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Birth of John Magee, Bishop Emeritus of Cloyne

John Magee SPS, a Roman Catholic bishop emeritus in Ireland, is born in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore, on September 24, 1936. He is Bishop of Cloyne from 1987 to 2010. Following scandal he resigns from that position on March 24, 2010, becoming a bishop emeritus. He is the only person to have been private secretary to three popes.

Magee’s father is a dairy farmer. He is educated at St. Colman’s College in Newry and enters the St Patrick’s Missionary Society at Kiltegan, County Wicklow, in 1954. He also attends University College Cork (UCC) where he obtains a degree in philosophy before going to study theology in Rome, where he is ordained priest on March 17, 1962.

Magee serves as a missionary priest in Nigeria for almost six years before being appointed Procurator General of St. Patrick’s Society in Rome. In 1969, he is an official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome, when he is chosen by Pope Paul VI to be one of his private secretaries. On Pope Paul’s death he remains in service as a private secretary to his successor, Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II. He is the only man to hold the position of private secretary to three Popes in Vatican history. He also acts as chaplain to the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

Magee is appointed papal Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations in 1982, and is appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Cloyne on February 17, 1987. He is consecrated bishop on March 17, 1987, Saint Patrick’s Day, by Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

On April 28, 1981, Magee travels, without the knowledge or approval of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, to the Long Kesh Detention Centre outside Belfast to meet with Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker Bobby Sands. He seeks, unsuccessfully, to convince Sands to end his hunger strike. Sands dies the following week.

Magee plays a role in the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference where he is featured in the modernisation of the liturgy in Ireland. His pastoral approach places heavy emphasis on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood but, after some initial success, the number of vocations in the diocese of Cloyne declines, a trend reflected across the island of Ireland. He appoints Ireland’s first female “faith developer” and entrusts her with the task of transforming an Irish rural diocese into a cosmopolitan pastoral model using techniques borrowed from several urban dioceses in the United States.

Magee involves himself in a dispute with the Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral, a local conservationist group in Cobh which organises an effective and professional opposition to the Bishop’s plans to re-order the interior of the cathedral, plans similar to previous re-orderings in Killarney, Cork and Limerick cathedrals. In an oral hearing conducted by An Bord Pleanála, the Irish Planning Board, it emerges that irregularities have occurred in the planning application that are traced to Cobh Town Council, which accommodates the Bishop’s plans to modify the Victorian interior designed by E. W. Pugin and George Ashlin. On June 2, 2006, when Bishop Magee was in Lourdes, An Bord Pleanála directs Cobh Town Council to refuse the Bishop’s application.

On July 25, 2006, Magee publishes a pastoral letter stating: “As a result of An Bord Pleanála’s decision, the situation concerning the temporary plywood altar still remains unresolved and needs to be addressed. The Diocese will initiate discussions with the planning authorities in an attempt to find a solution, which would be acceptable from both the liturgical and heritage points of view.”

A diocesan official explains that the bishop does not wish to institute a judicial review in the Irish High Court because of the financial implications of such an action and because of the bishop’s desire to avoid a Church-State clash.

Claims that the decision of An Bord Pleanála infringes the constitutional property rights of religious bodies are dismissed when it is revealed that the cathedral is the property of a secular trust established in Irish law. It is estimated that Bishop Magee spent over €200,000 in his bid to re-order the cathedral. The controversy is reported even outside Ireland.

A February 2006 article by Kieron Wood in The Sunday Business Post claims that Magee does not have the backing of the Vatican in his proposals for St. Colman’s. At the oral hearing of An Bord Pleanála he is requested to provide a copy of the letter from the Vatican in which he claims he has been given approval for the modernising of the cathedral. The letter that he produces is a congratulatory message dated December 9, 2003 to the team of architects who worked on the cathedral project from Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The whole text of this letter is then reproduced in a publication called Conserving Cobh Cathedral: The Case Stated pp. 108–109.

At a meeting of his liturgical advisers and diocesan clergy in November 2006, Bishop Magee speaks of his conversation with the Pope in the course of that ad limina visit at the end of the previous month. He mentions that he has been closely questioned on several aspects of his proposals to re-order St. Colman’s Cathedral. It is obvious, he says, that the Pope has been kept well informed of the entire issue.

