Celebrating 90 years of a full Athlone life

By David Flynn

An Athlone woman who was part of two Connaught-side families has just celebrated 90 years of a life filled with family, friends, and a great love of music and dancing.

Mary Gaynor, of St Paul’s Terrace, was born Mary Derwin in Gallows Hill on June 26, 1934.

Mary was the third eldest of Christina and Edward’s ten children. Edward worked in construction, and a few years after Mary’s birth the family moved close by to her grandmother’s house in the nearby district of Baylough.

“The house is still standing and we, the children, lived there with my mother, father and an uncle in a two-bedroomed house and a kitchen.

“None of us was ever sick, and we had plenty of good food that we sowed ourselves,” Mary told the Westmeath Independent this week.

Mary was christened in the old St Peter’s parish church, which is now the site of the Dean Crowe Theatre. She went to school in the old St Peter’s school.

Her early childhood in Athlone took place during World War Two, and Mary remembers the rationing of tea and sugar that took place then.

“I remember there were ration books and I’d get so many ounces of sugar, butter or tea and of course, if I didn’t use it, my mother would,” said Mary.

“We used to take off our shoes after Sunday, so we could save them, and we’d be going around in our bare feet every day.”

She remembers in the 1940s and 50s, Connaught Street was the main shopping area of Athlone.

“People from the other side of town came over to shop in Connaught Street, because there was no large grocery there until Liptons and a few others came along,” said Mary.

“I counted seven butchers in Connaught Street, and there were plenty of pubs and groceries together, like McNeill’s and Walsh’s.”

However the Derwins shopped in Kirby’s pub and grocer in Baylough, which was on the site where Shine’s bar is located now. “That was the home of Bishop John Kirby,” explained Mary.

Baylough and the road beyond was literally ‘out the country’ in the days when Mary and her siblings were growing up.

“When you came to the Grove you were at the start of the country, and up two fields from us there was a bungalow, and a few little houses and some laneways to the bog but there were no new houses anywhere,” she said.

“The bog was right behind us, and the railway lane was opposite, and while we had running water we still went up for the pure water from the spring on the Springwell Road.”

Mary remembers few cars in those days and most people either went walking or cycling.

“I got a bicycle when I was around 19, and I paid so much a week to Mr Egan in Connaught Street,” she said. “I went everywhere in town on the bicycle then.”

After finishing school she went working in the Gentex textiles factory, like so many Athlone people did in the late 1940s.

“Every family in town had some connection to Gentex,” said Mary. “I worked in the picking area where you pulled down the sheets and if there were threads and lumps, you had to get them off.”

The love of her life, Jack Gaynor, came into her life in a way that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a comedy film.

The circumstances of their meeting was unusual, but those who knew Jack would say that he was a very charming man, full of great humour and a very decent and genuine character.

“I was on my bicycle and met Jack in the middle of Church Street, and he was with a man, Christy Murphy, and I was friends with his wife, Bridie,” said Mary.

“I had a message for Bridie and while I was telling it to Christy, Jack was messing with the parcel that was on the carrier of my bicycle.

“He took the parcel and walked away with it!”

A comedic exchange then took place between the young Athlonians, with Jack refusing to give the parcel back to Mary unless she went for a drink with him.

“I didn’t know him, although he was from St Paul’s Terrace, and I hadn’t a notion of going for a drink, because I didn’t drink,” said Mary.

“Anyway, he said he’d walk with me and he walked beside me through town and we walked up to the Batteries.

“We went into his house and his mother was there. I was terrified. He still had my parcel.

“She offered me tea but I wouldn’t have any. I followed Jack out of the house and he walked beside me down the Springwell Road and it was there he said, if I met him the next Sunday night at the Ritz Cinema, he would give me back my parcel.”

Mary told him she went to the St Mary’s Hall dance on Sunday nights, so Jack suggested they would meet there instead.

“But I didn’t go there, I went to a dance in the Royal Hotel and after a while, who came in the door, only Jack,” said Mary, laughing. “He was a lovely dancer, and I got to like him, so I stayed with him.”

Mary and Jack married and had five children, Maureen, Frank, John, Paul and Catherine. Sadly Jack died while still a young man, in December 1988.

Jack had been an electrician in Gentex some years before Mary worked there.

He later joined the army in Custume Barracks and was in the Congo twice, before he retired after 24 years.

“We loved dancing, but didn’t go out to dances until the children were older,” she said.

Jack and Mary were part of a regular bunch of Athlonians who followed a revival of old-time Social Dancing in town during the 1980s.

The ‘Ballroom of Romance’ as it was known, after the RTE / BBC film which starred Brenda Fricker, was first on in the Royal Hoey Hotel and later in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel.

“That was a lovely time with the music of Joe Flynn, Mickey Tierney, Frank Reid and many others, and we danced tangos and quick-steps, and there were many lovely people who used to go there,” said Mary.

Today Mary looks back fondly on that time of an Athlone life of sometimes sad, but also very happy, memories.