Former Senator packs lifetime’s work into new book
Sometime around the year 1880 a young man from Burnthouse, Moycullen, came to Lettermore on a hunting trip, and he never left. His name was Nicholas O’Connor, and he had returned from the US a few years earlier. And it was on that hunting trip to Conamara that he first met Barbara McDonagh who was running the family shop; they were married six years later.
The ‘first’ Nicholas O’Connor couldn’t possibly have known the impression that his name – handed on through the generations to follow – would indelibly leave on Ceantair na nOilean over the almost century and a half since.
For those with a knowledge of Galway politics and Conamara business, the Nicholas O’Connor, or Nioclás Ó Conchubhair, they would most likely know is a grandson of the first iteration – and the name itself continues as a Conamara cornerstone, through the fourth generation today.
In many ways, the story of the O’Connors, all encapsulated between the covers of a new book entitled Nioclás Ó Conchubhair – My Story, is also the story of that part of West Conamara over the last 150 years.
It’s a tale of emigration, resilience, community, politics, sport – overcoming the odds and thriving on the most westerly part of the country.
On a broader scale, it’s an insight into the political landscape of eighties Ireland – Charlie Haughey, Bobby Molloy, political heaves, turbulent times – from a man who was at the coalface.
It’s also the parallel tale of Naomh Anna GAA Club, which came into being in 1964 to rival the two established Conamara clubs of Micheál Breathnach and Na Piarsaigh, thanks in no small way to Nicky’s life-long commitment to the cause.
And it’s the history of a family home, Bay View, built two years before the beginning of the twentieth century, where the author came into the world in 1945 and his son Nicholas Óg O’Connor was born in 1988.
By times Bay View was also the local post office and the travel agency for the Cunard and White Star Lines, the last port of call for the droves who left the area for a new life on the other side of the Atlantic.
The second Nicholas married Lilly, and their eldest son was also Nicholas – the now-author, community man, politician, businessman, sportsman and family man – a County Councillor and Senator in his time, standing in two General Elections along the way.
For half a century, he was a mainstay of the Fianna Fáil party in Conamara, topping the poll for the Conamara Electoral Area in 1985 – with more than double the first preference vote of Éamon Ó Cuív.
Caption: Life story… Nioclás Ó Conchúbhair.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie.