your
job when you got married,” she says.
That marriage was to Harry Dunne,
whom she first encountered at a Bachelors Club dance in the county hall after
Bella introduced them.
“But he was doing a line with another
girl,” says Marie.
Harry was, however, smitten, and he
began to ask Marie out, but she knocked
him back. But they managed somehow
to run into each other often, and the
conversation flowed easily, and there
was good craic between them.
“Then, I fell stone mad in love with
him,” she recalls.
But from Marie’s point of view, there
was no future, since he was seeing this
other girl, and she believed she had no
chance.
“So I decided to go to America, and
that when I’d come home, I’d have for-
My hobbies...Peter beirne
MY name is Peter Beirne and I would
like to tell you about my hobbies. My
favourite hobbies are reading and
sport. I especially love sport because
it keeps me fit and active. You have to
be dedicated to whatever sport you do
and always be on time for training and
matches and games. At the moment I
play basketball and Gaelic football and
also athletics. I probably get my love of
sport from my mum, who played sport
from early childhood. My favourite
sport would probably be Gaelic football. The name of the club I play for is
Inny Shamrocks and I play U14. This is
my first year playing U14 so I am very
excited, My trainers are John Kiernan
and Peter Maguire and we are at the top
of our table. My home pitch is in Bunbrosna. A special word of thanks to our
two trainers who put blood, sweat and
tears into the team during our training
sessions and matches. I think everyone
should have hobbies and one should be
sport, it so good for your health and fitness. I really enjoy my hobbies.
The late Harry Dunne, after whom
Harry’s of Kinnegad is named.
Harry’s, in the early days.
gotten all about him.
“This course came up in Mount Sinai
hospital in New York, and myself and
another girl applied for it, and got it, and
we had to get a year’s leave of absence,
and there was a big ‘do’ for us in the hospital, and Harry said to me: ‘Where are
you going tomorrow?’, and I said: ‘I’m
going [to Dublin] to get the tickets’. And
he said: ‘Get off the bus in Kinnegad, and
I will meet you there’.
“And in the car, he said to me: ‘You
are not going to get tickets today: we are
going to get the ring! We’ll get married,
and I couldn’t believe it, and I said yes.
And I had to go back then, with just one
ticket for the other girl.
“The next morning, I woke up, and
thought I had been dreaming so the first
thing I did was looked at my hand and
saw the ring.”
In February 1954, the couple got
married, and when Marie asked Harry
where they were going to live, he sprung
another surprise: he had a house arranged for them in Killucan - “St Etchen’s”, all furnished, carpeted, and ready
to move in to.
Children followed soon after, and
while Harry drove to Kinnegad daily to
work in the Dunnes’ skin and hide business, Marie stayed at home, minding
the children, their first having arrived in
January 1955, the next in April 1956.
With some degree of prescience,
Harry had said to her at one point: “I’m
just thinking: this place would be no
good to you if anything happened to me.
If anything does, you should put it up
for sale.”
As it happened not long afterwards,
Mick Dunne, Harry’s brother, who had
bought a pub in Kinnegad, which wasn’t
in great condition, wanted to sell it.
Harry counted the cars driving
through Kinnegad, and reckoned if he
bought the pub, and if he could get 100
a day to stop, they’d be doing very well,
so they decided to buy the pub off his
brother.
That was 1958, and thus was born
“Harry’s”, and it was to that establishment that Marie came “home” after they
had their fifth child, Kathryn.
Harry kept on his job in the skin and
hide firm as the two built up the business, expanding the premises, and
growing their trade. It was the first roadhouse to serve bar food.
Two years later, Marie and Vera were
doing so well - Marie doing the cooking
and Vera running the bar - that Harry
decided to build a dining room, and the
trade grew day by day. The head chef
was... Marie herself, even though she
had never trained as a chef.
“I started the food. I did weddings,
with my sister, Vera,” says Marie.
“Harry Dunne put Kinnegad on the
map.”
But as they raised their young family,
and expanded their business, there was
tragedy on the way: Harry became ill in
January of 1960, with, it turned out, cancer. He died in September 1960 at just 38
years of age.
He had been a keen GAA man – both
as a county player and official – and on
his death, a minute’s silence was observed at the All-Ireland final in Croke
Park that same day.
Marie and Harry had five children first
– Harry, Aideen, Johnny, Eamon and
Kathryn and Marie was four and a half
months pregnant with her sixth child,
Mark, when he died.
Despite that, with the help of good
friends and good staff, she carried on
running the business.
After some time, she became friendly
with a young widower, veterinary surgeon, Milo Cox, whose wife had died
suddenly, leaving a son, Mark, behind.

Marie as a young nurse.
“Milo was interested in horses and
used to go racing, and he’d call in and
he’d have steak and onion and chips on
the way back,” recalls Marie.
Eventually, their friendship became
more, and Milo asked Marie to marry
him.
“I never told anyone I was getting
married, only Patty,” she says, referring
to Patty Conlon who helped her with the
children.
“We got married in Dublin, in the University Chapel, and went to London,
and we came back and said we were
married.”
Marie sold Harry’s to Tom Bourke,
later of The Covert, and she and Milo
settled in Pettitswood, with their seven
children. Coincidentally, there were
now two children with the name Mark
in the family – “Mark C” and “Mark
D”, just nine months apart in age. Milo
and Marie went on to have Milo, Liz,
Stephen, Morgan and Leonard.
Missing the challenge that came with
running a business, Marie’s eyes lit up
when she saw, one day, a “For Sale” sign
on a pharmacy on Pearse Street.
“I said: ‘we’ll buy that’, and Milo said:
‘we won’t!’. But anyway, we got a price
on it, and went ahead and bought it.
“I wanted to open a hairdresser’s
– and it would have done well – and
Vera said: ‘We’ll open a clothes shop’,
because she had served her time in Keelan’s in Mullingar.”
The sisters opened “Liz Anne” clothes
shop – but after about five years, when a
pub licence came up for sale, Marie decided to buy that, and turned Liz Anne
Marie’s second husband, the late Milo
Cox.
into “The Colt” pub – the forerunner to
what is now Danny Byrne’s, deciding it
was better to have a pub than a clothes
shop, as they’d never have to have a sale.
“I said ‘we’ll do dinners’, and we were
the first in Mullingar to serve food in a
pub, and then we decided to open the
end as a steak bar, and I did the cooking
there.”
They sold The Colt, but after a spell at
home minding the family, Marie got, as
she puts it, “itchy feet”, and decided to
open a B&B, and she ran that until 1995,
when she and Milo moved in to Mullingar town centre, finally beginning to
scale down on a lifetime of hard work.
Milo, sadly, died in 2012.
Although now in her 80s, Marie still
drives, and still enjoys an active social
life, especially enjoying playing cards
with her sister, Vera, and also, painting.
She begins her day with Mass, saying religion has always been important to her:
“Without God, I wouldn’t have got on. I
put it all down to him”.
When she returns from Mass, various family members drop in and out. In
total, Marie has 36 grandchildren.
In fact, on the day of the interview,
present were Marie’s daughters Aideen
Ginnell and Liz Tynan, and Aideen’s
daughter, also Aideen.
“It can be like a train station here!”
laughs Aideen.
Marie finishes by saying she is delighted that the new owners of The
Hilamar have called it Harry’s, and she
wishes them the very best of luck in the
future.
Would you like to feature in
My Memories or My xxxxxxx?
Email [email protected] or call 04493 46747