A Tipperary man guided by duty and a sense of fairness

Mark Twain once stated that history does not repeat but it does rhyme.
A natural corollary of this statement would be to assume that there are people who can ‘hear’ these historical rhythms, identify patterns and help us to learn from the past.

Clonmel native and Old Spa Road resident, Michael O’Riordan is definitely someone who bears that finely attuned instinct for the historical, social and political mores of this divided world.
From humble origins in Barron Park, the retired Irish and EU customs official and US State Department advisor has had a broad career.

BALKANS
Across the Balkans and into the Seychelles, Michael built a reputation as a trusted, pragmatic and empathetic advisor and customs expert who had the ear of four successive US ambassadors in Bosnia.
He holds the distinction of establishing the first multiethnic customs administration of Serbs, Croats and Muslim customs officers in the post conflict Bosnia of 2003. No mean feat in a country that is still deeply divided. Michael has received various awards for his contributions to diplomacy and reconstruction in the Balkans, including the Civilian Medal from the US Army.

This tale of international travel, conflict resolution and the millennial bitterness that men can inherit in their hearts and minds does not begin in Sarajevo or Zagreb but in that beautiful village of Newcastle at the foot of the Knockmealdowns.
“My grandfather was from Newcastle and a captain in the British army as were his three brothers,” Michael tells me beneath the canopy of the beautiful tree-flanked driveway at the front of his house. We are accompanied by his wife, Snezana (Sanna). Michael met Sanna on a mission to Macedonia in the 1990s and she has an equally impressive CV. She is a warm and contemplative character and a Danish citizen who has worked in customs and for the EU and the UN in the Balkans and Eastern Ukraine.

Michael’s family’s social position fell when his grandfather never returned home to Newcastle after the first world war but instead opted to remain in England where he passed away in 1922.
“That was a turning point that changed my father’s life forever and in the absence of his father, he adopted the politics of his mother’s republican family in Newcastle.

”My father, Enda was very much involved in republican politics all his life, was a pallbearer at George Plant’s funeral and for many years organized the annual Liam Lynch commemoration in the Knockmealdowns. He also sold the Easter lily at Clonmel’s Main Guard for over fifty years,” said Michael.
It is clear from listening to Michael that his father was a man of deep principle and also a ‘communist’ in a time it would have totally alienated him from the conservative Catholic church.

LIAM LYNCH
As the Newcastle area was where General Liam Lynch was killed during the Civil War, we inevitably discuss his tragic demise. Michael doesn’t mince his words when speaking of the republican leader.
“The Civil War was a tragedy and I have no time for leaders such as De Valera, Lynch and Brugha. Their expectations about the treaty were unrealistic and they didn’t do enough to avoid civil war. When you think of what Ireland could have become without the civil war, it was a tragedy. Intellectual idealism is a dangerous thing in leaders,” he said.
Michael is also critical of the Free State side, the executions and their vicious pursuit of former colleagues.
He also says, “Michael Collins should never have done the British government’s dirty work by bombing the Four Courts” whilst still acknowledging that he had good pragmatic qualities and might have salvaged something from the Civil War.”
Michael’s father ran the Collins Hall in Clonmel and played in his own musical group, The Riverside Jazz Band. There was a strong music scene in the town and he says that the hall was a huge hub for showbands in the 1960s and early 1970s.

PROTECTIVE
“My mother Anna O’Riordan was the most important part of my early life. She always had my back and I loved her to bits. Mam was a country woman from Bruff, county Limerick who scrimped and saved all her life to give us kids a good life at home and she was fiercely protective and ambitious for me and my three sisters, Geraldine, Maria and Lynda,” he said.
When he recalls his childhood in Barron Park he smiles. “We were happy. We had nothing but neither did anyone else.”
Michael says that his family was one of the first fifty-five families who moved into the new Barron Park in the 1950s.
“It was idyllic with a large green area for our daily football games. We lived in Number 10 and had great neighbours in the Keatings, the O’Keeffes and the Bergins. We were effectively out in the country in those days,” said Michael.
He reminisces about his home life and a love for reading. There wasn’t any spare cash but there were always books in the house. This stood him well when he received a scholarship for the High School. Michael recalls a number of teachers who left a positive lasting effect. “Brother Collins, known as Machai was a fantastic teacher [and] Tom Ambrose was tough with withering put-downs but they both passed on great standards to me,” he said.
Michael also fondly remembers Oliver Doyle who became a lifelong friend.

THE RITZ
It wasn’t all work and Michael has great memories of the Ritz and Regal Cinemas where he was exposed to Hollywood classics like The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Magnificent Seven.
He adds, “When we lived in a flat beside the Oisín cinema I used to go to the matinees with my mam who loved Doris Day’s movies like Annie Get Your Gun, On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” said Michael.
He was also a keen sportsman and played football and hurling with Commercials and St Mary’s and soccer with Clonmel Town amongst others.

Although Michael had a happy childhood, he does acknowledge that there was a class system in the town.
“Oh yes, definitely. The shopkeepers and the middle class had a grip on the people,” he said.
He also recalls how some shopkeepers in the town, such as McDermotts on the Cashel Road were very kind whereas others could be nasty, especially if groceries were bought on the book.
Michael says that his scholarship to the High School steered him away from the “Barron Park experience of weekly subsistence living.”

He credits his early experiences and a heightened awareness of politics as a vast strength when he worked in Bosnia.
“Oh definitely. From my own background I was able to relate to the divisive nature of the conflict in the region,” he said.
I would also imagine that Michael’s voracious appetite for knowledge has helped with his career.

