Tullamore's new TD to launch major work on life in Offaly county town in the 1960s

"TULLAMORE in the Sixties - A decade of innovation and improvement" is a new volume of essays that brings together the contributions of eighteen people who kept a keen eye on developments in Tullamore in the 1960s.
The book will be launched by the newly elected TD, Cllr Tony McCormack on this Friday evening at 7.30pm at Offaly History centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore.
A launch will also take place in Kinnitty on December 19 next.

Perhaps one of the contributors who kept a keen eye on the town was the late Joe Kenny who came to Tullamore in the 1950s as a vocational schoolteacher and was held in high esteem for his sound judgement and abilities as an impartial chairman.
In that capacity he was the inaugural president of Tullamore Credit Union in 1963.
Fergal MacCabe, as a Tullamore native, with a professional life in architecture and town planning in Dublin, brings a unique contribution by way of his recollections of Tullamore in the 1950s and his review of the first town plan of the 1960s.
The same can be said of Vincent Hussey as a planning officer with Offaly County Council with his recollections of Tullamore since the 1960s.
Niall Sweeney, an engineer and former Offaly County Manager, takes a close look at the provision of public infrastructure in Tullamore over the period from the 1960s to 2014. The late Jack Taaffe, as town clerk in Tullamore in 1970–72 demonstrates just how underfunded urban authorities were in those years. He went on to become county manager in Westmeath presiding over the progress of the county from 1981 to 1988.
Michael Byrne looks at the history of business in Tullamore and sought to cover the principal enterprises of the 1960s in manufacturing, distribution, shopping, entertainment and dancing.
Noel Guerin, as a former employee of ‘the bacon factory’, was able to write of a company that employed up to 100 people in Tullamore over forty years and made the name of the town famous for the Tullamore sausage.
Ronnie Colton, from his own extensive involvement in the motor business brings a knowledge from the garage floor and sales yard that few others can match.
Alan Mahon, as the grandson of an innovative cinema proprietor, recalls two cinemas in Tullamore whose cultural contribution is perhaps forgotten now but was all important to the people of Tullamore and district over a period of sixty or seventy years, if one takes it from the commencement of the Foresters cinema (later the Grand Central) in 1914.
Sport, so important to so many, brings us to the essay by Kevin Corrigan who looks at a formative decade leading on to the GAA Senior Football All-Ireland victories in the 1970s. Kevin had the challenging job of reducing to a short essay what could fill twenty books were one to address in detail each of the sporting activities that came to the forefront in the sixties.
How others saw Tullamore in the 1960s may have been a wake-up call in some instances, but these are appreciative portraits, while not uncritical, from Conor Brady, Ian Nairn and Margaret Stewart. These three contemporary pieces are reproduced from publications of the 1960s and 1970s and provided here as readings in how others saw Tullamore at the time, and not with the benefit of a post 2008–15 lookback after the recessionary years. This later view is provided for us by the late Jim Cullen and Pat Cronin. Terry Adams, whose family have long lived in Cormac Street reflects on ‘Kilcruttin’s Forgotten People in an evocative piece. All three men had strong associations with Tullamore but were living abroad.
While the emphasis was on the 1960s a spill-over to later decades seemed relevant in a few instances. In writing about the Catholic parish of Tullamore it seemed essential to take the story to the destruction by fire of the old church in 1983.That said there are topics that had to be left to one side for reasons of space and deserve comprehensive treatment in a second volume. This is true of the all-important subject of education which could easily take a full volume. The voice of women needed to be heard, but was absent from local politics, the courts, law and policing. Likewise, the contribution of the caring professions, the voluntary sector and the provincial media. The introductory essay has sought to repair these deficiencies by way of no more than short notices. A lot more work needs to be done and we hope that students and researchers looking for thesis topics will take note. Offaly History publishes a journal and is always keen to receive carefully researched topics for publication.
Launch Details
Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore R35 Y5VO (beside new Aldi and Old Warehouse. 7.30 p.m
456 pages, 350 pictures, €22.95