Joe Flynn: An Athlone life shaped by a love of music

When nine-year-old Joe Flynn was evacuated to The Crescent during the Athlone Woollen Mills fire, little did he think that he would later grace the stage there as a singer.

Now almost 94 years old, and perhaps best known for his music, the Athlone man has lived a varied and colourful life and has seen many changes in his home town over the past ten decades.

Born in Railway View in October 1931, Joe was the youngest of Martin and Julia (Browne) Flynn's six children.

He has memories of the Athlone Woollen Mills fire, rationing during World War II, singing in the St Mary's Church choir, playing football and games in the nearby Station Field, and introducing many of the townspeople to the world of TV when he set up business as an aerial installer in the 1960s.

Woollen Mills Fire

Joe was just nine years old when the Athlone Woollen Mills caught fire in November 1940. Although Joe didn't see the actual fire, he has memories of the night because the decision was made to evacuate nearby houses. He explained that the Army was called in to help because there were fears that the proximity of the mills to the gasworks may lead to an explosion, and it was decided to release the town's gas supply into the river.

"Then they decided they would have to evacuate St Francis Terrace and Lucas Court and they had brought all the people out, the FCA or Army people, and I was carried by someone up to The Crescent Ballroom and lay on the ballroom floor. And little did I think that later on I'd be up their singing on that stage," he said.

"We spent the night there until they got it under control."

The fire took place during the years of World War Two, which Joe said were difficult times for people.

"During the war years, life was curtailed in lots of things. First of all, we had to observe the blackouts to thwart German planes coming or going. Rationing was another thing and we had to get used to it. Tea was rationed and I think it was half an ounce a week.

"There were no sweets except boiled sweets, there was no chocolate. And then the fuel, we had no coal, we had to use a coke. And if you had a turf bank you were doing well.

"The main street in Athlone at that time, a lot of people said it was Connaught Street, but if you lived this side it was Church Street. You got your rations of tea in Lipton's on Church Street.

"We had a coffee called Irl coffee. We just ate what we could get. More people sowed their gardens. We had big gardens in Railway View, and we grew potatoes and cabbage, lettuce and onions. If the weather was good we went up the bog in Gorry Bog," he added.

Despite the hardships of the war years, Joe has fond memories of his childhood and teenage years in Railway View. He recalls going to see western movies in the Ritz Cinema on Sunday afternoons.

"Then we'd go home and play Cowboys and Indians in St Francis Terrace. I would have played with Paddy Fitz, Seán Fleming, the O'Brien family, the Brocks, the McKirbys.

"We had a little thing down there called The Ring and that's where we'd play. The girls would play skipping. The Lyons family, the Robinsons and the Mannions in Lucas Court were all great friends too."

Town Shops

As a child, Joe was brought by the hand over the town bridge by his mother to shop on Connaught Street and remembers visiting Broderick's Bakery, before being brought to Butler's on The Square.

"At Christmastime when she would shop, she'd do some shopping up on Connaught Street and then she'd go into Butler's public house and she would have her hot claret and I would have a soft drink. I remember my mother in The Square and the country people would all be lined up with their baskets of eggs and you'd go and buy your eggs and the turkeys and geese were sold there.

"And I remember my mother would say we're ready for home but I'm not going to bring a live goose across the bridge so will you do the job? It would cost thruppence sixpence for them to kill it,” he said.

He also remembers seeing the work being carried out on Ss Peter and Paul's Church shortly before it opened in 1937. "My father brought me across the bridge and they were putting in the crucifixes. My cousin, Christy Browne, was actually putting in the little crosses over the Stations of the Cross," he said.

An Enduring Love of Music

Joe recalls always having a love of music, something which ran on both sides of his family. His cousin Andrew Browne (Christy's brother), on his mother's side, was a noted tenor in Athlone in the 1940s, who sang on Radio Éireann and as a tenor in Ss Peter and Paul's Church.

On his father's side of the family, Joe's uncle Kevin Flynn and cousin Martin Flynn enjoyed great success with The Kevin Flynn Orchestra.

His time in school with the Marist Brothers encouraged his love of music and singing.

"Brother Patrick was a very good music teacher and he was an influence. He was a great man for scales and he would tell us to sing from the chest, not from the throat. I was in the school choir and we would sing at requiem Masses at St Mary's Church. And we would get a big jar of sweets from the relatives of the dead and we always looked forward to that," he said.

Joe completed his Primary Cert when he was aged 13 or 14, before then attending the technical school for two years.

“It was decided I would become a baker because Fitzpatrick's Bakery was in Railway View, owned by Paddy Fitzpatrick. I had to do a four year apprenticeship with no money.

“I became a baker and I made plenty of dough, but I kneaded it all!” he joked.

'The Hawk'

Throughout his childhood and teenage years, Joe enjoyed playing both soccer and Gaelic, playing in the position of goalkeeper in both disciplines.

It was during a training session with St Mary's soccer club that Joe earned the nickname 'The Hawk'. When a player was criticised by the captain for not scoring against Joe, he responded that it was impossible to get the ball past him because he had the eyes of a hawk and so Joe's nickname was born.