Bishop Magee’s contribution to the ad limina visit concerns not only his diocese of Cloyne but also ceremonial matters on behalf of the Conference. He also facilitates the broadcasting, in coincidence with the visit, of a life of Pope John Paul I prepared some months earlier by Italian state television (RAI). In an interview published on the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire on October 26, 2006, Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone criticises the image that the programme presents of Pope John Paul I.

After the ad limina visit, Bishop Magee represents the Irish bishops at a meeting in Rome of the International Commission for Eucharistic Congresses.

In 2007, for the third year in succession, Magee fails to complete his personal schedule of confirmations in Cloyne diocese. On May 12, 2007, he is admitted to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork to undergo a knee replacement operation. All official engagements are cancelled for the next ten weeks to allow him to recuperate, after which he resumes work.

In December 2008, Magee is at the centre of a controversy concerning his handling of child sexual abuse cases by clergy in the diocese of Cloyne. Calls for his resignation follow. On March 7, 2009, he announces that, at his request, the Pope has placed the running of the diocese in the hands of Dermot Clifford, metropolitan archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, to whose ecclesiastical province the diocese of Cloyne belongs. Magee remains Bishop of Cloyne, but withdraws from administration in order, he says, to dedicate his full-time to the matter of the inquiry. On March 24, 2010, the Holy See announces that Magee has formally resigned from his duties as Bishop of Cloyne. He is eventually succeeded by Canon William Crean whose appointment comes on November 25, 2012.

The subsequent report of the Irish government judicial inquiry, The Cloyne Report, published on July 13, 2011, finds that Bishop Magee’s second in command, Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan, then the parish priest of Mallow, had falsely told the Government and the HSE in a previous inquiry that the diocese was reporting all allegations of clerical child sexual abuse to the civil authorities.

The inquiry into Cloyne – the fourth examination of clerical abuse in the Church in Ireland – finds the greatest flaw in the diocese is repeated failure to report all complaints. It finds nine allegations out of 15 were not passed on to the Garda.

Speaking in August 2011, Magee says that he felt “horrified and ashamed” by abuse in his diocese. He says he accepts “full responsibility” for the findings. “I feel ashamed that this happened under my watch – it shouldn’t have and I truly apologise,” he says. “I did endeavour and I hoped that those guidelines that I issued in a booklet form to every person in the diocese were being implemented but I discovered they were not and that is my responsibility.”

Magee also offers to meet abuse victims and apologise “on bended knee.” He says he had been “truly horrified” when he read the full extent of the abuse in the report. However, a victim says apologies would “never go far enough.” “It’s too late for us now, the only thing it’s not too late for is that maybe there will be a future where people will be more enlightened, more aware and protect their children better,” she says. Asked about restitution for victims, Magee says it is a matter for the Cloyne Diocese.


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Death of Oliver St. John Gogarty, Poet, Author, Athlete & Politician

Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty, Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist, dies in New York City on September 22, 1957. He serves as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce‘s novel Ulysses.

Gogarty is born on August 17, 1878, in Rutland Square, Dublin. In 1887, his father dies of a burst appendix, and he is sent to Mungret College, a boarding school near Limerick. He is unhappy in his new school, and the following year he transfers to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England, which he likes little better, later referring to it as “a religious jail.” He returns to Ireland in 1896 and boards at Clongowes Wood College while studying for examinations with the Royal University of Ireland. In 1898, he switches to the medical school at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), having failed eight of his ten examinations at the Royal.

A serious interest in poetry and literature begins to manifest itself during his years at TCD. In 1900, he makes the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats and George Moore and begins to frequent Dublin literary circles. In 1904 and 1905 he publishes several short poems in the London publication The Venture and in John Eglinton‘s journal Dana. His name also appears in print as the renegade priest Fr. Oliver Gogarty in George Moore’s 1905 novel The Lake.

In 1905, Gogarty becomes one of the founding members of Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin, a non-violent political movement with a plan for Irish autonomy modeled after the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.

