Heritage Notes - 13 August 2010

Cappoquin and the United Nations

The material has literally poured in over the past week for our exhibition on Cappoquin and the United Nations. We now have over 250 photographs and lots of other pieces of interest relating to the involvement of local people in serving the United Nations over fifty years. The exhibition will run throughout Heritage Week at Cappoquin Library and will, we hope, help to show local people what wonderful work has been done by local people on behalf of the United Nations, and of peace, in far flung corners of the Congo, Chad, Lebanon, East Timor and more. We will give full details of opening times etc next week but the event will certainly run from August 21st to 28th during Heritage Week, and possibly longer. A huge thanks to Mary and to Waterford County Library for their help with this, our first formal contribution to Heritage Week.

Raft Race Countdown

The posters are up and all the organisational arrangements are well in hand. We hear the occasional sound of nails going into timber coming from the back gardens of Cappoquin but the raft building preparations are always a pretty secretive affair. This week, thanks to the camera work of Phyl Cuddihy, we enclose a reminder of the crazy excitement of the finishing stages of the last Cappoquin Raft Race in 2008. It should be a great day out this year too, with the added bonus of the additional pallet races and, of course the usual barbecue event at the Boathouse. Best of luck to all involved, for Saturday August 21st with first paddles in the water at the Rock around 2.30pm.

Heritage Notes - 6 August 2010

Picture time

Out photographs over the past couple of weeks have generated quite a deal of interest, and we can promise more to come. The late Breda Keating from Green Street has been picked out by several people in the Vocational School picture from the 1930s. Last week’s picture of the building team at Mt Melleray has also produced some local interest. The father of Margaret O’Connor (nee McCarthy) of Dungarvan Road was four from the left in the second last row. Johnny Keating of Lismore was second from the left in the same row, and his brother Thomas was three from the right in the second row from the front. Many thanks to Margaret and to Billy Hogan of Lismore, for the information here.

This week’s picture is a real classic, coming from the collection of Congo memorabilia of Jim Fives, who served there with the Irish United Nations peacekeeping force in 1960. Shortly after the first Irish troops were sent to the Congo, a hurley maker in Kilrush, Co. Clare supplied 250 hurleys for the soldiers’ recreational use, and a thirteen-a-side competition was organised. No easy task finding a level playing field in the Congo, not to mention finding a quiet day in a war zone to have a game in the early 1960s. Jim Fives was not only a veteran of many a Tourin triumph but also hurled at inter-county level for Galway. He is pictured here third from the right at the rear, lining out for C company of the 32nd Batallion.

United Nations exhibition

Our Heritage Group are working away gathering memorabilia and pictures to commemorate the fifty years of involvement by local people in the United Nations work around the world. Jim Fives’ wonderful photographs and uniform items will be joined by some fascinating personal accounts from Maire Mac an tSaoi and others on the Congo, while we are working hard to gather material from the Lebanon, Chad and so on too. Time is running out and, as yet, it is impossible to say how much material we will gather. Anyone with pictures, newspaper cuttings or any other items which you would like to contribute for the exhibition, it would be much appreciated if you could drop them in to Cara McGrath, Angela Collender, Kevin McCarthy or any other member of the Heritage Group as soon as possible. Full details about exhibition dates and times will be given in the coming weeks.

Blackwater Crossing update

Just a further note from the Heritage Group that anyone interested in seeing all the action shots taken by well known sports photographer Danny McGrath on the night of the Blackwater Crossing long puck contest in June should check out Danny’s site on http://www.editorialimages.com/ . All details regarding how to buy a copy of yourself in full flight, or making an idiot of yourself as some of us managed, can be found on the site. At this stage, we hope most of the 49 participants have received their certificates and, if not, the rest will be going to the contestants this week.

Raft Race

Tony and company are hard at work on the plans for the raft race. All systems are go for Saturday, August 21st, with a start time around 2.30 PM. In addition to the raft race itself, for originally designed craft, this year’s event will see a barbecue at the Boathouse and will also feature some pallet races, where people who did not manage to get rafts built for themselves will have a chance to take part in races across the Blackwater at the Boathouse. This should add a whole new dimension to the day and remember, it’s all in the cause of celebrating our wonderful river and raising a few euro to help in the ongoing work at the Rock, which has become one of the most important and well-kept recreational sites we have thanks to the dedicated work of the group there.