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.