FROM THE ARCHIVES:During the early 1960s
The Irish Timesran a series of profiles entitled "People of Ireland" about people in different parts of the country, which painted a picture of life at the time. In today's paper in 1963, the subject was PJ Heenan of Borrisokane, Co Tipperary. –
JOE JOYCE
THERE ARE scores of Heenans among the 1,936 inhabitants of the quiet Tipperary parish of Borrisokane, where the broad, rich meadows creep up to the main street of the town, the centre of life in the district.
Patrick J. Heenan, young and tall, knows all the other Heenans and the other parishioners, too. But they have more than one reason for knowing him. He owns the big, centre town store where a farmer can buy a vice for the workshop, a watch for himself or a glossy magazine for the wife. Not that that shop is an exception in this well-to-do town, four miles east of Lough Derg, but Paddy – as they all call him – has more than a good shop and a pleasant manner. He has his hand in nearly every enterprise in Borrisokane, if one excepts the agricultural show, which in this farming heart of Ireland is run by the ladies.
Paddy Heenan’s town is the sort of town where anyone who is weary of city streets or bored by deserted rural ones would love to go and live. It has a way of life, which, unfortunately, can be had only where the farmers all own about sixty acres and where the nearest towns are so far away as to cause no serious business rivalry. Such is Borrisokane and you can read its wealth in the muddy cattle trucks and the equally muddy cars, with their milk trailers behind them, parked on the broad street and along the market square.
There is no sighing for an industry there: the industry is in the markets, the monthly fair and the creamery station. The success of this is seen in the handsome homes, the prosperous shops, the thriving trade.
In another such community, Paddy Heenan would be president of the chamber of commerce but in Borrisokane when his day’s work behind the counter is over, he becomes the projectionist in the local hall.
He is one of the five trustees of the lovely Clarke Memorial Hall, the social centre of the town. As a member of the fairs’ and markets’ committees, Mr. Heenan sees that the all-important farmers are kept satisfied by having the services of the town – which feels no need for a cattle mart – kept up-to-date.
He also helps in the active dramatic society, which specialises in local entertainment, but he has encountered certain domestic difficulties in the world of sport.
He was educated, like so many in Borrisokane, in Roscrea where he learned to play rugby as well as hurling. He is still attached to that “foreign” game, though he is now married to the daughter of a former president of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Mr. Seamus Gardiner, who is a teacher there. When they discuss sport, Paddy Heenan observes a discreet caution. Nevertheless, he is keen on hurling, as befits a Tipperary man, especially in a town that has given two men to the present All-Ireland champions, John “Mackie” McKenna and Ronnie Slevin.
For a township of 1,936 souls Borrisokane has no less than five hurling teams and, strange as it might seem, they had been trained by a County Monaghan man, Michael Mulligan, who now is sergeant of the Civic Guard there. When Paddy Heenan is not playing golf with the Nenagh golf club, 18 miles away, he makes sure on a Sunday to be with the hurlers wherever they go – and Tipperary hurlers, as everyone knows, are a much-travelled a lot.
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