Track to priesthood for McNamara brothers began in train station

City Lives – Bernie Ní Fhlatharta meets Frs Wally and Bill McNamara whose playground was the city

It’s a wonder the McNamara brothers who are now in their seventies survived their childhood at all, given that their family home was on a railway platform and the Galway Docks as well as the railway tracks were their playgrounds!

Hearing about their adventurous escapades now sounds like a nightmare for any parent but in the 1950, the world was a different place, a freer place where children played unsupervised most of the time.

Tommy McNamara was the Station Master at Ceannt Station from 1949 to 1954, during which time the last of his ten children was born.

They lived in what is now the bus office at the station, in a split-level house where the back door led to the actual train platform and their front door led out onto the busy forecourt.

On Friday four of the McNamara brothers were in town for a special Mass and reunion of former CIÉ staff and current Irish Rail workers. And two of those brothers, Fr Bill and Fr Walter, along with a former CIÉ clerical officer, Fr Brendan Costello concelebrated the Mass in St Patrick’s Church in Forster Street. That was followed by a cuppa and finger food in Rabbitt’s bar where people had an opportunity to reminisce.

When the McNamaras were growing up, it was not unusual, in fact it was almost expected, that at least one son would join the priesthood.

Bill attended St Joseph’s College (Bish) and at 16 went into St Patrick’s College, then a seminary in Carlow. As soon as he was ordained he opted to join a parish in Texas, where he has been since, though he retired as a parish priest in the Archdiocese of San Antonio two years ago. His younger brothers, Walter (known as Wally) was only 13 when he left the Bish’s primary school to enter a seminary in Ballyfin, Co Laois, and went on to complete a BSc in Science. In fact he taught Science in Tipperary’s Rockwell College for a short while after he graduated.

Like his older brother he too had the urge to travel and volunteered for the missions, first in Sierra Leone which he loved. “I did pastoral work as well as community development organising social welfare programmes and community programmes funded mainly by the Dutch. But the last eight years saw turmoil and unrest and civil war broke out after I left,” he said.

In fact his best friend, Fr Phelim McAllister, was shot in that war.

It was then back to Ireland for a few years and he even spent a year in Texas with his brother until “the spirit led me to Western Australia” where he lived up until six years ago when he retired to the Holy Spirit Fathers House in Kimmage Manor, Dublin. He is now engaged in pastoral work and care of the elderly in a nursing home for retired missionaries.

In fact, Fr Wally loved everywhere he says. In Australia he was based in a rural parish north of Perth, Port Hedland, the second largest town in that region with a population of about 14,000.

The region is dominated by large cattle stations. The mining town also had a port, a detention centre for 700 prisoners as well as a big aboriginal population.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.