NOEL CASEY,
Sir, - I was a student at Maynooth College for six-and-a-half years in the 1960s and, as it turned out, a non-clerical graduate.
I got a varied, useful and interesting education. I met most of my life's true friends. I enjoyed the excitement of the promise of Vatican II. Those years still rank as by far the happiest and most contented of my life.
Next week I return, as I do every year, for an afternoon of unashamed nostalgia, walking corridors and pathways with the man, now a hard-working parish priest, who sat beside me in chapel, classroom and concert hall, catching here and there "gleams of half-extinguished thought" that still flicker, however dimly, through the shadows of the years.
Maybe this year our memories will be tinged with "somewhat of a sad perplexity". - Yours, etc.,
NOEL CASEY,
Carrickbeg,
Carrick-on-Suir,
Co Tipperary.