He was an accomplished soccer player, playing with Athlone Town FC and Gentex FC and receiving offers from Waterford, Drumcondra and Sligo Rovers, all of which he turned down as he had just taken up work at Gentex after returning from a two-year stint in London.

Joe enjoyed success with Gaelic football, also, being part of the Athlone GAA team that won the club's first ever Westmeath Minor title in 1949.

Television's Arrival

With the arrival of television in Ireland in 1962, Joe decided to try his hand at aerial installation, something he worked with alongside Richie Collins for a number of years.

Speaking of this work, Joe said: "It was hard, it was good and people went mad. They couldn't get enough of television at that time and everyone wanted to jump the queue. It was mad. It was dangerous as well, you had to be careful, but it was a good earner.

"During that period, BBC television was wanted by a lot of people. In Athlone, that was hard because we were a bit too far from the transmitter. If you wanted it, I used to vet the places first. A lot of customers would say, Joe, even if I can get a snowy picture, I'd like BBC," he explained.

And while Joe travelled all across the Midlands installing television aerials, one job he remembers, in particular was attempting to install an aerial on the building of Byrne's Hardware on The Square. Despite the building being a three-storey one, Joe said he estimated he would need to go up about 30ft from the chimney and decided he would do a test.

"We went up 20ft from his chimney and it was bad, and then I told him, I said, Padraig, I'm a stupid man, I forgot that St Peter's Church was in the way and obliterated any hope of a signal," he laughed, as he recalled the incident. "Even the church wouldn't have got a signal," he joked.

"There was a photographer called Simmons in the town at the time and he was passing by and asked if he could take our photograph," he added.

Showband Era

No matter what job Joe was working at, his love of music was always in the background and he enjoyed many great years performing with Syd and the Saints before later establishing the band 'Showcase', which was a success for over two decades.

"When I came back from England, The Crescent had a 12-piece orchestra and Sydney Shine asked me would I like to join the band because the resident singer at the time, Cecil Featherstone, was leaving to go to England," explained Joe, adding that he later joined Syd's showband, Syd and the Saints, as the Big Band era came to a close.

It was during one of his performances in The Crescent when Joe met Mary McHale from Tulsk in county Roscommon. Mary's family was in the music business also and were renowned traditional Irish musicians.

The couple married in 1967 and had two children - Anthony and Amanda. Anthony and his wife Caroline have three children - Aaron, Katie and Laura - and live in Galway, while Amanda and her husband Ken live close to Joe and have two children - Joseph and Robyn.

Mary passed away last year, and as Joe sits in his sitting room in Retreat Heights, surrounded by family photographs and happy memories of their life together, he says he is lonely at times without her. The two had a very happy home in Retreat, he said, with many great neighbours over the years.

'The Broken Hearted Farmer'

He talks with pride about Mary writing the lyrics to the song, The Broken Hearted Farmer, during the early years of their marriage.

"Around that time the farmers had a big row with the government of Ireland. I decided that I was gong to do a song," he said, recalling asking Mary to put words to music that would describe the farmers' plight.

"She put brilliant words to it and we recorded it. I had told her if she did it, I would bring her to America on the next tour," he said, adding that while the song was banned from the Irish airwaves, it got airplay in America while they were on tour there and received coverage in the US, Irish and English press.

Joe toured extensively with Syd and the Saints and he remembers being on tour in Scotland, driving through the night to England in 1968 when he and Syd Shine began to discuss the future of the showbands. Joe said he felt the era was coming to an end.

He had an idea that people needed somewhere to go on Saturday or Sunday nights where they could sit and have a cup of tea or a drink and also have somewhere to dance. Three or four weeks later, Syd told Joe he had bought part of Wansboro's Field and planned to build the Jolly Mariner Marina.

Joe became entertainment manager and said of The Jolly Mariner: "It swept the country. There were different things every Saturday night, cabaret slots and more. We had our own music."

In 1973, Joe and his friend Tommy Kilroy, who was a member a local business family which had a successful grocery business on Connaught Street, bought The Shannon Queen, a boat pub where Joe played music.

"The first year in business we had quite a good turnover. In 1974, calamity struck when The Shannon Queen broke its moorings and sailed across the river to Burgess Park. We had a function on that night and we had to cancel it," said Joe, explaining that they had to wait until the weather turned before being able to return The Shannon Queen to her home on The Docks, where the popular night-time venue enjoyed many more successful years, into the 1980s.

Pictured in his Retreat Heights home this week holding a recently gifted frame containing all of his album covers, it is clear that music has greatly shaped Joe Flynn's life and continues to do so. He has recently joined the St Mary's Church choir, where he is trying to get bass parts.

"That's if they'll have me," he joked.

At almost 94 years of age, Joe was asked what the secret to a long life is and he replied: "I decided when I was about 12 that I wasn't going to take any more sugar in my tea or have any more sweet things. Also, I decided I would curtail the frying pan.

"I never smoked and what I drank wasn't very much, and when I did, it was a pint of Guinness. I had my football. And then early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."