Past pupils of CBS in south Mayo celebrate special anniversary
A special and cherished reunion has taken place as eight former pupils of the old Ballinrobe CBS from 1950 to 1955 met up for a 70th anniversary reunion.
The reunion included Sean Fitzpatrick, Joe O’Malley, Michael Coyne, Peter McHugh, Fr. Jack Garvey, Fr. Martin Costello, Mark Farragher and Peter Costello, and took place in The Bowers Bar and Restaurant, Ballinrobe.
The Ballinrobe CBS class from 1950 to 1955 have held regular get-togethers since their 40th anniversary back in 1995, and that initial meeting was organised by Michael Coyne, with a Golden Jubilee event taking place in 2005.
In 2022, some of the former pupils collaborated and put together a unique book titled ‘Ballinrobe CBS Class 1950-1955 Golden Memories’, which was launched in December of the same year.
The popular local book shared memories of their school days and lives thereafter and can still be purchased in Martin Murphy’s Newsagent, Main Street, Ballinrobe.
One of the former pupils from that era, Michael Coyne, has been heavily involved in Ballinrobe GAA Club and Ballinrobe Handball Club over the years. He explained that he instigated the first get-together of the Ballinrobe CBS 1950 to 1955 class in 1995. It involved a trojan amount of work, but Michael was pleased with the way things panned out.
“I started the first reunion and tried to get in contact with as many people as I could. I then began to wonder who would turn up to the first get-together, as a lot of families had left Ballinrobe during the intervening years.
"There were a lot of the families who had emigrated to England, and there were also former pupils living in America
"The second major reunion in 2005 was Peter Costello’s idea, and he rang me to see if there was another chance of some of our former classmates meeting up for the Golden Jubilee. Thankfully, I had retained the addresses from 1995, and Peter did a lot of the work for that reunion," he stated.
Life was different back in the 1950s and students had to travel some distance to go to school.
Sadly, the railway station closed in Ballinrobe back in 1959, however, former CBS student Fr. Martin Costello, explained that the old railway line from Claremorris to Ballinrobe played a vital role for secondary school students back in the 1950s.
“I remember when students from Claremorris travelled by train to Ballinrobe Railway Station to go to school in the CBS, as St. Colman’s was not in Claremorris at the time.
"We had the nuns and the Christian Brothers in Ballinrobe, and they provided the secondary school education at the time.”
The surviving students from the Ballinrobe CBS class from 1950 to 1955 hope to continue to have their regular get-togethers, and no doubt memories of times past will continue to be shared.