In July 1907, his first son, Oliver Duane Odysseus Gogarty, is born, and in autumn of that year he leaves for Vienna to finish the practical phase of his medical training. Returning to Dublin in 1908, he secures a post at Richmond Hospital, and shortly afterward purchases a house in Ely Place opposite George Moore. Three years later, he joins the staff of the Meath Hospital and remains there for the remainder of his medical career.

As a Sinn Féiner during the Irish War of Independence, Gogarty participates in a variety of anti-Black and Tan schemes, allowing his home to be used as a safe house and transporting disguised Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers in his car. Following the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he sides with the pro-Treaty government and is made a Free State Senator. He remains a senator until the abolition of the Seanad in 1936, during which time he identifies with none of the existing political parties and votes according to his own whims.

Gogarty maintains close friendships with many of the Dublin literati and continues to write poetry in the midst of his political and professional duties. He also tries his hand at playwriting, producing a slum drama in 1917 under the pseudonym “Alpha and Omega,” and two comedies in 1919 under the pseudonym “Gideon Ouseley,” all three of which are performed at the Abbey Theatre. He devotes less energy to his medical practice and more to his writing during the twenties and thirties.

With the onset of World War II, Gogarty attempts to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as a doctor. He is denied on grounds of age. He then departs in September 1939 for an extended lecture tour in the United States, leaving his wife to manage Renvyle House, which has since been rebuilt as a hotel. When his return to Ireland is delayed by the war, he applies for American citizenship and eventually decides to reside permanently in the United States. Though he regularly sends letters, funds, and care-packages to his family and returns home for occasional holiday visits, he never again lives in Ireland for any extended length of time.

Gogarty suffers from heart complaints during the last few years of his life, and in September 1957 he collapses in the street on his way to dinner. He dies on September 22, 1957. His body is flown home to Ireland and buried in Cartron Church, Moyard, near Renvyle, County Galway.

(Pictured: 1911 portrait of Oliver St. John Gogarty painted by Sir William Orpen, currently housed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland)


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Birth of Fenian Leader Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Irish Fenian leader and prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), is born Jeremiah O’Donovan at Reenascreena, Rosscarbery, County Cork, on September 10, 1831.

Rossa becomes a shopkeeper in Skibbereen where, in 1856, he establishes the Phoenix National and Literary Society, the aim of which is “the liberation of Ireland by force of arms.” This organisation later merges with the IRB, founded two years later in Dublin.

In December 1858, Roosa is arrested and jailed without trial until July 1859. He is charged with plotting a Fenian rising in 1865, put on trial for high treason, and sentenced to penal servitude for life due to previous convictions. He serves his time in Pentonville, Portland, and Chatham prisons in England.

In an 1869 by-election, Roosa is returned to the British House of Commons for the Tipperary constituency, defeating the Liberal Catholic Denis Caulfield Heron by 1,054 to 898 votes. The election is declared invalid because Rossa is an imprisoned felon.

After giving an understanding that he will not return to Ireland, Rossa is released as part of the Fenian amnesty of 1870. Boarding the S.S. Cuba, he leaves for the United States with his friend John Devoy and three other exiles. Together they were dubbed “The Cuba Five.”

Rossa takes up residence in New York City, where he joins Clan na Gael and the Fenian Brotherhood. He organises the first ever bombings by Irish republicans of English cities in what is called the “dynamite campaign.” The campaign lasts through the 1880s and makes him infamous in Britain. The British government demands his extradition from America but without success.

In 1885, Rossa is shot outside his office near Broadway by an Englishwoman, Yseult Dudley, but his wounds are not life-threatening. He is allowed to visit Ireland in 1894, and again in 1904. On the latter visit, he is made a “Freeman of the City of Cork.”

Rossa is seriously ill in his later years and is finally confined to a hospital bed in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Staten Island, where he dies suddenly at the age of 83 on June 29, 1915. His body is returned to Ireland for burial and a hero’s welcome. The funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on August 1, 1915, is a huge affair, garnering substantial publicity for the Irish Volunteers and the IRB at time when a rebellion, later to emerge as the Easter Rising, is being actively planned. The graveside oration given by Patrick Pearse remains one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement stirring his audience to a call to arms.


