De Valera's Irelands Read Online Free PDF Page B

occasionally to play for the firsts, but more often for the Metropolitan side which he preferred and which he captained in 1908. His team was narrowly de­feated in the final. He served as secretary to the club for one year and helped at the running of the annual sports each year in the college. With regard to schools rugby at this time it is interesting to learn that the minutes of the schools’ rugby committee record that E. de Valera was one of the two members present at the Gresham Hotel in October 1905 at the annual general meeting, representing Belvedere College; and that in the following year, October 1906, and again in 1908, he was one of the two who represented Blackrock. And in this connection it is worth mentioning that the first ever fixture between Blackrock and Belvedere took place in January 1907, shortly after de Valera moved into residence in the ‘Castle’ after his first year teaching at Belvedere.
    Fr Downey resigned as dean of the Castle in 1908 and a special func­tion and presentation was arranged by a number of his friends in­cluding de Valera. That was the signal for Dev to pull up his roots finally and move to outside accommodation, having spent most of his life from 1898 to 1908 in such close association with Blackrock, Rockwell and St Mary’s. At a special reception given by him as President of Ireland in Áras an Úachtaráin in 1960 in connection with the college centenary, he paid a moving tribute to those formative years to which he admitted freely he owed so much. At the college centenary he and his classmate Cardinal d’Alton were obviously the central figures. Fifty years prev­iously they were also among the special guests at the golden jubilee cele­brations of the college although they are out at the edge of the photos then. But that was away back in 1910!
    Next came 1916. The then Castle students, now reduced in numbers, mixed with the Sherwood Foresters as these consulted their obsolete maps looking for Williamstown Avenue, demolished in 1906, as a suit­able stopping place. They were on their way to face Commandant de Va­lera’s men at Mount Street Bridge. When the fighting was over and it was learned that de Valera was among those condemned to death, Fr Dow­ney, then President of the college, contacted the attorney general, Sir James O’Connor, who happened to be a past student of the college, to pass on the word that de Valera was American-born. He passed the same message on to James McMahon, secretary of the GPO, another past pupil of the college.
    Fr John T. Murphy, who was then provincial superior, wrote just after the Rising to inform the superior general in Paris on what had happened in Dublin. In his report he deplored the imprudence of the leaders of what he considered a misguided rebellion but paid tribute to their sense of honour and their Christian piety. He had of course known de Valera as a student and Thomas McDonagh as a prefect in Rockwell (1896–1901).
    When de Valera was elected President of Dáil Éireann in 1919, it was decided that he should go to the United States as soon as possible in that capacity. Very shortly after his secret arrival, and before he made his first public appearance at the Waldorf Astoria, Fr William O’Donnell, CSSp, who knew him personally and was deeply involved in the Irish move­ment in the United States, arranged that he should visit the Holy Ghost community at Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, composed as it was of past Blackrock and Rockwell men known to the President. Realising that it was a historic occasion they improvised a battery of lamps to take a time-exposure photo of the group that night. Seated beside the youthful looking President is one of Blackrock’s earliest students, Fr William Healy, CSSp. He it was who was responsible away back in 1865 for erecting the first (home made) green flag over the college, on St Patrick’s Day 1865. He was described by