Fallon's Town Talk: Death of John Naughten has left Roscommon reeling
The late Cllr John Naughton and Frank Feighan TD
Over the last 14 years I’ve developed a rhythm about writing this column. Some weeks there is a stand-out story that makes the subject a no-brainer, the newspaper equivalent of shooting into an empty net. More times than I would like, no inspiration is forthcoming and panic sets in sometime around Sunday afternoon Last Friday night, I realised this would be one of those bumper weeks where there would be a host of topics to write about. Then everything changed with a WhatsApp message that popped up on my phone.
Within a few hours, all of Roscommon was reeling. Rarely has a story stopped this county or the wider region in its tracks the way the death of John Naughten has. People are stunned. I didn’t know John well. It’s so long since I covered county council meetings that it seems like a different world. However, from his very first appearance in the council chamber, John came across as an innately decent person who wanted to do his best for others. Those first impressions lasted throughout his political career. A greeting from John was always prefaced by a smile.
What has been so instructive over the recent grief-stricken days is not just the volume of the tributes. It is the heartfelt sincerity of the expressions of sympathy from across the political divide. The messages have been characterised by courtesy, civility and kindness; those were the very qualities that defined John Naughten himself. I join with so many others in expressing sympathy to his grieving family. May John rest in peace.
Before last week I hadn’t heard of Mike Parcej. It turns out Mike is a self-professed “passionate national hunt racing fan” from Wolverhampton who is doing a tour of all of Ireland’s 26 racecourses. Mike attended Roscommon Races last week, making Lenebane his 21st stop on his nationwide trek.
Mike has almost 8,000 followers on Twitter/X and for a few days he turned into a one-man tourist promotion for Roscommon Town.
He wrote glowingly, not just about Roscommon Racecourse, but about the establishments he visited during his two-day sojourn. He posted a myriad of photographs including ones of Roscommon Castle, a local Roscommon resident (who happened to be a sheep) and landmark buildings in the town.
Nevertheless, two photos stood out. One was of the sun setting over the racecourse but the pick of the bunch was a remarkable picture of the Sacred Heart Church, taken from Lenebane. It was an angle of the church and the surrounding countryside I hadn’t seen before. It portrayed Roscommon as a beautiful town nestling in a wooded rural idyll.
Parcej described Roscommon as, “a lovely, relaxed, warm and friendly town. One of my favourite places stayed in Ireland so far.” This comes following similarly effusive comments about Roscommon Town from Today FM presenter Alison Curtis after she broadcast her show from Gleeson’s Townhouse recently.
It's a reminder that not everything on social media is septic. If you are on X, you should browse through Parcej’s posts or follow him. More importantly, the people involved in Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands should use him as part of its next promotion campaign about Roscommon.
As the trees shimmer with the unmistakable shades of autumn, another reliable indicator of the passing of the seasons is when friend of the column, John Scally, gets in touch about his latest book. This year marks the 140th anniversary of the founding of the GAA. To mark the occasion John's new book ‘Extraordinary GAA People’ celebrates exceptional GAA figures. In this excerpt from the book, legendary Dublin footballer David Hickey recalls a trip to Roscommon when the Dubs were brought down to earth in the 1970s:
“In those days we sometimes travelled in Joe O'Hara's funeral cars called Princesses, if there was no big funeral that day. On one trip to play Roscommon in Elphin in November on a very wet day, we set out in a line of Princesses, the visibility was poor and the trip seemed to take forever. When we saw the Atlantic Ocean or some other milestone we knew there was a problem. We asked a local what happened to Elphin he answered, ‘Elphin is about an hour back the road.’ We had driven through it without realising it. We lost that game and Jimmy Keaveney got sent off standing up for me in a punch up.’ John Scally’s new book, ‘Extraordinary GAA People’, is available in all good bookshops now.