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Birth of Des Hanafin, Fianna Fáil Politician

Desmond A. Hanafin, Fianna Fáil politician who serves for over 30 years as a member of Seanad Éireann, is born in Thurles, County Tipperary, on September 9, 1930. He opposes social liberalisation, particularly the legalisation of abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage, and is one of the founders of the anti-abortion advocacy group, Pro Life Campaign (PLC).

Hanafin is the son of John Hanafin (1890–1953), a draper and newsagent who serves for many years as a Fianna Fáil councillor for North Tipperary County Council and previously is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and an elected Sinn Féin councillor.

Hanafin marries Mona Brady, daughter of J. P. Brady, on August 2, 1958, in Clonmel, County Tipperary. The wedding is followed by a reception at the Galtee Hotel, Cahir, which is attended by various notables including Rev. Father J. J. Hampson, president of Blackrock College. Their first child, Mary Hanafin, is born in June 1959, followed by John Hanafin in September 1960. Mary Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil TD and government minister, and John Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil senator.

Hanafin operates the Anner Hotel, located in Thurles during the 1960s. Initially successful, the business fails in 1967, which Mary Hanafin later blames on her father’s excess drinking. Subsequently, Hanafin is a director of the Transinternational Oil Company.

Hanafin’s first attempt for election to public office proves unsuccessful. In 1953, he seeks to be co-opted to fill the vacancy on North Tipperary County Council created by the death of his father. In the event councillors co-opt a Labour Party nominee, Michael Treacy, by eleven votes to seven.

Hanafin is elected a member of North Tipperary County Council in 1955, polling 934 first preference votes. Subsequently, in 1956, drawing support from the Clann na Poblachta representatives, he is elected Chairman of the County Council.

In 1957, Hanafin conducts a three-month tour of the United States, during which he is commissioned a Kentucky colonel by then Kentucky Governor Albert Benjamin “Happy” Chandler, Sr.. He is also awarded the freedom of Louisville, Kentucky, and is received by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.

Hanafin is re-elected to North Tipperary County Council in 1960, polling 797 first preference votes. In 1961, he votes against the Fianna Fáil nominee for Chair of the County Council, Thomas F. Meagher, and in favour of the Clann na Poblachta nominee, Michael F. Cronin, who is elected by 10 votes to 9. In 1964, he controversially votes in favour of Jeremiah Mockler, “a former school mate,” who is elected by 10 votes to 9 to the office of Rate Collector for Borrisokane, County Tipperary.

Hanafin holds the seat until 1985. He is first elected to Seanad Éireann in 1969 and retains his seat until the 1993 Seanad election at which he loses his seat by one vote. He regains his seat in the 1997 elections, and in 2002 announces his retirement from politics. He unsuccessfully contests the 1977 and 1981 Irish general elections for the Tipperary North constituency. He is a chief fundraiser of the Fianna Fáil party for many years.

In May 2015, Hanafin accuses “Yes” campaigners in the same-sex marriage referendum of spreading a “palpable climate of fear,” and calls for a “No” vote.

Hanafin opposes the legalisation of divorce, which is introduced in 1995, and attempts to overturn the referendum result in the Supreme Court, but is refused by the court.

An opponent of abortion, Hanafin is one of the promoters of the constitutional amendment that enshrines the legal ban on abortion in the Constitution of Ireland. He is co-founder, chairman and later honorary president of the Pro Life Campaign.

Hanafin dies in County Tipperary at the age of 86 on June 22, 2017. A Requiem Mass is held at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, on June 25, with burial afterward in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.


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Birth of Seán Cronin, Journalist & Irish Army Officer

Seán Gerard Cronin, journalist and former Irish Army officer and twice Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born in Dublin on August 29, 1922.

Cronin is the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County Kerry Gaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.

During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre director Alan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.

Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.

Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.

Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.

Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).

Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.

Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.

In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.

By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.

In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.

Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.

After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.


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Death of Johnny Hayes, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

John Joseph Hayes, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey. He is the winner of the men’s marathon race at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. His Olympic victory contributes to the early growth of long-distance running and marathoning in the United States.

Born in New York City on April 10, 1886, to a family of Irish emigrants from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Hayes is probably best known for winning the controversial marathon race at the London Olympics. He is one of only three male American athletes to win the Olympic Marathon, the other two being Thomas Hicks in 1904 and  Frank Shorter in 1972.

