Athlone’s Karl hailed for charity endeavours

Juggling writing a Masters thesis with organising and participating in a 400-mile charity cycle from Malin Head to Mizen Head was a tough “balancing act” but local man Karl Turley was rewarded for his mammoth efforts last week with a President’s Award from Athlone IT. A native of Auburn Heights, Karl celebrated on the double last week at his graduation ceremony, receiving an Honours Masters in Business in front of his friends and family, and a President’s Award from Professor Ciarán ” Catháin for his fantastic work in the college and organising The Frank Young Memorial Cycle initially raised €45,000 for South Westmeath Hospice and The Young Social Innovators. Since the cheques were presented in recent months, a further €2,000 has come in for both charities. “It was hard to balance the two,” Karl admitted to the Westmeath Independent this week. “About a month before the cycle, I was only getting about five to six hours sleep between the thesis and doing the logistics for the cycle. Then I was a week away doing the cycle and I had two weeks to finish the thesis,” he commented. It’s not the first time the energetic Athlone man has tried his hand at a charity cycle, back in 2007 he raised over €125,000 for the Irish Cancer Society after setting up an event in memorial of his late father, Mick. And, he was more than happy to organise something to remember Frank Young, a close friend of his, and his family and extremely popular figure throughout Athlone. “I got great support from friends and family for the cycle, the triathlon club, the rugby club all got involved. It was a really close knit thing. It went great, we had a great laugh,” he said. “I’m absolutely over the moon. It’s such a prestigious award, I didn’t realise until the day that only one person out of the whole year gets the award. It made a great day of it,” he enthused.