Recalling Kilcullen's 'Flying Priest'

 "I remember him landing the plane in the Hundred Acres at New Abbey."

It was that comment by local man Liam Walker last week which prompted a remembrance of Kilcullen's only 'flying priest', Canon Joseph Furlong, writes Brian Byrne. Liam had come across an article in an old copy of the 'Irish Red Setter Yearbook', in which the real hero wasn't Fr Furlong, but his dog 'Bruno'.

Bruno was possibly Ireland's first flying red setter. Sitting on the wooden seat of the Aeronca C-3 monoplane beside his pilot master as he flew them both around the country. When he came to Kilcullen as Parish Priest in 1952, Fr Furlong certainly caused a stir locally, though he had been flying regularly since 1937 in North Dublin, where he had founded the Tramway Aero Club at Kildonan while a curate in Finglas parish.

Aeronca C-3

Fr Furlong was the second owner of the plane, which had been imported from America in 1936 by one Reginald George Williams of Hanworth in England. Fr Furlong bought it there in the summer of 1937 and flew it to Kildonan. With an Irish registration number of EI-ABN, it was a very easy plane to fly and maintain, and was used for pilot training at the Tramway club as well as for Fr Furlong's own personal leisure flying. It was decommissioned by the Air Corps in 1939 at the outbreak of WW2. After the war, the plane was based at Weston Aerodrome, from where Fr Furlong was still flying it when he arrived in Kilcullen. EI-ABN is recorded as being scrapped there in 1956.

Little is on record of Fr Furlong's early life though it's known that he was a curate at St Patrick's Church in Celbridge from 1906-1908. He is also believed to have served as a Catholic chaplain in the Royal Air Force in France during WW1, where presumably he developed his interest in flying. He was a senior curate in Finglas from 1932, and had been elevated to Canon when he was posted in Kilcullen.

He arrived at a time when the parish was in debt to the tune of £16,000 following much-needed repairs to the church built in 1872. An annual Carnival with marquee dancing was the mainstay fundraiser, but it wasn't making serious inroads into the debt. The Canon made it his priority to clear the debt, keeping the pressure up on the parishioners to make it happen. Then he undertook a programme of fixing up other parish property, particularly Gormanstown Church which had become close to derelict.

When he died, 'in harness', in 1971 he was remembered as having left a legacy of a spirit of self-help which has characterised Kilcullen ever since. He was also deeply religious, and in a long life had gained an extraordinary range of experience and knowledge which funded many evenings of stories with his friends in the parish.

And Bruno? Well, according to Liam Walker — who in the Canon's later years used to drive him down to Wexford to visit his relations in that county of many Furlongs — the 'flying priest' had other dogs after Bruno died, each also named Bruno.

But there was no successor to the Aeronca C-3 in which both Fr Furlong and the original Bruno had soared so many times into the heavens of this earth.

This article was first published on the Kilcullen Page of the Kildare Nationalist.