In 1905, Hayes joins Bloomingdale Brothers as an assistant to the manager of the sporting goods department. At night, he trains on a cinder track on the roof of the Bloomingdale’s building in New York. He is promoted to manager of the department after returning from his Olympic victory.

Hayes starts his athletics career with a fifth-place finish at the 1906 Boston Marathon, running for the St. Bartholemew Athletic Club in a time of 2:55:38. He improves on that the following year by finishing third in Boston with a time of 2:30:38 and winning the inaugural Yonkers Marathon. In 1908, he finishes second, 21 seconds behind Thomas Morrissey in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:26:04 and thus qualifies for the Olympic Games held in London that same year.

The British Olympic Association wants to start the race in front of Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal reviewing stand at the White City Stadium. As a result, the distance is 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 km). It takes until 1921 for the IAAF to codify that distance as the official length of the marathon. Prior to this, races are usually about 25 miles (40 km).

At the race itself, Dorando Pietri from Italy is the first to enter the stadium. But Pietri has depleted himself to open a more than 10 minute lead over the field and is suffering extreme fatigue and dehydration. When he enters the stadium, he takes the wrong path, and when umpires redirect him, he falls down for the first time. He gets up with their help in front of 75,000 spectators.

Pietri falls four more times, and each time, the umpires help him up. He manages to finish the race first, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds. During all these stumbles and the direct aid from the officials, Hayes has now entered the stadium, finishing the race second, with a time of 2 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds.

Pietri is disqualified after the U.S. officials file a protest. Despite the official result, Pietri achieves much more fame than Hayes when Queen Alexandra awards him a special silver cup.

All of the Olympic officials are British, and the Pietri incident joins a list of other controversial calls in the 1908 Olympics, prompting the International Olympic Committee to start appointing judges from a wide variety of countries instead of only the host country.

After the dramatic Olympic battle between Pietri and Hayes, public interest is such that a match race is organized by professional promoters in November 1908 at Madison Square Garden. Pietri wins the race by 75 yards. A second match race is held on March 15, 1909, and again Pietri wins. Both Pietri and Hayes turn professional after the Olympics and achieve great fame.

Hayes is a trainer for the U.S. team for the 1912 Summer Olympics. He later teaches physical education and is a food broker. Hayes dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey.

The Shore Athletic Club of New Jersey (Shore AC) holds the Johnny Hayes collection as lifetime trustees. Included in the collection are numerous trophies, as well as the 1908 Olympic gold medal for the marathon. This represents the first Olympic gold medal to be won at the modern marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards.

Hayes is a guest on the television show I’ve Got a Secret as one of five former Olympic champions, which airs on October 13, 1954.

In 2002, three statues honoring Olympic champions with links to Nenagh, Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall, are unveiled in front of the Nenagh Courthouse.


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Death of Teresa Brayton, Irish Republican & Poet

Teresa Brayton, an Irish republican and poet who uses the pen name T. B. Kilbrook, dies in Kilbrook, a small village near Kilcock, County Kildare, on August 19, 1943.

Brayton is born Teresa Coca Boulanger in Kilbrook, the youngest daughter and fifth child of Hugh Boylan and Elizabeth Boylan (née Downes). Her family are long-time nationalists, with her great grandfather previously leading a battalion of pikesmen at the Battle of Prosperous.

Brayton later becomes a notable member of Irish national parties, the United Irish League and Cumann na mBan. She is described as “a patriot, but never in the vulgar sense a politician” in The Irish Times. She is closely associated with leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and writes poems in honour of Irish patriots including Charles Stewart Parnell, Roger Casement and Patrick Pearse.

Brayton is educated from the age of 5 in Newtown National School. She writes her first poem at the age of twelve, and soon after wins her first literary award. Later on, she trains to be a teacher, and then becomes an assistant teacher to her older sister Elizabeth in the same school she received her education.

Brayton’s father is a tenant farmer, and from a young age she witnesses the effects of the land wars in Ireland. She is a supporter of Parnell, the Irish National Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement. Her work is largely influenced by her family history and Irish nationalism.

