In the farthest corner of the lightless attic of the Myers family home long, long ago was a large chest, writes Kevin Myers.
To get to it was risky, because the attic had no floor-boards and we had to hop across the roof-joists in the dark. But within the chest was a most magical heirloom, an ancient and elaborate fireman's helmet, with a huge, decorative spine up its centre, and a metallic ribbed strap to go under the chin. It had belonged to my Great-Uncle Jack, and was almost completely intact, save for a large dent in the side. How had that come about? No one knew.
One distant summer's day, we took the old helmet down from the attic, and I donned it for other children to hurl rocks at it. As a means of protecting a 10-year old's head from projectiles, an already damaged Dublin Fire Brigade helmet was about as useless as orange peel. It was the beginning of the end. Soon it was smashed into bits, vanishing from our lives, though not from our memory.
On page 185 of the recently published history of the Dublin Fire Brigade by Tom Geraghty and Trevor Whitehead, published by Dublin City Council, there is an account of a fire at the former Royal Hibernian Military School in the Phoenix Park in the 1920s.
"The top floor was well alight when the chief and two engines arrived and soon after, the clock tower collapsed through the blazing roof. It was a bitterly cold morning. Witnesses reported that icicles formed on the stand-pipe and leaking hoses.
"Captain Myers sustained a blow to the helmet and serious foot injuries when struck by an amount of falling masonry, and he was removed to hospital." Ah. So, nearly 80 years later, I finally discover the cause of the mystery dent in the family heirloom, the one that was treated with such scandalous disrespect in a sunny back garden long ago. Had I known the truth about Great-Uncle Jack, who died decades before I was born, perhaps I might have shown more respect for his headwear. For he was in many ways the inventor of the modern Dublin Fire Brigade. He oversaw the transition from horses to fire engines, and had fought the most famous blazes in Dublin's history: O'Connell Street in 1916, the Custom House in 1921, the Four Courts in 1922.
He died just at a period when Dublin Corporation had been temporarily suspended, so his employers weren't able to mark his great services to the capital, as they certainly should have done. The city commissioners tendered their respects, and the Garda Commissioner, Eoin O'Duffy, declared that the death of Great-Uncle Jack - though he didn't call him that - was a source of deep regret to the Garda Síochána - "and I wish on behalf of the Force to tender sympathy to his relatives and to the members of the Brigade".
To his relatives. That's me. Eoin O'Duffy, all these years later, tendering me sympathies over the death of a man whose helmet I'd since smashed up. Worse - not so long ago, I concocted a flight of fancy in this column in which Eoin O'Duffy had a passionate homosexual affair with Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, so making him a mitre-biter. Ah. What a spasm of guilt passes through the old system! All I need now to complete my abjection is to hear from David Sheedy in Dublin Diocesan Library that John Charles ordered sung Requiem Masses and churches' bells to toll in bronzely grief throughout the archdiocese upon GUJ's death.
According to this - I must say quite splendid - history of the brigade, Jack's father William, my great-great-grandfather, was chief fire officer in 1909 when the Cinematograph Act obliged him to ensure the first cinema - the Volta - was not a fire hazard. William asked for more money for undertaking extra cinema duties but, naturally, was refused. The projectionist in the Volta was, of course, James Joyce, which perhaps explains why William's fireman son - my Great-Uncle Jack - who perhaps performed the inspection, was given a cameo role in Ulysses. Now it is true that GUJ features in only a few of the 300 pages of the history of the Dublin Fire Brigade, and poor Willie in but one. But that nonetheless is sensational. Because you don't know what it is to have a name like Myers. It is common across the world, yet we never feature in any encyclopaedias and dictionaries of national biography.
No Myers ever won a gold medal in the Olympics. No Myers has ever won a Nobel Prize or an Oscar. The Guinness Book of Hit Singles lists not a single Myers in the thousands of recording artists going back over half a century. No Myers has ever won an All-Ireland medal, or played for Ireland, or indeed for any country in any sport. We Myerses are a plain tribe, invisible in the crowd, and well used to neglect; so that an account of the Dublin Fire Brigade should finally recognise a Myers in any way constitutes a world event - for us Myerses anyway.
The best histories are local histories, and this is one of them. From its inception in the 18th century, into the troubles in 1916-22, to the Belfast blitz in the second World War, Dublin Fire Brigade has been one of the most gallant organisations in Irish life. It thoroughly deserves the credit that Dublin Council's book accords it. And as for William and Jack Myers: rest easy, kinsmen.