THERE ARE many memories, but Stella Mew, chief executive officer of the Yeats Society and former principal of Rathdown School in Glenageary, Co Dublin, recalls her first encounter with the spirit of Yeats in 1965 when she attended the official opening of Thor Ballylee, outside Gort in Co Galway.
The four-storey Norman tower and the two thatched cottages at its base had been reclaimed, thanks to the industry and drive of a local woman, Mary Hanley. Donagh O'Malley, the minister for education, came to open the tower, which had been home to Yeats and his family before falling into disrepair and neglect.
"Hail Mary, full of Yeats," O'Malley greeted the woman who had mobilised everyone and organised the reclamation, recalls Mew.
"I remember Austin Clarke was there," she adds. "We went up through the four storeys of the tower to the roof and surveyed everything. It's on an island."
Her love of all things Yeatsian began there and then, and she has been attending the Yeats International Summer School ever since, she says.
It's the passion of speakers at summer schools that takes Fr Walter Forde, chair of the Byrne Perry Summer School, back to his student days in the 1960s. He also recalls the energy of Dr Garret FitzGerald, who received a standing ovation from the gathering in Gorey, Co Wexford, when he finished his address.
"He was the only one to get it in 12 years," recalls Fr Forde.
Another memory that stands out is of Albert Reynolds, who had made a commitment to give the first Gordon Wilson Memorial Lecture months in advance and who had to come from a family wedding on the same day in Co Mayo.
"He arrived by helicopter and went back by helicopter. He was no longer taoiseach," says Fr Forde.
"The most significant moment for me was when I brought a Dutch avant-garde dance company to perform here," recalls David Teevan, the founder and artistic director of the Clonmel Junction Festival.
It took courage to programme this rarely seen contemporary dance company with its show, Gorilla Goes Beautiful, but it got a standing ovation and four curtain calls. "I think I knew then that I had an audience who were prepared to come with me on a journey," he says.
