Kerry Trainers

Dr. Eamonn O Sullivan's Son Writes about His Father - The Legendary Kerry Trainer

June 19th, 2007
by Weeshie Fogarty

"I live in Croydon in England but I return to Killarney as much as possible, I love the mountains and lakes, and it's great to visit my old friends. I was born when my father was assistance medical officer in the mental hospital so I was born in his quarters in the hospital where he lived with my mother. It was a small self contained house attached it would appear as an after thought by Pugin the designer and there in the top upper bedroom I was born in the year 1931. I was the eldest of Eamon's four children.

It was a wonderful experience growing up around St. Finan's and even though the hospital was a part of Killarney it had an existence of its own. It was slightly remote and was subject to certain strict orders about arriving back at certain times in the evening when the gates were closed, so an element of isolation occurred. I can clearly remember being impressed by the way the staff as a community survived in this environment. Families inter married, sons and daughters of staff members married and followed into the hospital as a career path. All of this led to a very close community sense which were all part of as children grown up including staff and medical staff. And of course in the back ground ever presence in our consciences were the patients themselves, some times  forlorn figures, sad but none the less very human and treated with great dignity and respect by all of us. It was a pleasure to grow up in that environment.

"There were over one thousand patients in the hospital at that time, now there are less than one hundred. History moves on. Kerry to day is a very different place than what it was in the thirties, the pre war years and even through the war years when everything was so quite and isolated. We have to move on; the science of psychiatry has progressed wonderfully to the benefit of the patient. Now of course there isn't the same need to virtually incarcerate people in vast numbers in old Victorian institutions which in many instances back then was the case.

My own father Eamonn was always keen to alleviate the burden the patients were faced with in their isolation. In his particular case he concentrated on occupation therapy as a means to soften their burden and in that I am proud to say he was very successful. My memories of my father is that if a large man so therefore to a young man he was very a dignified and imposing figure that had to be treated with respect. Now he wasn't a strict disciplinarian but nonetheless he wanted us to obey certain rules, we were brought up in a very strict way I would imagine certainly by to-days standards. However he was a tolerant man and my feelings for him even as a young teenager and later as a young man were one of love rather than respect.

"I had a great admiration for him but I also had a love for him. He was a wonderful man with a warm spirit and it came across to you when you were in his presence. He was never boring, a journey in the car with him to the country maybe to attend a sports meting was an adventure because he knew exactly all the stories of the places where we traveled through. He loved talking about the towns we passed through and the great footballer or hurler they had produced in their time and all of this was presented to me as a young child growing up. He was always close to his county, to his country to his sport and that rubbed off on us very much.

Now as we look on the imminent closure of St Finan's Hospital my mind goes back to the plaque over the hall door which says the hospital was opened in 1849 and I remember looking at that plaque in 1949 so I saw the hundred years spread out behind me as it were. My father came to Killarney as a locum doctor and while he was there a vacancy occurred for an assistance at St Finan's and he had to undergo a canvassing process to win that appointment. It was he reminded me very complex and detailed but he turned out to be successful so he took up the post under Dr. Edward Griffin who came from Ballyheigue as assistance medical officer. Now Dr Griffin had a bevy of daughters the second of which caught Eamon's eye and within a year or two they were involved in a secret courtship. My mother Marjorie was at school in Drishane at that time and when Eamonn went to visit her the nuns thought he was her medical adviser they did not realize it was of a more personal relationship. So that is how we came into being as it were.

"On my visit to Kerry this summer I discovered a remarkable coincidence of an earlier event that took place. There was another Dr. Griffin who was no relation to the family or had no blood relationship. Now he had come to Killarney at the request of the Earl of Kenmare who had an epileptic son and lived in the Priory in Killarney near the Flesk River and this Dr Griffin acted as a medical adviser for this boy who wasn't very healthy. Eventually the young boy died and Lord Kenmare was able to use his influence to obtain for that Dr. Griffin the appointment of Medical Superintend of the hospital which in those days was known as the Killarney district Lunatic Asylum. KDLA. those are letters which are emblazoned in my mind because in my early childhood I remember the brooms that were used in the hospital had the letters burned into their handles. However we remember it as it is known to day, St Finan's.

