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Paddy O'Callaghan
Paddy O' Callaghan was county delegate to the NACA in Kerry. He was also Vice-President of the NACA. Paddy has always been deeply involved in the Kerry County board and is also president of the Munster athletic and cycling council? Recently he held the role of international president of the NCA which led him to represent the association in Moscow. When the new federation was set up in Ireland he became treasurer of that and also vice president for eight years.
 Dr. Eamonn O'Sullivan - By Paddy O' Callaghan
The first time we met was in the early fifties and this was some years before I joined the staff of the mental hospital, as a psychiatric nurse where Eamonn was RMS. I would have been going to a lot of sports and grass track meetings around the county and that brought me into contact with Dr. Eamonn. He was hugely involved in the whole athletic scene at that particular period and before that going back many years. He was chairman of the Kerry County Athletics Board of the NACAI, President of the Munster Council of the NACAI and also President of the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland. These three positions were spread over a period of years and following each term of office he left a remarkable legacy. Probably more than any other person.
To meet him on a friendly basis or should I say an Eamonn/Paddy basis would not have happened until I joined the hospital staff in 1954. I then got to know him very well as I would be going to athletics as a delegate. I must admit we became very friendly. I recall one particular night Marjorie (his wife) was travelling with us, she was going on some other business and he was telling her all about me and my involvement in the board. I was living in Cromane at the time and I would cycle into work every day, he was telling her all this and she found it very hard to understand how somebody could get up on a bicycle and be in Killarney for eight o clock in the morning after cycling twenty miles. So in instances like that we became very friendly.
He was deeply involved in everything and he became President of the National body at a time when efforts by athletes in Belfast were being made to set up a part of the British AA. Now that never happened but they did set up a Northern Ireland organization. But thankfully I am glad to say that after all this time we have one organization, one athletics organization and one cycling organization for all of the country and that is what Eamonn aspired to. He very well respected all over Ireland for the views he held. He was ahead of his time in many respects in that he proposed a solution to the problem. When the people in Belfast wanted to break away he said, "I as president of the NACA would have no problem provided they did not break away in a six counties basis, but on a none county basis, and that we would have the four provinces as four autonomous bodies with four or five people from each body setting up a central council in Dublin".
That was Eamonn's thinking. Now it was not taken on board but it was something we did in cycling years later, so here again he was well ahead of his time. Now in relation of being ahead of his time there was one very important aspect about Eamonn. He had a great brain and used it always with the intention of safe guarding the integrity of a thirty two county athletics federation in Ireland. That was to him the most important thing (as indeed it was to me and it still is to day). I have never accepted these fragmentations that went on in athletics but in cycling particularly. Eamonn aspired to this; he was a fabulous man away ahead of his time.
At meetings there were very few people prepared to stand up and argue with him, he was very fair to everyone, very honest in his approach and he gave everybody an opportunity to express whatever they wanted to. However he was steadfast in the national question, there was no ambivalence and in all the other questions democracy reigned. It was an education to see him chairing a meeting.
And I repeat, his vision was absolute in the sense that he had one burning demand and that was all that all of the athletes in Ireland would be represented by one National Athletics Federation, and all of the cyclists would be represented by one National Cycling federation, and more importantly that both of these two federations would be thirty two county. Just like the GAA in which he was so immersed, and that example was often given at the time, he couldn't think any other way. There was no other road for Dr Eamonn to go in relation to this question and indeed no way would he even consider going any other road. The more I discuss him and try to put into context all he achieved the more I now appreciate his achievements.
He always kept a very cool head at those meetings. As I recall a slow thoughtful type of dialogue emanated from him. No standing up and shouting or arguing, he was well able to think on his feet and always gave every one their fair say, nevertheless he always thought things very well. Meetings often went on longer that they should because he gave everybody plenty of time to express their views but he was very positive in everything that he did and said.
How he found time for everything I will never know. In the thirties and forties when all the hassle was going on in athletics that man would travel on a regular basis up to meetings in Dundalk. The roads of Ireland were not great back then and the trains may or may not have been running on time. He put an amount of his time into these meetings and this is a little known fact of his passionate involvement during this period of Irish athletics. He really did the job he was elected to do and he did it with great integrity. Now I have personal knowledge of this type of travelling. I would leave home here in Cromane at six o clock in the morning on the road to Dundalk, arrive there at twelve o clock, sit at a meeting until about six o clock then sit in a car, turn around and head back for kerry. This is what Eamonn did for what he believed in and remember he was training Kerry teams, building Fitzgerald Stadium, writing books and much more behind the scene.
He was a very interesting man to travel with. If my memory serves me right he would always discuss what was happening at the time. If a new move was being initiated by anyone, that would be discussed and he would explain how we should react to it. He was always thinking ahead, always planning. He had a fierce active mind. The hap pings around the country would be on the agenda; he was I believe an avid reader and kept very well in touch with all the happenings of the time. And I always felt that he had great time for my points of view as well. He was a great motivator, and a great leader.
I must also add that I got on great with him in my nursing capacity in the hospital. You can imagine what is was like to be locked into a ward with fifty patients from eight o clock in the morning in stuffy smoky conditions, and back then things were not great plus you would be there until six or eight o click in the evening. It was years after that I came to the conclusion that he had great time for me and in many ways looked after me when I was there. Now at that time two patients would deliver turf in a container to the wards and for years when I was on day duty I had the job of walking with those two men around to the wards, if you like keeping an eye on them. I also had the job of going out on the hospital farm with the result that I spent very little time in those cramped stuffy smoky wards. Now I am utterly convinced that because of the fact that I was involved in the athletic scene and cycled in the Rás Tailteann he gave me jobs outside the ward environment. I was only eight years a nurse in the hospital and retired in 1962 the year that Eamonn also retired.
The one thing that I find difficult to comprehend is that he trained a Kerry team in 1924 to win the All Ireland and then all these years later in 1964 he was still training Kerry teams. Now that is a span of forty years and while he dropped out at times, it is a truly remarkable achievement, when you take into account all that I have revealed to you in relation to his athletic involvements. Forty years at the very top level. Now of course there would not be as much pressure on trainers back then as there is now, nevertheless he also had to deliver the goods. His was a truly remarkable man of continuity and let's not forget that he was also involved in teams that lost All Ireland semi finals and probably Munster finals too.
He and I would have discussed all these things and while I did not appreciate it back then, to put it in context now would be to describe it as unbelievable. We would also have discussed his family history. His father "The Champion" and his uncles and his Firies roots because I came from Ballyhar which is part of the Firies parish. So we also had that connection.
Now I would not agree with people that Eamonn has been forgotten, however he has been put well into the background. He was truly an amazing man and a truly, truly great Kerryman and I would think that the GAA particularly should honour and commemorate his memory in some special way. I would greatly welcome that. Now that this publication has out about him is in it self a wonderful thing. It is long overdue.
A great gentleman, a great Kerryman, a great Irishman and a great friend
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