With a quiet degree of confidence, it will be put that, with the passing of Mrs Annie McEnroe and her late husband Johnny, Mr William Lynskey assumed the mantle of being the oldest resident the locality.
Alas, the title is up for awarding once again as news emerged on Monday evening that gentleman Willie will indeed sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh from the great football field far away having been called ashore in the midst of his 100th year.
A native of Barnderig, Tuam, Co Galway, Willie and his late sister Mary came to live at Beggstown, Dunboyne in 1955.
Even though there were generations between us in terms of age, my late father knew Willie and his sister – whom he always referred to as Ms. Lynskey up to his death when he was 91 – and indeed Willie’s best friend the late Paddy McIntyre Snr very well.
And besides that, there are no better topics to bridge generational gaps than sport and farming. And with the common threads connecting us, age didn’t make a jot of difference.
Whether that was sitting up in the old dugout at the Rooske pitch with Paddy Mc – and others such as Aidan Curley, Sean McManus, Jim Reilly, Seamus Lynch and Brian Smyth – Lord rest them all now – watching whatever team happened to be training.
Or meeting Willie and/or Ms Lynskey around the village where the conversation could easily flit between GAA and farming.
Having moved to Dunboyne in 1955, Willie was a member of the very first Bingo Committee within the GAA club in 1963 was a committed and generous supporter of our club. In terms of attending matches and fundraising events and contributing to the latter most generously.
In 1997, the Meath GAA Yearbook ran a lovely feature about Paddy Mc Snr which was headed “Paddy has been to 109 All Ireland Finals” – there is a very good possibility Willie was by his side for a very large number of those outings. They were a duo that – similar to Francis (Sonny) Lowndes and the late Paddy Mulreid – seemed to try and get to every match going, whether Dunboyne or Meath teams were playing or not.
Mind you, it’s worth pointing out that, though Willie was in his 71st year of living in the Royal County, he never lost interest in or gra for his native soil, so in one sense it wasn’t a surprise to hear that he was going home to Kilererin – home of the great Padraic Joyce – on his final journey this morning. However, what it would also do would be explain the massive number of All Irelands Paddy – presumably with Willie in tow – had attended.
The former being a native of Cloghan in Co Offaly and having played with the Faithful as well as with Dublin while he was lining out with the Sean McDermott’s club. Which, I think, was a club for country folk based in Dublin, but if that is incorrect, my apologies. Anyway, with Paddy being a dual player and having the fortunes of two counties to follow (Three when he moved to Dunboyne in 1951) and Galway competing to a high level across the codes, it should be no wonder the two great friends managed to wrack up such attendance numbers on big days in Croke Park.
Mention was afforded a few paragraphs ago as to how Willie was one of the founding members of the Bingo Committee within the GAA club in 1963, and, on my behalf, it can only be assumed that Paddy and Brian Smyth and maybe even my own late uncle Jimmy were on hand then too.
When Operation Bingo – which still runs every Friday to this day – commenced, the club had yet to begin its long and treasured association with Tom Yourell’s field, but Alpha House, which Tom also owned, was the venue for meetings while the Bingo found its first home in what was then the old Catholic Church – now the car park beside the current incarnation of the latter building.
It was quite the thrill for me, then, that when I became involved with the club at committee level in the late 1990s, Brian and Paddy and Willie were still heavily involved either as ‘workers’ on Friday nights or out on the floor playing.
One regret I do have from those years is not dropping into the Bingo more. Not so much for the game itself as to see the team at work. Paddy Mc in particular had a crew of runners – Willie included – ferrying the bundles of money into his fiefdom, where it was all bagged and batched in some system I could never quite figure out. One thing which was learned very quickly and entirely at my own expense and through my own fault, was that hell hath no fury like a Bingo Squad disturbed!
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The other area in which Willie made many invaluable contributions to life in Dunboyne and indeed beyond was in relation to farming. In a condolence message on rip.ie, leading local agricultural activist Henry Corbally from Kilmainhamwood said “I knew William when he attended IFA meetings in Navan many years ago, he was a kind and friendly person who was very popular and whose opinions were always highly valued and respected”.
In another tribute, Dunboyne farmer Eamonn Walsh remembered Willie as a “True gentleman, scholar and part time revolutionary”. The latter being a reference to the key role played by Willie in the National Farmers’ Association (NFA)* protests of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Led by Tipperary man Rikard Deasy, what basically amounted to industrial action of its time. was headlined by Mr Deasy fronting a 217-mile march from Bantry in Co Cork to Dail Eireann. Whereupon nine of those who spearheaded a campaign staged a sit-in protest when then Minister for Agriculture Charlie Haughey refused to meet the delegation.
Resultant from which a number of farmers, including Willie and Eamonn, were jailed for their part in the farmer unrest which took the form of refusing to pay rates owing to the diabolical prices producers were being fobbed off with for their work.
History will, though, be kind to them, as their selfless patriotism laid the way for the formation of the IFA as we know it now and also ensured their comrades got properly rewarded for their efforts. How ironic is it that, though time moves on and generations change, the challenges facing farmers in order to simply get fair prices for their produce never change.
Nor, indeed, do the demands facing clubs and groups of all sorts to be in financial positions to go after the success we all strive for and derive so much enjoyment from. Under both heading Willie Lynskey has left a legacy to be proud of and one which will live on locally and much further afield for generations to come. May he rest in peace.
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