Shamrocks and Boher, Paddy McCoy and Oliver Mahedy ...

One of the reasons for the formation of Mullingar Shamrocks in 1953 was to provide an opportunity for the young footballers of the town to play with a Mullingar team.

This picture of the Boher junior team of 1952, beaten in the county final, features two of these outstanding young footballers, Paddy McCoy and Oliver Mahedy. Both players also featured on the Westmeath minor football team of 1952, Oliver Mahedy, a wonderful dual player, at centre-back and Paddy McCoy, who kicked 0-8 in the Leinster final, in the forwards.

Both players joined the priesthood which cut short their playing careers (as well as 3 more of their fellow St Mary’s students from a Leaving Cert class of 17!). Oliver Mahedy, from the Ashe Road, was ordained in St Kieran’s College in 1959 and served in the Archdiocese of Washington for most of his life. He died in Maryland in November 1999.
Paddy McCoy joined the Franciscan Order and was ordained (Fr Loman) in 1963.

Oliver Mahedy and his St Kieran’s College fellow former students featured in a piece in the Washington Post on 17 March 1991.

“When Oliver Mahedy got off the plane in New York, in 1959, it was "at least 95" and he nearly wilted. Back home in Ireland, 65 is a heat wave, he said.
Welcome to America, fathers O'Sullivan, Maddigan, Treacy, Mahedy, McGready and Sweeney.
But if the welcomes were warm, the partings could be bittersweet.
The Rev. Michael Kidd, pastor at Holy Family Church in Mitchellville, remembers going to the docks in Cobh, County Cork, in August 1954, to board the ship that would carry him to the United States. As was the case in many Irish families, Kidd's younger brother had left from the same port a few months earlier, and he found saying goodbye to his parents difficult.
For several hours they waited for the ship to be readied, while around them some locals sang melancholy Irish ballads. It was "very dreary," recalled Kidd, and he was glad when he was finally allowed to board.
Once on this side of the Atlantic, though, adjustment came swiftly. "It didn't take one day," said the Rev. Peter Sweeney, of St. Paul's Church in Damascus in Montgomery County. He arrived in New York in 1961 at age 24 (yes, it was hot -- "98 degrees, with 90 percent humidity . . . a steambath").
Often the newcomers had relatives already in the United States, which eased the transition. But in some cases, family ties, once cut, remain severed: Mahedy has been back to Ireland several times, but has not seen his sister, who moved to Australia, since 1946.
The Rev. Canice Treacy's seven brothers and sisters remained in Ireland, and he tries to go back once a year, he said. Treacy, who emigrated in 1956 and has been pastor at St. Peter's in Olney for 23 years, said his first view of the United States -- morning rush hour in New York -- was "unbelievable," and that he has witnessed "amazing changes" in the Washington landscape since the days when the trolley cars ran out to Rockville.
On return trips to Ireland, he said, he sometimes gets homesick for America.
Treacy and the others from St. Kieran's get together as often as time allows for dinners or a round of golf on Fridays. The competition on the fairway is keen and the wit cutting.
"They're the biggest bunch of liars and cutthroats," Mahedy said. "They'll hit seven or eight coming down the fairway, and then tell you 'four.' "

Thanks to Pat Garvin and Seamus McLoughlin for the photo.