CLONMEL LIBRARY
“I’ve read all my life since Nora Atkins in the Clonmel library gave me adult reading tickets at ten years of age. I have collected books on history and politics for fifty years and have over four hundred books on the Balkans and Bosnia alone,” he admits. I then ask him what special quality his hometown has. He pauses and says, “I spent twenty years of my career in Wexford after I was assigned by the Revenue Commissioners to Rosslare Port. I’d often go up to a hill outside Wexford and at a certain spot I’d be able to get a distant view of the Seven Sisters ridge and the gap into the Nire Valley. The physical location of Clonmel is beautiful and unique and the people are special.”

Michael spent much of his early working life in Wexford with his first wife Anne Peters from O’Neill Street and their four children. He does admit that the travelling took its toll on family life but his personality and career path evidently influenced his children. His daughter works in international relations, starting with the US State Department in Montenegro in 1999. Michael’s three sons’ CVs are equally impressive. They all served as army and air corps officers, two eventually trained as Aer Lingus pilots and one works in the Irish diplomatic corps in Mexico.
I ask Michael about some of the characters that he met over the years and he replies with a laugh that there were many.
“I once spent the day with Sean McBride and got to know Martin McGuinness through my father.” Michael says that McBride was a fascinating character who was friendly and talkative and that he liked McGuinness.
He adds that he ‘bonded’ with an SAS officer when they made a dangerous winter ascent of Mount Olympus together and he told him a story about McGuinness’ involvement in the aggressive questioning of a captured British soldier in the 1970s. The fact that Michael could befriend characters from polarized political locations demonstrates his pragmatism and his ability to balance the nuances of personality.

“During my time in the Seychelles I got to know Garret FitzGerald well as he was working there at intervals as a consultant to the government. He was a nice man,” he said.
“I was head of the Seychelles Government delegation to meet Prince William on the island in 2008. Over coffee in Mahe Airport

I told him that my dad had met his dad. When he politely asked where, I told him it was at Lismore Castle in 1998. I was in Sarajevo at the time and remember seeing coverage of the visit and my father holding up a sign that read ‘Charlie Go Home’. We both sipped our coffee and agreed that fathers would be fathers,” he said.
Michael also tells me a humorous story of how he ‘flattened’ a rude EU Customs official in Macedonia when he was in a new post in Skopje. He had expected to be recalled home after the incident and took the weekend off to fly to Istanbul before a decision filtered back. Upon his return, the official was civil and cooperative and they got on fine after that. I cannot fail to find the humour in this story and it demonstrates the duality of the Irish character. A man who has read thousands of books who reverted to a box in the jaw when diplomacy and dialogue was found awanting.

BELOVED HOMETOWN
Conversation steers back to Michael’s roots and his beloved hometown.
We discuss the blight of every large town in Ireland: anti-social behaviour and the lagging Clonmel town centre. He offers an opinion as to why successive stake holders have struggled to find an imaginative solution.
“Culture,” he says. “It’s a former garrison town, which had a centre and although there are great people here and it’s a beautiful physical location, it has no cultural centre, never had,” he said.

Conversation with Michael is engaging and never dull. It ebbs and flows between his encyclopedic knowledge of history, his foreign experiences and his other great passion: gardening.

On the seven-acre site that falls away to the rear of his house, Michael and Sanna have cultivated a phenomenal ecosystem (the term garden would not do it justice). From a scrubby piece of neglected wetland they have planted all manner and variety of trees, plants and grasses from around the world. It has been a labour of love that they began in 2001.
Today, it is flanked by a walkway that meanders through swamps and marshes, trees and ponds. The rich visuals are complemented by the singing of birds in the rushes and overhead in the high ash, pine, birch and gum trees that provide them with a wondrous home.

The garden bears Sanna’s maiden name of Petrovska and I can’t resist the urge to see this garden as both a testimony and a reflection of Michael’s broad and varied life and his patriotism and service to Ireland and the wider world. The plants and trees hail from Armenia, America, Australia, Iran and dozens of other places. They compete for resources and yet they co-exist in beautiful symmetry at the foot of the Comeragh mountains.

In his long career, this Clonmel man was guided by duty and a sense of fairness and pragmatism. Sometimes patriots don’t run around like action heroes with big guns and flags. They often wear the uniform of the nurse or the formal attire of the diplomat and customs official.

PATRIOTISM
Michael’s past has shaped him but he has also positively shaped the future by helping and educating others. His sense of patriotism and his desire to help those in troubled parts of the world shows that he has an ear for the rhyming patterns in history. He brought his skills and knowledge to some of the most divided nations and contributed to the growth of peace and stability in these regions.

A few nights after meeting Michael and Sanna for the first time, I walk atop the shoulder of a hill above my home village. The sun is dying and a pigeon coos in the ditch. In the far distance I can just about see the sodium fuzz of the bypass in Clonmel. Draped high above the town like charcoal curtains are those rude and high hills, landscapes of the heart and mind. Their dips and curves defy geometry just as the hold that land takes on men defies logic and rationality. The image of a younger Michael scaling a hill in Wexford to steal a glance at these slopes serves as a fitting metaphor. Home is where the heart is. A sense of place is hard-wired into us but pathological attachment to place can be a dangerous paradox. As a patriot who served his country in areas of conflict for decades, Michael understands this better than most.

A  teacher enjoying his writing journey

Brian’s work has appeared in a range of small publications, including UL’s The Ogham Stone and local parish magazines. He began his writing journey in Kilkenny’s NUI Maynooth Campus and Boston’s Grubb Street workshop.

His screenplay, The Tarantula and the Frog was made into a short film in 2019. His latest play The Year of ’21 was staged last year in Thurles’s The Source and Kilkenny’s Watergate Theatre. Recently, Brian’s piece ‘I Go Where The Wood Takes Me’ was published in a collection by the Clonmel Artisans Project. Brian is a carpenter and also teaches English and History in CTI Clonmel. He lives with his family in Cloneen, county Tipperary.