[caption id="attachment_69413" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="A World War 1 recruitment poster."]
MAYO - KIN MAKE PLEA AFTER SUDDEN DEATH
The family of a Castlebar man who died suddenly last week have made plea for people to open up and talk about their problems, the Mayo News reports.
Forty-four-year-old Micheál “Mick” Mullahy was found dead on Tuesday evening last at his home in the Brambles, Castlebar.
News of the very popular and successful Mick Mullahy's passing was met with widespread shock in the Castlebar area and beyond. Several thousand people attended at his removal and Funeral Mass last Thursday and Friday.
A statement issued to the Mayo News on behalf of Mullahy's wife Cathy, parents and brothers and sisters, paid tribute to a husband, father, brother and son.
"Last Tuesday we lost a beautiful man. Mick had everything to live for. He had a beautiful wife with whom he shared great love; he had two sweet little girls whom he adored. He had a mum and dad, three brothers and three sisters, and an extended family who surrounded him with love all his life. He was fortunate to have had a great circle of friends. Mick also had a very successful career and all the comforts of this world's material things. He was the last person we expected to leave us so suddenly," they said.
"Our hope is that some good may come from Mick's tragic passing. No person is without problems or struggles, and nobody should feel or be alone with them. On this very sad occasion may we encourage all to talk about anything that they may have difficulty with in their lives, from the smallest to the largest problem. Can we also encourage everyone to listen to others? Friends and family are there to help you, and you will find a great understanding in people. “Thank you, and may God bless you all," the statement concluded.
Mayor of Castlebar Eugene McCormack also paid tribute: "Mick was a great and wonderful community person, he was very likeable and a real natural guy whom people warmed to. He was a devoted family man and his death cast a cloud over Castlebar for the entire week," he said.
A minute's silence was observed at Castlebar Town Council's monthly meeting on Thursday evening and at Celtic Park on Sunday before Castlebar Celtic's FAI Junior Cup game. Westport Town Council passed a vote of condolence at their budget meeting on Thursday also.
Mick Mullahy – who is survived by his wife, 10- and 8-year-old daughters, Emma and Eva, his parents and six siblings – worked as the Retail Area Manager for Corrib Oil. He had previously worked for the Kavanagh Group (Super Valu) in Westport serving as a director. He was a member of the Mayo minor team that won the All-Ireland title in 1985 and he later won county senior titles with Castlebar Mitchels.
ROSCOMMON - PRIEST QUITS, CANON SHOCKED
When the acting parish priest of Aughanagh resigned last week, the man who said Mass in his place told the Roscommon Herald that there was “nothing sinister” about his leaving. The Herald tried the Rev. Ian Kennedy’s cell phone and office numbers without reply. It reported that Bishop Christopher Jones did not issue a statement. However Canon Gerard Hanley, the parish priest in Boyle, said that Kennedy had resigned the ministry “due to personal reasons.”
Hanley, who officiated at the Mass when Kennedy addressed Aughanagh parishioners about his decision, said: "It did come as a shock to me, but this is something that he has done of his own free will for his own personal reasons. I understood it is something he has thought about on and off for some time and he spoke to the bishop recently and came to this agreement.”
He stressed that Kennedy has not been asked to step down.
KILDARE - WIDER PATHS ARE ‘DANGEROUS’
New footpaths in Monasterevin have prompted a storm of protest in the town, where locals fear the paths have hindered the progress of traffic to a dangerous degree, the Leinster Leader reports.
The paths have been widened to help people with mobility issues, but with the widening has come a corresponding narrowing of streets.
Larger vehicles, like articulated trucks, have found it almost impossible to negotiate , for instance, the Drogheda Street and Dublin Street junction without driving over a significant section of the paving.
“These footpaths are jutting out too far,” one local told the Leinster Leader during a street protest last Saturday. “Drogheda Street has four schools on it. What they’ve done is ridiculous.”
WESTMEATH - BOOK FOCUSES ON WW1
From the quiet fields and small villages of Westmeath, hundreds left to fight in World War 1 and never came home again.
A man who has spent hours poring into papers and documents that contain the life stories of the Kilbeggan people who took part in the Great War, as it was known before World War II, has written a book about what became of them. The project has been a labor of love for its writer Ray Metters, whose “Who Answered the Bugle Call?” is to be launched today at the lecture room at Kilbeggan library.
"Although the book is mainly a tribute to the largely forgotten war dead of Kilbeggan, it also examines surviving combatants and considers the affects of modern warfare upon the community," the author said.
Relief workers, many of them women, are among the groups whose outstanding resilience and achievements have been largely erased from public memory, he added, citing the case of Mrs. Locke of Locke's Distillery.
"She not only joined the band of voluntary dedicated Red Cross VAD nurses who went overseas to care for the wrecks of war, but went on to campaign for, and eventually govern, the newly established Red Cross Hospital at Bloomfield House, Mullingar," Metters said.
Cases from similar sized towns in southern Westmeath and northern Offaly were studied to make comparisons with the Kilbeggan experiences.
"British Army service and pension records have proved invaluable in this respect, providing not only the list of soldiers but also their regiments, details of backgrounds, occupations, ages, marital status, children, health details and conduct reports," Metters said.
Interesting stories emerge of men who escaped from probable slaughter on account of ill-health or who were discharged because of injuries caused by bizarre incidents such as sleep walking.
"There are amusing tales of recruits who adopted aliases and sad instances of men being killed in accidents before they even embarked for Europe. Several underage lads feature, most of them being bailed out by anxious mothers armed with baptismal certificates - the standard proof of age."
One revealing fact emerging in the study is the extent to which army life extended beyond the typical war image of infantry soldiers charging out of trenches to a sergeant's whistle.
"Many of the men from the Midlands were attached to units engaged in activities seldom mentioned in connection with the Great War - as veterinary workers, vehicle drivers and maintenance operatives," Metters said.
"Several were employed within the Royal Engineers as messengers and quarry-men or even functioned in the strange-sounding Inland Water Transport Corps," he added.
