MOYNE PAST PUPIL’S GENERAL REUNION 2008
Not even the marvels of a modern website like this one can capture the memories of the first experience of education beyond National School for hundreds of young people that took them from their native places to an unforgettable school in Moyne, County Longford. Their many-layered memories still live in Ireland or in the new lands to which some have gone in one of the great Diasporas of modern times. It is hoped that this modern technological marvel will help renew the spirits of the young lads who took up the books at any time in “The Latin School”. The school’s official name was St. Mary’s Apostolic School. It is still called the Latin School even as it wonderfully serves the region as a Community Center.
Among the unforgettable experiences of Moyne’s past pupils, is their first exposures to “The Classics” – sometimes secretly aided by copies of “Kelly’s Key to the Classics” found in secondhand bookshops in Dublin if they were lucky enough to get there. Some past pupils will remember Virgil’s Aeneid (VI, 313): “Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum. Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore”. (“So, they all stood, each praying to be ferried across first; their hands stretched out in longing for the further shore.”)
Plans for a reunion started when members of the Class of 1958, “stretching out in longing” to renew an unforgettable time and place of their youth, talked about a 50th anniversary reunion. Soon, contact with other past pupils made it clear that many would like to join in. So the organizers decided on a General Reunion of all past pupils, embracing and inviting anyone who ever attended the School. A recent news item in the Longford Leader reveals the plans for the reunion. The American based organizers of the Latin School Moyne reunion, Pat Brady, John McNamee and JJ Smyth, class of 1958, have begun the countdown towards the grand reunion that will take place on 4th July to 6th July, 2008 and which will include all those who were ever students in the school. A general “Meet and Greet” is scheduled for Friday night July 4 in the Breffni Arms Hotel, Arva. On Saturday, July 5, the reunion will include afternoon visits to the Old Latin School, individual class reunions and a 5.30 PM Mass in St Mary’s Church, Moyne led by Bishop Colm O’Reilly. A general meeting and dinner will be held at the Breffni Arms, Arva, on Saturday at 7PM. The dinner will require reservations which are available on a first come, first served basis; spouses and guests are welcome. The dinner cost is 20 euros per person and must be prepaid to the Breffni Arms Hotel. Rooms are also available at the hotel on a first come first served basis. ‘Phone 049 4335127, fax 049 4335799, e-mail breffniarms@hotmail.com. Sunday July 6 will be open ended for individual, group and family plans.
“We are all making history as we live and our own way of living will be a source of interest and curiosity to those who come after us”. These words appear on the dust cover of James P. MacNerney’s From the Well of St. Patrick: Dromard Parish, Co. Longford (2000). In some small way, it is hoped that the 2008 Reunion of Moyne’s past pupils will be a source of interest – and inspiration – to those who once attended it. Accommodating John Locke’s words “The Exile’s Return”, it is hoped that many exiles will return in July to visit “the vale and the cot they were born in” and from their heart of hearts, they will say, at least symbolically, to one another: “I bid you the top of the morning”.
The Class of 1958: There were fourteen who “did the Leaving” in 1958: Gerry Brady, Pat Brady, Kevin Gormley, Eamon Hourican, Matt McGauran (RIP), Seamus McKeon, Frank McLoughlin, John J. McNamee, Tommy McTiernan, Seamus Mulligan, Alphonsus Reilly, Paddy Reilly (RIP), JJ Smyth and Seamus Sorohan,.
watch out for Leitrim Post n July 15th 2008