Looking Back: Naas-Kilcullen Lions

Although the present Kilcullen Lions Club is long-established and has for many years raised substantial sums to help local charities and other organisations that need help, it's probably not generally known today that there was a previous Lions group here, writes Brian Byrne.

The Naas-Kilcullen Lions were set up in the late 1970s, and during their time they worked successfully to support deserving groups in both towns equally.

My father Jim Byrne Jr was one of the membership who served as President of the Club, in 1980, and thanks to Josephine Byrne I recently got some of the clippings of the club's activities during that time.

As a time capsule they show that much has changed in 40 years, and also that much has not. Most notable was the funds raised to provide CPC in Kilcullen and Naas Mercy Convent School in Naas with their first computers, so that pupils might have the opportunity to catch the wind of the early development of technology we now take for granted in our schools, workplaces, homes, and even in our phones.

There was also fundraising to bring older citizens from the respective towns for a summer holiday to the Butlins Holiday Camp in north Dublin, part of a national effort by the combined Lions Clubs of Ireland.

Support was also given beyond Ireland, and in the Leinster Leader story of 20 December 1980 we read that funds had been sent for humanitarian needs in the Kampuchea crisis — that's one forgotten in four decades, but such situations continue to happen today.

In that year, the main events organised by the Naas-Kilcullen Lions included a 10-mile Cycle Rally from Quinnsworth Car Park in Naas to Naas Rugby Club. The late local businessman Gay Warren and Donal 'Scones' Fitzsimons of Naas helped organiser Tony Frost, and between them they managed to get some 250 participants of all ages. The Anniversary Charter Dinner of the Club was held in Frank Fallon's well-known Red House between Newbridge and Naas, a business which later decamped to Kilcullen under the stewardship of Brian Fallon.

A very poignant appeal in the file from Teresa Grattan of St Vincent's Hospital in Athy notes that they had organised Knit-Ins to pay the difference between renting a colour TV and the black and white sets provided by the Health Board for each of the seven units housing the 310 older people there. She was hoping that the local Lions Clubs — Naas-Kilcullen, Kildare-Newbridge, and Athy — might help them buy sets instead of renting at a cost of £1,350 a year.

There are clippings which also report the handing over of Apple computers to the principals of the two schools — Sr Joan of Cross and Passion Convent and Sr Mary of the Naas Mercy Convent. Sr Joan said young people 'need not be daunted' by the increasing use of computers in their world, while Sr Mary said the gift would allow girls from her school to take up the optional Computer Studies programme on the curriculum. A front page picture on The Nationalist of 18 April 1981 shows a CPC school prefect, Jane Leavy, trying out the new computer. I wonder where she is today?

The pictures here today will no doubt provoke many memories of those early local Lions, and some sadness too as so many of them are no longer with us. It would be nice to get a few more memories from this Looking Back.

Photographs use Policy — Privacy Policy