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Carlow County - Ireland Genealogical Projects (IGP TM)


Mr. John Sweeney
Sweeney Park, Tullow Road, Carlow.

Sweeney Park Tullow Road Carlow
named after John Sweeney.

Nationalist and Leinster Times.

July 5th 1958.

Mr John Sweeney.

Widespread regret was felt at the death on Monday of Mr. John Sweeney, Pollerton Road, Carlow.

Kind hearted and softly spoken, he was one of the town's most popular figures.

The late Mr Sweeney was employed at Carlow Boor Factory for nearly fifty years and was Captain of the Carlow Fire Brigade with which he was associated for forty years.

Educated at Carlow Christian Brother' Schools, he was a keen follower of all forms of Gaelic sport and was the holder of an All-Ireland Junior Handball title which he won with Joe McEvoy, Green Lane, in the 1920s He was a member of the Carlow Christian Young Men's Society (C.Y.M.S.) for over thirty years and was Vice-President at the time of his death.

The remains were brought to the Cathedral on the Fire Brigade trailer on Tuesday night and were followed by a huge cortege.

Members of the Fire Brigade in full uniform and C.Y.M.S. members wearing black arm bands accompanied the remains.

Chief mourners were: Mrs. J. Sweeney (widow), James, Laurence, Patrick, Edward Sweeney, Friarstown, (cousins), Mrs P. Hoare, Miss Connolly (sisters-in-law), P. Hoare (brother-in-law).

An Appreciation.

It was an honour to know him. The qualities we treasured in him, his loyalty, his genial kindness, his thoughtfulness for others, the generosity which made him prefer his friends before honour to himself, his contentedness with the simple, sane things making for right thinking and right living.

The firm soundness of his life's foundation are potent with us yet.

The broad human sympathy which bound to him the many who loved him, and his clear courage and self-forgetful devotion to God and country, will live as the inspiration for the new and better world we so ardently seek to create, or see created.

What he did, plain men understood.

 His thoughts, if lofty, were yet within their reach. To one of them, at least, John Sweeney was the image of his (the writer's) better self.

Alert, glad, without meanness or fear, free from affectation or arrogance, slow to promise if he could not perform, yet dominated by standards more severely set for himself than for others, sustained by a breadth of knowledge and sympathy, John Sweeney lived with a completeness which lesser men can never know.

May I end this inadequate tribute in a way he would have loved, because things poetical had for him a special appeal and I have heard him quote the lines:--

Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of Time.
John Sweeney was a great man, if too humble to see it, or to admit it.
The world is poorer -- without him.
Requiescat in Pace. H.C.

Source: Michael Purcell c.2011


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