This is your life, Sam

It isn't easy to keep a surprise party a secret from the recipient. Especially if you have to postpone it at the last minute and then do it again a few weeks later.

But Sam Sloan's family managed just that over the last month. The plan to surprise him for his 80th with a big spash in Fallons had to be hastily dropped when he became seriously ill a few days before the event.

Thankfully he recovered, and last Sunday in Fallons some 120 people turned out to celebrate with him. He was clearly taken completely by surprise as his sons Kieran and Fergal brought him through the end door of the back restaurant.



"I hadn't a clue," he said afterwards. "I thought I was coming to a quiet family lunch."

There were lots of tears and many choked throats as Sam 'worked the room' before the meal and met up with friends, brothers, cousins -- he has more than 60 first cousins, we heard afterwards -- and a bunch of friends from Kilcullen and Crookstown, where he taught in the National School for 21 years.

The rest of the afternoon was, well, it was like any great party, with lots of stories, recollections and reminiscences.

In olden times it was a tradition that poems of praise would be written for people who had achieved much. So it was from the Sloan family too, with Fergal reading out in verse the story of his Dad's life. His meeting with his wife, the late Phyllis, and subsequent raising of his family and working as a teacher for a total of 32 years after leaving his native Roscommon all featured in the poetic 'This is Your Life'.



There were lots of 'thank you's said on all sides -- Sam did his 'as Gaeilge' in part, and with flowers for his daughter Fiona, with whom he is living today. His brother Frank paid tribute to how Sam had looked after Phyllis in her illness before she died in 1998.

In conversation later Sam recalled some of the aspects of his teaching career, noting that things changed considerably with the arrival of television in the early 60s. "Discipline went out the window, and you could see which children were up at night watching the television," he said. "Homework was neglected, and I remember the night they gave me a party for my retirement, I told the parents even then that there was a knob on the thing to turn it off."

That said, some of the most pleasant memories of his career and afterwards are of pupils of his who are now teachers themselves. "I feel I must have passed something on. And it is great too when past pupils come up and say I had taught them, even if I can't remember them from Adam!"

It isn't many who manage to achieve 80 years even in these days of modern medical miracles, so that itself was worthy of last weekend's celebration. But to be there surrounded by so many family and friends is the icing on the cake, isn't it?

Brian Byrne.