The recent death, at the age of 91, of former Fianna Fáil TD Dr Hugh Gibbons was a reminder for many Roscommon people of past football glories, writes Patsy McGarry. He played on the last senior football team from the county to win the All-Ireland - in 1944. But his passing was also a reminder of some less than glorious political episodes.
A genial, mild-mannered man,very much the local country doctor, he also looked after many of the miners at the nearby Arigna coalmine. He first stood for the Dáil at the request of Taoiseach Sean Lemass in a by-election after the death of popular local Fine Gael TD Jimmy Burke. I remember that by-election because it took place on the day my grandfather and namesake died:, July 8th 1964.
Jimmy Burke's widow Joan held the seat for Fine Gael. But in the general election of 1965, Dr Gibbons was elected to the Dáil alongside Fianna Fáil constituency colleague Brian Lenihan.
He would probably have been made a minister but for the fact that Brian Lenihan had been Minister for Justice in the outgoing government and was reappointed to the post. The two men would prove unwitting stumbling blocks to each other's political ambitions.
Dr Gibbons also became the innocent victim of a row in Frenchpark over the post office. It had been run for years by the elderly Gannon sisters, from whom I used to pick up the Dandyand Beanoevery Friday when I went about that village we called a town to do the weekly messages for my mother.
We lived then about a mile-and-a-half away in Mullen. I would cycle to Frenchpark on the bike my father bought me for my sixth birthday, usually with a wet battery for the radio, which needed recharging, slung over the handlebars. It was to be recharged in Murray's.
Another shop I called at was Frankie Martin's. He would always greet me with: "And how are all the Mullen peasants today?" It used to drive me mad. "Don't heed him," my father would say when I told him. "Sure they're all Lord de Freyne's bastards in Frenchpark, anyway." Lord de Freyne, a member of the Ffrench family after whom the village was named, had owned an enormous house and a huge demesne of green land in former times.
I was confused by my father's remark and asked the inevitable question: "Daddy, what's a bastard?" To which he replied: "Someone from Frenchpark!" It was years before I discovered the word had a wider application.
When the post office became available Frankie believed he was the best-placed person in Frenchpark to get it. His family were Fianna Fáil through and through and his mother Peg had been in Cumann na mBan. (She was also a midwife and delivered two of my brothers and one of my sisters. I still remember the bag in which she brought Mary to our house.)
Frankie's only opposition in Frenchpark when it came to the post office was a local business family believed to have strong Fine Gael sympathies. He thought it was game, set and match. But not so. They got the post office. He went ballistic.
A larger than life character, he had a beautiful tenor voice and was much in demand as a result. He was also a man of considerable ambition in other areas. Later he would have a large family, each of whose names began with an initial of his own Christian name and then surname, in the correct order. When he reached the final "n" in Martin, he announced he was going "to start on the address". It was "Ballaghaderreen Road, Frenchpark, Co Roscommon". But he got no further than that final "n".
In his fierce disappointment at not getting the post office Frankie planned spectacular revenge on the first Fianna Fáil candidate who came through his door at the next general election. He believed it would be Brian Lenihan. It happened to be Hugh Gibbons.
When the good doctor entered his shop to canvass his vote, Frankie reached beneath the counter where a chamber pot resided and poured its long-matured contents over the hapless candidate.
In 1973 Dr Gibbons was involved in making history. Brian Lenihan was then Minister for Foreign Affairs and considered his own seat safe. Aware that Roscommon had never returned the same set of candidates to Dáil Éireann and that there might be a reaction in the county against Fianna Fáil following the Arms Trial, he decided that the greater part of the constituency should be canvassed in Dr Gibbons's favour.
My father, who thought the sun, moon and stars shone out of Lenihan, and Brian Lenihan himself both canvassed large swathes of north Roscommon seeking number ones for Hugh Gibbons. It worked.
Dr Gibbons got the votes canvassed but Brian Lenihan became the first Cabinet minister in the history of the State to lose his seat. He and his family moved to Dublin.
By 1977 Hugh Gibbons had had enough and decided he would not stand again. His seat was retained for Fianna Fáil by a young man called Sean Doherty.