In September 1895, Brayton emigrates to the United States at the age of 27. She first lives in Boston, Chicago, and later moves to New York City. She meets Richard H. Brayton, a French-Canadian who works as an executive in the Municipal Revenue Department, who she then marries. She looks after their home and focuses on her career as a freelance journalist. She lives in the United States for 40 years and becomes well known in Irish American circles as a prominent figure in the Celtic Fellowship. It was in the United States that her reputation is established.

In the 1880s, Brayton begins her career as a poet, writing poetry for both national and provincial Irish newspapers, including Young Ireland and the King’s County Chronicle. She uses the pseudonym “T. B. Kilbrook” while contributing to these papers.

Brayton continues writing under the pseudonym until moving to the United States, where she becomes an acclaimed writer and continues to contribute to papers including the Boston newspaper The Pilot, New York Monitor and Rosary Magazine. Her target audience is the Irish immigrant population of the United States. After establishing herself she releases her poetry in collections including Songs of Dawn (1913) and The Flame of Ireland (1926).

Brayton makes return trips to Ireland regularly and develops a relationship with nationalist peers, and the leaders of the Easter Rising. Upon returning to the United States, she becomes an activist for the Irish Republic and participates in organising the distribution of information to the Irish population through pamphlets and public speaking. Her contribution is acknowledged by Constance Markievicz. Her patriotism to Ireland admit her to the Celtic Fellowship in America, where she shares her poetry at events.

Brayton’s best-known poem is “The Old Bog Road,” which is later set to music by Madeline King O’Farrelly. It has since been recorded and released by many Irish musicians including Finbar Furey, Daniel O’Donnell and Eileen Donaghy, among many others. Many more of her best-known ballads include, The Cuckoo’s Call, By the Old Fireside and Takin’ Tea in Reilly’s.

Brayton makes her permanent return to Ireland at the age of 64 following the death of her husband in 1932 and continues her career as a journalist writing for Irish newspapers and publishes religious poetry in the volume Christmas Verses in 1934. A short story called The New Lodger written by Brayton is published by the Catholic Trust Society in 1933. She dedicates much of her work to the exiled Irish living in the United States, incorporating themes of nostalgia, the familiarity of home and religion throughout her poetry.

Initially upon moving back to Ireland, she lives for a few years with her sister in Bray, County Wicklow. She then moves to Waterloo Avenue, North Strand, County Dublin. Here, she witnesses the bombing of the North Strand on May 31, 1941 during World War II. Shortly after the bombing, she eventually settles back in Kilbrook, where she was born, and lives there for the rest of her life. She spends a brief period of time in the Edenderry Hospital before her death. During her stay there she becomes a good friend with Padraig O’Kennedy, the “Leinster Leader,” who is able to reveal to her something that is linked to a family member of his. A copy of her The Old Bog Road which had been set to music and autographed by her while she was living in the United States. She had it sent to O’Kennedy’s eldest son and on it she wrote the words: “To the boy who sings the Old Bog Road so sweetly.”

Two years after her return to Kilbrook, on August 19, 1943, Brayton dies in the same room where her mother had given birth to her over 75 years previously. She is buried at the Cloncurry cemetery in County Kildare. Her funeral is attended by many, including the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera.

From the vivid imagery she speaks of in her poetry, Brayton, both a poet and a novelist, is described by some as “the poet of the homes of Ireland.” Such scenes include the vivid imagery of the fireside chats, the sound of her latch lifting as neighbours in to visit at night from her poem “The Old Boreen” and about her home cooking and work from “When the Leaves Begin to Fall.” Such images can be compared to most Irish households and can depict a vivid picture to those reading her poetry.

Brayton’s poetry leaves a lasting sense of Irish beauty and community. This can be seen in such poems as “A Christmas Blessing” where she speaks of “taking and giving in friendship” during Christmas. Since her passing she has continued to keep an audience from overseas from Boston and New York primarily, this as a result of the reminder her poems give to Irish exiles of Irish traditions and music which was close to them. While her poems are more often serious, some portray an almost comical undertone tone. In an article in The Irish Times, her poetry is also said to have a racy feel to them.