Now Dr. Griffin took up that appointment. He was a married man and in fact it was his second marriage. His second wife had a ward who was an English lady called Marjorie Stokes and some time later my grand father Dr. Griffin from Ballyheigue returned from work in the medical service in England back to his home county Kerry and obtained the appointment as medical assistant at the mental hospital. He at that point went on to marry Marjorie Stokes my maternal grandmother who was the ward of Dr. Griffin his superior at that time. So twice in the history of our family and with the Griffin's in particular there was a connection with the hospital and an inter marriage between the assistant Dr. and the daughter of the superintendent and I think that this was a remarkable thing.

"My grandfather Dr. Griffin came from farming stock in the village of Ballyheigue and quite remarkably for the times graduated through National University and became |a doctor. He went to England to work for a number of years eventually specializing in mental health. We know he worked in the mental hospital in Wakefield and I have photographs of him from that era, the photograph shows him standing with cricket team. So in his own right he was a great sportsman. When he came back to Kerry he married into the griffin family and took up his appointment at St. Finan's he continued his interest in sport. He began training greyhounds as a hobby during his time as R.M.S. and by the end of 1919 he had a remarkable winning dog called guard's brigade which he took over to England for the Waterloo Purse in 1919 and again in 1921 for the Waterloo Cup and the dig won on both occasions. Tragically there was a foot and mouth outbreak in England which prevented the dog being brought back to Ireland and so Dr. Griffin had to sell him to some English lord.

"My mother I presume was born and reared in St. Finan's where her father worked, like so many of our family and we all grew up in that environment. And of course it was there she met my father. She was a member of a large family; there were three boys and five girls. My father I wish to add was an official with the Irish team at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Now I don't know much about it but what I do remember is when he came back he was very impressed by Germany as a country and by the organization of the games. He came back and talked about the cleanliness of the country, the punctuality of the trains, the facilities made available for the athletes and so on. He had in fact very strong respect for the Germans as a result of that experience and it wasn't until later when the world war broke out that we began to learn of the more sinister aspects of National Socialism and then he had to review his outlook and attitude.

It so happened that just before the war a German firm was rewiring St. Finan's. My father had a new car and he had a collision with the foreman of the German company and I think that also reduced his admiration for the German nation. Eamonn had a very broad outlook and that led to tolerance. He has an inane ability to understand people and their problems and I think that was one of the aspects of his personality that endeared to the young men that he trained during all those decades of Kerry football history.

He studied for the priest hood in Maynooth for two years and then went to Rome to the Irish College there but his tenure there came to a sudden end when his health broke down. Now he never really discussed the details of it but it was sufficient to interrupt his career, he came home, recuperated and it was then that he began his medical career and went to college in Dublin. He was a native speaker of the Irish language even though we didn't speak Irish in the home but he had a great love for all things Irish and promoted the language every chance he had. He was proud of Ireland, proud of the heritage of place names, mountain names and so on. He was constantly bringing these things to our attention as children so we also had a great love for all these things as well.

"My father's knowledge of famous people and famous sportsmen extended far and wide and journeys to All Ireland matches would feature the same commentary as we were traveling and he made the journeys very easy to pass. Now I was five years old in 1937 and we took our summer holiday in Ballyheigue to be near the retired Dr. Griffin and his family and we were staying in a lodge in the village. That year of '37 Kerry had drawn with Laois in the All Ireland semi final in Cork, Kerry 2-3, Laois 1-6. Eamonn was approached by officers of the county board and asked to train the team for the re-play. However he told them he was on holidays and he really could not upset his family by abandoning the holiday. Then he said to them if they brought the team to Ballyheigue he would train them, which they did without hesitation. I have vivid memories of the team behind the Castle hotel in the village of Ballyheigue undergoing their training regime under Eamon's supervision.

The re-play took place at Waterford City on August 29th and with five minutes to go the sides were level but just before the final whistle Mickey Lyne one of the famous Lyne brothers from Cleeney, Killarney sent high between the posts and Eamonn had guided the team to anther final. They then drew with Cavan in the final and won the re-play 4-4 to 1-7.  I was not aware then of my father having trained Kery to win the 1924 and '26 All Irelands and I was not even aware of the significance of what I was seeing but I knew it was important and I had a feeling of respect and a great interest in what was going on.



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