Snapshot in time

An historic All-Ireland win is one important event documented in Anthony Cunningham’s new book which captures major social, political and sporting moments of 1957. The Medical Director of Galway Clinic hopes the book will evoke memories for those who were alive at the time while offering younger readers a glimpse of the past and showing how it shapes our lives, as he tells JUDY MURPHY.

Our lives seem to go by in a flash, especially once we hit mid-adulthood. But some years do stand out and that’s especially true when it comes to childhood memories.

For Anthony Cunningham, the Medical Director of Galway Clinic, 1957 was such a year. Anthony, who is originally from Louth, was nine when his home county defeated Cork in the 1957 All-Ireland final. He remembers going to the homecoming, watching the victorious team from the shoulders of a kindly neighbour.

“He told me it would never again happen in my lifetime,” recalls Anthony. “And it wasn’t a curse, just a statement of fact. He was right.”

That was one of several standout moments of 1957 for Anthony, who has now combined memory with diligent research to produce a snapshot in time, with a new book, entitled About 1957 – That Was When!. It’s inspired by the approach taken by US writer and social historian Bill Bryson in his book One Summer: America, 1927, which brought that significant year in American history to life.

Anthony’s book, which is filled with photos, has 13 chapters, including a prologue giving a background to life in Ireland at the time; the levels of emigration, what people worked at and their social circumstances. He describes the publication as being somewhat like RTÉ’s Reeling in the Years, “in that I say what happened, outline its significance and give the fate of the central characters”.

There’s also an extensive bibliography so readers can delve further into particular topics.

These include the achievement of amateur lightweight boxer, Anthony ‘Socks’ Byrne from Drogheda, who’d won a bronze medal in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, losing in the semi-final in a split decision.

A few months later, in 1957, at an Irish-English International in London’s Royal Albert Hall, Socks defeated Dick McTaggart who had won gold in Melbourne. Anthony vividly recalls the excitement.

“We had a black and white TV. Not many people had televisions then and the neighbours gathered to watch the fight on BBC. There was no RTÉ.”

Socks and his wife emigrated to Canada soon after where they reared their family. Fifty years after the Olympics, Drogheda honoured Socks with a life-sized monument and Anthony also covers this.

Another major incident in his young life in 1957 was the IRA raid on the RUC barracks at Brookeborough, County Fermanagh. It occurred that January as part of the organisation’s ‘Border Campaign’. Two IRA volunteers, Seán South from Limerick and Fergal O’Hanlon from Monaghan, were killed by the RUC in the failed attack.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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