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Birth of Sidney Hatch, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

Sidney Herbert Hatch, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, is born in River Forest, Illinois, on August 18, 1883. He competes for the United States in the 1904 Summer Olympics held in St. Louis, Missouri, in the 4-mile team where he wins the silver medal with his teammates Jim Lightbody, Frank Verner, Lacey Hearn and Frenchman Albert Corey.

Hatch is also a well-known marathon runner. From 1904 through 1922 he runs more than 45 marathons with a score of victories including the Chicago Marathon in 1909 and the Yonkers Marathon in 1911, competing as a member of the Illinois State Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). In 1910, he finishes in 5th place in the Yonkers Marathon, competing as a member of the Chicago Irish American Athletic Club.

Hatch never fails to finish a marathon. He is a six-time (1906, 1907, 1908, 1911, 1914, and 1915) winner of the Missouri Athletic Club‘s All Western Marathon in St. Louis including the 1908 marathon that qualifies him for the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. He competes in the marathon in two Olympics, placing 8th in 1904 at St. Louis and 14th in 1908 in London. He wins a silver medal in the 1904 Olympics Four-Mile team event.

On January 8, 1909, Hatch finishes third behind Matthew Maloney and James Crowley in an indoor marathon before 5,000 “wildly cheering” spectators held within the second Madison Square Garden with a time of 3:03:29.4. Maloney is reported to have set a new indoor record for the event (2:54:45.4).

On November 27, 1909, Hatch finishes sixth in the third edition of the Yonkers Marathon with a time of 3:00:24. In July of the same year, he wins a 100-mile race in Chicago, Illinois.

In March 1912, Hatch is one of “twenty of the best distance runners in the middle west” scheduled to participate in a 20-mile indoor marathon at Riverview Rink in Chicago. He also qualifies for the 1912 Summer Olympics but does not compete. He places in the top 10 in the Boston Marathon several times with a second-placed finish in 1917. He finishes third in the Boston Marathon in 1915 and 1916. In October 1916, he sets a record in the 96-mile Milwaukee to Chicago Run, completing the race in 14 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds.

Hatch serves as a U.S. Army messenger in World War I and is decorated for “extraordinary heroism” under fire near Brieulles, France, October 11, 1918. He is awarded the Purple Heart and Distinguished Service Cross as well as the French Croix de Guerre. After World War I, he returns to run two more Boston Marathons before retiring from marathon running. He is a letter carrier in River Forest, Illinois, from 1923 to 1953, retiring at age 70. He and Gertrude Morris are married in 1921 and have three children, Herbert, and twin girls June and Jane.

Hatch dies in Maywood, Illinois, on October 17, 1966. He is buried at the Chapel Hills Gardens West Cemetery, Oak Brook Terrace, Illinois.


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Death of Wilhelmina Geddes, Stained Glass Artist

Wilhelmina Geddes, Irish stained glass artist who is an important figure within the Irish Arts and Crafts movement and also the twentieth-century British stained glass revival, dies in London, England, on August 10, 1955. Her notable works include windows at St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church (Ottawa, Canada), St. Peter’s Church (Lampeter, Wales), and the King Albert Memorial Window, St. Martin’s Cathedral (Ypres, Belgium).

Geddes is born on her maternal grandparent’s farm at Drumreilly Cottage in Leitrim, County Leitrim, on May 25, 1887. She is the eldest of four children, three girls and a boy, of William Geddes and his wife Eliza Jane Stafford. The family, who migrates to Ireland from Scotland, has mainly been farmers. Her father, a Methodist, who is born near his father’s farm at Tandragee, County Armagh, emigrates to the United States as a young man, working as a labourer for the railway construction business. This serves a useful purpose as he had worked as a site engineer at the Cavan, Leitrim and Roscommon Railway Company. When she is still an infant her parents move to their native home in Belfast, so her father can set up in business as a building contractor.

Geddes begins drawing subjects from life and nature from the age of four. She learns first how to draw from the school mistress in Ayrshire, where her father occasionally goes shooting. She begins her studies at Methodist College Belfast along with her three younger sisters. She later moves to the Belfast School of Art. She is encouraged by Rosamond Praeger, a sculptor from County Down, to continue with her studies. She is accepted as a student to study at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. This is where she adapts and improves her style and is introduced to a professional standard of art work.

