It is true that age has a way of playing tricks with the memory and so it was for the two of us.  It became a hoot between us as we tried to recall faces and then names of fellow pupils of the Class of 1960/1961 at St Patrick’s Boys Primary School, Rooney’s Meadow, Newry.

The first theory that we went with was that there was 30 pupils in this class. A day later and we would find out that this was entirely wrong.  This encouraged us to concentrate and compete to see who got the forgotten names first. At our age this hurt the brain cells.

As we added more names, the thought was that forty pupils was the maximum, so if a few names are missing then apologies for the slight but it goes back to the age thing.

We think we have all the names and at the same time we wonder have we put in names that came into our lives later and the memories all got mixed up.

We would be very grateful if anyone could come up with a photograph of this class, or could add the missing names.

The other problem was, did this class start off as a whole unit in P1 and if not, when did others join? The other side of this is did we forget names, of boys who perhaps left before P7?  

We both feel that the puzzle is not solved yet, so this is not the definitive list.

The other problem is did we put names in that actually went to the Abbey Primary?

Perhaps you, the reader know best?

Anyway, here is our list …

Martin Bannon

P.J. Blair 

Gerard Boyle

Stephen Boyle 

Paul Byrne

Pat Carroll

Joe Casey

Pat Craven

Louis Cunningham

Robert Ferguson

Brian Fitzpatrick

Dessie Fitzpatrick

Peter Flanagan

Mark Graham

Benny Hughes

Peadar Jackson

Dessie Kavanagh

Micheal Keenan

Peter Kelly

Sean Kenny

Tony Loy

Kieran Lucas

Hugh Mallon

Brendan McCabe

Brian McConaghy

Paul McCrink

Gerard McEvoy

Thomas McGuigan

Gary McKay

Micheal McKevitt

Colm McKigney 

Peadar McLoughlin 

Thomas Murphy

Terry Murray 

Gerard O Hare

Declan O Reilly 

John Rodgers 

Martin Toal 

Damian Trodden

Teachers   P1 Mrs Rafferty

  P2  Miss Barry or was it Miss O’Donohue?

 P3 Miss Hollywood

 P4 George Matthews

 P5 Fintan Mussen

 P6  Fintan Mussen

 P7 Fintan Mussen then Paddy Aherne 

Headmaster, Mr Vincent Cranney, Vice Principal, Mr Donal Delahunt.

Some Facts

We know that Louis Cunningham designed the school crest that was going into use in September 67 when we would be elsewhere. 

I wonder if it still the same or was it modified at a late date?

Many of the above played in the school’s first ever Gaelic team, a one-off match against the Abbey Primary.  Score? We think that St Patrick’s failed to score on a very wet day. The Abbey had shooting practice.

We trained on the tarmac yard but went to the green in Slieve Gullion Road a few times. There was no football pitch at the school at this time.

We talked about the milk run that took place every school day.

We would like responses to the above list! We are not looking for personal comments on the teachers.

After the 11+ results the class was scattered among the three Newry Schools,

St Colman’s College, Abbey CBS and St Joseph’s.

St Colman’s College … 6

Abbey CBS … 10

St Joseph’s … 22

Again the above figures may be challenged.

I wonder what the next thing we will be hurting our brain cells over?