A man for all seasons

Lifestyle – Walter McDonagh is proof that retiring from your job doesn’t mean retiring from life. The former An Post employee who spent many years in Dublin has played a key role in Moycullen’s social and cultural life since moving home in 2008. He tells BERNIE NÍ FHLATHARTA about the importance of community and how the village has benefitted from new blood.

Restrictions may have lifted and life is slowly returning to some sort of normality, but there’s no doubt that the pandemic has torn the heart out of communities who had to shelve most, if not all of their social, sporting and fundraising activities since March 2020.

Moycullen’s experience of lockdown was similar to other communities across the city and county, especially for older people.

There were no more Bingo sessions, no group lunches on Fridays in community halls or local restaurants — not even Sunday Masses for the best part of two years.

Moycullen man, Walter McDonagh has good reason to welcome the lifting of restrictions as there are very few activities in his locality that he isn’t involved in. Every community needs someone like Walter, an organiser, a doer, a man who really wants to make his homeplace a better place to live.

Indeed, he could be a poster boy for the active retirement movement, such is his enthusiasm and vigour. A founder of the local retirement group, he has held various roles with Moycullen Active Retired over the years. He has also been involved in Active Retirement Ireland at a regional and more recently at national level.

Retirement means different things to different people, but everyone should remember that they’re retiring from their working life, not their life, is Walter’s advice.

He is as enthusiastic about organising clubs and activities as he is about staying alive. After he retired from An Post almost 17 years ago he had no intention of vegetating or idling.

His position with An Post had given him great organisational skills, he explains, and he has put these to good use in his community — firstly in Celbridge when he lived there and then in his native Moycullen, after he moved home 2008.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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