While still studying at the Belfast School of Art, Geddes takes part in the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland‘s fourth exhibition. For this exhibition, she contributes a glowingly coloured illustration of the book Cinderella Dressing the Ugly Sister (Dublin City Gallery), which she had created. It is at this exhibition that her work is spotted by Sarah Purser, a well established painter seeking newly trained students to introduce to stained glass artistry. Purser, who goes on to be her lifelong mentor, invites the young Geddes to join her in Dublin, working under the established stained glass artist William Orpen.

Geddes contributes a watercolour illustration of a Ballad Seller with the Belfast Art Society in 1907. She is elected as an Associate of the Belfast Art Society’s successor, the Ulster Academy of Arts, in 1933 before promotion to Honorary Academician in 1935. She shows five illustrations in the 1911 Oireachtas Exhibition. It is some twenty-one years before she returns to the Oireachtas when she exhibits three cartoons and three sketches for stained glass in 1932.

Geddes joins Purser at the acclaimed stained glass workshop called An Túr Gloine in 1910. The workshop is held in Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art. It is here that she discovers her passion for the craftsmanship of stained glass artistry and creates her most important works.

During her early years at An Túr Gloine, Geddes’s originality shines, and important commissions come from St. Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin and the Presbyterian church in Rathgar. Dogged by illness, she returns to Belfast before 1916 and lives between there and Dublin until moving in 1925, as she has long wanted, to work in London at The Glass House, Fulham. While working at The Glass House, she instructs the Irish painter and stained glass artist Evie Hone.

Geddes’s work is considered pioneering and represents a rejection of the Late Victorian approach. She creates a new view of men in stained glass windows, portraying them with close-shaven crew cuts. The muscularity and tension of her portraiture is matched by the radical design of her constructions. Ambitious large-scale projects, as at the cathedral in Ypres, are equalled by the drama of smaller-scale work at Wallasey (Lancashire) and Wallsend (Northumberland), or war memorial windows in obscure country churches.

Despite the hardships of living in London during World War II, poverty, and ill health, Geddes designs seventeen full-scale stained glass masterpieces, sixteen of which she completes.

Geddes dies on August 10, 1955 in London of a pulmonary embolism. She is buried in Carnmoney Cemetery, County Antrim, along with her mother and sister Ethel. Even after moving to London, she claims that her native identity never wavered as she says she was always “a Belfast woman.”


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Birth of William Robbins, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

William Corbett Robbins, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 9, 1885. In 1908, he is involved in a controversial race in the final of the Men’s 400 metres and is later part of a team which breaks the world’s record for the one mile relay.

Robbins advances to the finals in the 400 metres race at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, winning his preliminary heat with a time of 50.4 seconds and his semifinal in 49.0 seconds. In the first running of the final race, he finishes in front. However, teammate John Carpenter is disqualified after being accused of obstructing British runner Wyndham Halswelle, and the race is ordered to be repeated without Carpenter. Robbins and fellow American John Taylor refuse to compete in the second final in protest of Carpenter’s disqualification. Halswelle runs the race alone and is presented with the Gold medal. This race is the only case of a walkover in Olympic history.

According to Robbins’ 1910 trading card, he is “one of the best quarter-milers in the United States. He was… (a) Cornell University student, and first came to prominence by the part he played in the 400-meter race held at London in 1908. ‘Yank,’ as he (was) called by his team mates, ran the first 300 yards at such a clip that it ‘pulled the great Halswell’s cork,’ the later finishing in third place. Robbins won the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union quarter-mile championship in September 1909, and two weeks later captured the Canadian quarter-mile title, running the distance in the great time of 48 4/5 seconds.”

At the Amateur Athletic Union metropolitan championships held at Travers Island in 1909, Robbins is part of the Irish American Athletic Club’s four-man relay team that breaks the world’s record for the one mile relay, with a time of 3 minutes 20 2/5 seconds. The other three men on the record-breaking team were C.S. Cassara, James Rosenberger, and Melvin Sheppard.

Robbins dies on July 30, 1962.

(Pictured: William C. Robbins, wearing the 1908 U.S. Olympic team shirt, from the 1910 Mecca Cigarettes Champion Athlete & Prize Fighter Series trading card)