Former Garda reflects on lifelong links with Killeigh

PROFILE:SEANCHAIL KELLY

As part of its efforts to highlight the need for a new community centre on the site of the old Macra Hall in Killeigh, the development committee has been putting together profiles of local people from the village and beyond. Seanchail Kelly, a former Garda who works with Noonan's Security in Tullamore and Naas Hospitals, is the latest person to be featured:

"I am very proud of my connections to this area, which is kind of apt with my name being Seanchail, after the patron Saint of Killeigh.

My parents were Brendan Kelly from Gurteen and Elizabeth O'Brien from Cappenlug, near Kilcavan. They married in 1952 and had eight children, living opposite the green in Killeigh for five years in what most people would know as Dick Colton's house.

After four of their children were born they moved to Kilcavan. My father was a calf man and needed more shed space for livestock. Their intentions were to build in Gurteen, but they settled there, and another four of us were born by 1968.

When my Ma was expecting me, in the winter of 1964, my sister Geraldine developed a strange rash on her arm and chest. She was referred to a cancer hospital in Dublin, as they didn't know what it was in Tullamore. Daddy had an uncle by the name of Chris Young, and he told Ma to visit St Seanchail's Wells first. She promised that if Geraldine got cured, and I was a boy, she would call me Seanchail. As you can see, this all came to pass as the rash disappeared.

After going to Clonaghadoo NS, and secondary school in Mountmellick, I served an apprenticeship with Barney Glennons but my passion was to join An Garda Siochana and that's what I did.

I went to the border in May 1985 - Omeath in county Louth - and three years later I transferred to Athboy in Meath. Having visited New York, where my sisters Dolores, Teresa and Bernadette resided, I got the 'bug' for The Big Apple and in June 1990, having failed to secure a career break, I resigned from the force and moved to the Bronx.

It's a decision I'm sorry I had to make, but it's not one I'm sorry I took. I'd regret it forever if I had taken the safe option and stayed in a job I loved rather than taking a chance in life.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out, as shortly after I went to New York my poor mother got Motor Neurone Disease. As she was failing, and my sisters had returned home in turns, I returned home too. Ma attended my sister Teresa's wedding but died three months later, aged 66.

In the meantime, with intentions of returning to New York, I got a bread van job with O'Donohue's Bakery. "Two weeks I'll give you," said Cathal, around the time of the Christmas rush. I was still with him four years on.

I did various jobs in between until I started my own taxi business in 2003. I kept it going until March 2020, when Covid-19 darkened our land. However, a career change came about, and I have been working with Noonan's Security in Naas and Tullamore Hospitals ever since. After 30 years, I was back in uniform and I'm loving the job. I married Marie Guckian in December 2000 and we have three great children, Cormac, 19, Sharona, 16, and Seanchail, 14.

My great loves growing up were sport and music. I've always been a huge U2 fan and first saw them in 1981, at the first Slane concert. It was £8 for the ticket and Thin Lizzy was the support band - fond memories I will treasure.

I played gaelic football for Kilcavan, of course, and Tullamore, and I also played soccer for numerous clubs. In 1997, I was delighted to be back in Killeigh once again and myself and my then brother in law Gerry Crowe founded Killeigh United Soccer Club. I was very proud as a player manager just two years later to win the Division Four Counties League with a great bunch of lads, most of them local and a few from Tullamore. I got two Leinster medals while in the guards, for soccer and gaelic football, but the medal I treasure most was an Under-14B hurling medal with Killeigh in 1978.

I remember going to a disco in the Macra hall in 1982, and it's a pity to see it fall into disrepair over the years. It would be great to see it fully developed again, so that future underage county champions would have a place to go for medal presentations and the like. Underage soccer is also thriving and if these kids have a place to share their glory with their parents and mentors it drives them on.

I always say, 'keep them in sport and out of court,' and it's true. I wish the hard-working Development Committee the best of luck in their endeavours going forward. These stories will be great reading in years to come for people to know about the people of Killeigh and beyond."