‘It’s time to hand over the reins’

“The tsunami – there was a collection for that.”

Redhills correspondent Frank Smith is sifting through local news from 2005 in search of a particular historic item for the village.

“The late Mary Boyle of Keelagh won over €19,000 in the jackpot in Redhills. Philip Hayes, who is still hail and hearty, went to Kenya in March and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.”

Conscious of the Celt on the other end of the line, Frank speeds up, paraphrasing the already bite-sized missives.

“Three or four local lads went to work in an orphanage in Belarus; there was a Redhills Golfing Society doing well; Tidy Towns did very well every year.”

At last he finds the story relating to Redhills footballers.

“They bridged a 32-year gap in 2005 when they won the junior championship,” he says with satisfaction at locating it.

A snapshot of the footballers’ progress was a staple of Redhills news. They backed up the junior win with the intermediate title in 2008. These trophies, and the intercounty careers of Rory Dunne, Packie Leddy, Oisin Minagh, Turloc Mooney, and Paddy Gumley who also had success with Nemo Rangers in Cork were amongst the most joyous events he reported.

“Football every year was topsy turvy – they are doing well this year,” he cheerfully reports.

“They have a pretty good team and there’s good hopes for the championship, please God, this year.”

Other sports also featured with updates on Ceire Smith’s boxing career, Gina Dolan’s cross country accomplishments, and Paul and Hugh Fitzpatrick competing in race walking championships.

Items on sports, jackpot wins, mountain climbs, and charitable causes will hopefully continue to flow into the Celt’s offices from Redhills, but they will no longer come courtesy of Frank Smith’s email. After 19 years of keeping readers informed of all the happenings in Redhills, he’s calling it a day.

A meeting of Redhills Development Association in July 2003 led Frank to lift the pen in the first place.

“The public house was changing hands from McMahon’s who had been there for years, and the late Phylis McAdam was retiring from the post office, and some time before that the other shop – Kelly’s were retiring as well. There was a lot happening in the village that wasn’t being recorded.

“Sure like an eejit I undertook to ask my good friend, the late Paddy Walsh, who was then the Ballyhaise news correspondent for years – I couldn’t polish his shoes, he was excellent at it – and I asked him would he give me a hand to put something together.”

With his news in hand he headed for the Celt’s HQ then at Station House and bumped into Sean McMahon. The stalwart reporter gave Frank a tour of the offices and introduced him to everyone and anyone.

“By the time I left, Sean had made me the Redhills news correspondent,” Frank recalls.

Sadly on only his second week in the role Frank had to write obituaries for two young cousins from the area who tragically lost their lives in a traffic accident.

Obituaries are regrettably a necessary part of a diligent correspondent’s job.

“The one thing I always found difficult was when somebody died, you didn’t like to be invasive, but at the same time afterwards they [the bereaved family] would like to have something in about it. So it was a balancing act – do you disturb them, and maybe upset them? Or would they be upset if you didn’t disturb them?

“It’s always a bit delicate and I haven’t always got it right. I’ve made mistakes, but as someone said recently, ‘The person that doesn’t make mistakes never does anything’.”

Informative, concise, well intentioned and equally well written, Frank’s notes were always welcomed by the Celt.

Regardless of the self imposed limitations of not reporting births, weddings or anniversaries, Frank seldom found writing notes a struggle. No mean feat considering the village’s modest population.

“There was always something, but we aren’t exactly the centre of the universe,” he quips.

“To my knowledge no house in Redhills has a number – it doesn’t need one. There’s no number one Redhills nor number two. Actually if you went through Redhills looking in one direction, you’d miss it,” he says drawing laughs from the Celt. “That’s not an exaggeration, because on one side you have the wall of the estate.”

The petite community punched above its weight in generating news, whether it was the appearance of Bridget Rudden on the cover of the ‘Vanishing Ireland’ photo book in 2010, and subsequent appearance on RTE’s Nationwide; the appearance of Oisin Minagh, Turloc Mooney and Paddy Gumley for Cavan in the All-Ireland U21 Final in 2011; the revival of the Carnival on the Green in 2012; the closure in 2013 of the Garda Barracks, made famous by Shane Connaughton’s book ‘A Border Station’; or Leontia Sheridan being crowned Cavan Rose in 2015.

2015 was also notable for a rather unusual news item – the death of Sam Goldwyn Jnr of Metro Goldwyn Mayer fame.

“Shane Connaughton got me to put that in,” says Frank.

“He was a regular visitor to Redhills around the time of the film and for sometime afterwards, and he passed away. That was an unusual one, but quite genuine. I don’t know who the family were but we sympathised with them.”

Reporting on the village’s festival – the Carnival on the Green - over eight consecutive years before Covid rudely called a temporary halt, gave Frank satisfaction.

“The Carnival each summer brought great life to the village. Redhills people are great, if they are going to do something, it’s done well.

“It wasn’t one organisation which ran the Carnival, it was every organisation – I think they might have divided the proceeds from the carnival 16 ways. Please God it will start up again next year,” he says.

Reflecting on his time, he says he enjoyed it. He suspects the people in Redhills probably already knew the news anyway, but people from surrounding areas were his keenest readers.

“A lot of people have come to me, especially since I said I was retiring, from outside the parish, and I’ve got some lovely phone calls and messages, just thanking me for it, and saying they’ll miss it.”

Having restarted his Building Energy Ratings (BER) work, he found writing notes “more challenging than it used to be”.

Frank wouldn’t have been able to submit news in the coming weeks anyway as he will join his wife Rita, their five grown up children - Declan, Sheena, Conor, Aisling, and Jennifer – their partners and 10 and a half grandchildren (Jennifer is expecting) for a family holiday at Center Parcs.

The main reason however for bringing an end to his spell was the feeling it was just time to go.

“It’s 19 years – as a certain man said in the Dáil one time, ‘I’ve done the area some service’ – not an awful lot – and it’s time to hand over the reins to somebody.”