Open the Door of your Heart

About the Book

This book is the story of a life born a week before the German army marched into Poland, the 12th. child of a poor Irish mother and her unemployed husband. The story tells of an idyllic childhood a short distance from the town of Mullinger in the midlands of Ireland followed by an education with the Christian Brothers and inevitably the boat to England. The return to Ireland six years later, the Showband scene in the 60's, love and marriage to a Mayo girl, raising a family and then facing a serious illness. The game of golf, working in the Electricity Board for 30 years and during this time living in Naa, Co. Kildare, Edenferry, Co. Offaly and Kill, Co. Kildare, and retiring in Ballina/Killaloe on the shores of Lough Derg.

About the Author

Born in Mullingar Co. Westmeath, Ireland on 26th August 1939. Youngest of 12 children with eight sisters and three brothers. His father was an unemployed labourer who had served in France for the four years of World War I. His mother had a great ambition for her children to be educated. Educated in the Christian Brothers school, Mullingar. The family moved to London in 1952 and he followed in 1954. Trained as an electrician in Guys Hospital and later returned to Ireland and worked, first in Bord na Mora and later in the Electricity Supply Board for 30 years. Married to Mary Murphy from near Belmullet in 1961, they have three daughters and one son. They retired in 1999 and moved to Ballina on the shores of Lough derg in Tipperary.