Galway’s retired phone and postal workers gather for night of nostalgia
Memories of a time when the letter and the landline were top of the communications tree were rekindled with fondness as a group of former phone and postal workers got together for a night of nostalgia and renewed friendships recently.
All were retired members of the former Department of Posts and Telegraphs, An Post, Telecom Eireann, Eircom and Eir, collectively enjoying the fifth An Post/Eircom Reunion in the Menlo Park Hotel.
Not surprisingly, much of the night was spent reminiscing on their days working in the GPO on Eglinton Street – a time when, for most of their working lives, the postal service and the fledgling phone network helped to make the world a smaller place.
While their latter years might have seen the arrival of the mobile phone and the internet in its infancy, most of their careers played out during a time when it took years to get a phone installed into a house after you made the application.
You could only make a call to someone by going through the operator and international calls cost a fortune. Telegrams were the norm in urgent messages – and the postman was the only means of communication for many people outside of the travelling shop and Sunday Mass.
The fax machine was a wonderful invention in its time – now long consigned to the pages of history and completely unrecognisable to a generation who think that Facetime and WhatsApp were always part of the equation.
But back before all that, those former staff members that gathered on Friday night played a crucial part in our ability to communicate, precursors to the instant communications we take for granted today.
At one time over 500 people worked in the Post Office in Eglinton Street prior to the establishment of the two semi-state companies in 1984.
The night shows that there still exists a great bond of friendship between the former workers, although the numbers now employed in both An Post and Eir have dwindled.
But the retirees can reflect fondly on their time within the Post Office in Eglinton Street which still has a retail counter, but back then also had a very busy telephone exchange and central exchange – the main hub for telephone operations out of Galway.
It was the centre of our world of communications – and at time when the flights to America or Australia were often only one-way tickets, they were the ones who kept us in touch with loved ones…however rudimentary it might seem compared to the technology of today.
Pictured: Committee members Cllr Donal Lyons, Eva Feeney, Walter McDonagh, Mary Kennedy, Pat McDonagh, Michael Irwin, Ray Kelly, Imelda Tierney and Nicholas Lyons, at the retired P&T / Telecom Eireann reunion dinner at the Menlo Park Hotel. Photo: Brian Harding.