Limerick Person of the month: Anne Curley’s kind heart is a home to many

A WOMAN who has inspired thousands of local children to become better versions of themselves, has been named the Limerick Person of the Month.

Anne Curley, fondly known as Curley, has spent the bones of 60 of her 80 years caring for children and bringing out the best in them.

If she wasn’t teaching half of Weston to swim in the Ennis Road pool, she was selling apple tarts door-to-door to fund their holiday retreats to Ballybunion and Ballycotton or else she’d be found behind her stall at the Milk Market raising more money to help the youth of Limerick enjoy a more fruitful childhood.

“I can't believe it,” were the words uttered by Anne when she was presented with the Limerick Person of the Month award at the Clayton Hotel.

“I suppose I touched a lot of people’s lives and I was unaware of it,” she said, flashing her roguish smile.

A native of Birr, County Offaly, Anne trained to be a nurse in St Patrick’s on the Navan Road in Dublin, specialising in infant dietetics.

She first came to Limerick in the 1960s when she took up a job minding the new born twins of Bishop Wyse Jackson who was the Bishop of Limerick.

“I also worked with the Eastern Health Board with the Single Parents and Unmarried Mothers as it was known as at the time, for a year,” Anne explains.

But the young Anne knew there was a great big world out there that she hadn’t seen and she was eager to explore. “I answered an ad in an English paper from some agent. I was around 24. I had not a word of Italian. I headed to Italy. I loved every moment. I saw there is another world - a bigger world.”

While she initially went working as an au pair Anne then got into a boarding school where she worked with the children.

“I was always very interested in children, always. It was just after the war. I always had a soft spot for children that nobody else wanted.”

After 10 years, Anne woke up one morning and decided, “I owe society something and I better come back”.

And so she came back and started a playschool in Caherdavin.

“The girl running it said to me that they was looking for somebody to work in Ballinacurra Weston and would I be interested. I said I’d give it a go.”

Anne’s job was essentially to organise the children - 45 in the morning and 45 in the evening.

“The mothers were great. They would have their day once a month that they would help. Most of the mothers never had less than five children - some had 25.

“The school was complaining that the children weren’t going to school- they were looking in the window so I made a bargain with the big lads, ‘if ye go to school I’ll open from 4pm to 11 at night’. We had table tennis, basketball - everything. The boys learned to knit and sew and darn and dance.

“We never could afford to put them into competition,” she says adding that local solicitors were “very good” to sponsor a child so they could take part in a club or competition.

“It was one big room with a toilet and the corporation ran it and the Our Lady of Lourdes parish paid the bills through bingo. They were great. We’d go to Curraghchase. I don’t know how many times they went to the zoo and once we got to the Áras.”

When the children were up to mischief or being a little naughty, but witty, Anne always concealed her laugh “but they knew inside I was laughing”.

If they marched in the St Patrick’s Day parade Anne ensured the children got a free flight around Limerick from Coonagh Airfield, near where she lives.

In the 1960s she would be seen every Thursday marching some 200 children from the Garryglass playground over the bridge out to the Ennis Road swimming pool, now closed.

“The under 8 group was called Triple Trapple but then they called the whole place Triple Trapple. The corporation never really knew what to call us but no matter what I asked them for they always backed me, they were very good as were the social services centre.” Anne continued this role for 36 years helping thousands of children along the way.

“I enjoyed every minute and I’m still doing the children’s holiday with the Garryglass Children’s Holiday Homes,” she explained. “We started that after acquiring a house in Ballybunion.”

“The children were out of the city over July and August. Everyone got a full week there - there were 48 children each week for eight weeks.

“We never had any problems with them. They would be five up to 17 years of age. The older ones would help.

“Over my years working with children I would give the clergy I dealt with an award for what they gave to the youth - both ladies and gentlemen. They worked their hearts to do the best for them.”

In the mid-1970s the location for the summer retreats moved to Ballycotton, County Cork after the group acquired a house there.

Ballycotton has become the focus for a summer adventure that has influenced so many of the local children, many of whom might not have had any opportunity of experiencing such a holiday. One of Anne’s major triumphs has been to secure ownership of the house so that the future of the summer camp project is now secure.

“Outside Ballycotton there is a beautiful little beach and they can pick periwinkles.”

Anne and her colleagues financed the retreats by selling apple tarts and cakes.

“We used to make 40 apple tarts and 10 cakes and sold them from door-to-door in the parish ‘Apple tarts today, apple tarts today’.

“We’d bake them on a Thursday evening and when they’d come out of the oven at four o’clock we’d go door-to-door and come out with around 50 or 60 pounds.

“We’d make them up in the community hall in Our Lady of Lourdes. The women in the parish used to make two boiled cakes each and we might have 50 boiled cakes and we’d take them with us on holiday and eat them on the beach as a snack.

“I find it is lovely to hand a child a chubby lollipop going over the cliffs or an apple or something. The food is never rationed,” explains Anne who also studied social studies at night at Mulgrave Street.

Anne of course is also one of the great characters of the Milk Market, where she has operated her charity stall under the Mungret Court Arch for 40 years.

Curley’s Charity Stall is often the first encountered by those entering the Milk Market through the archway.

All proceeds from Anne’s charity stall go to the Garryglass Children’s Holiday Home in Ballycotton.

“People would give me clothes, cutlery and doodahs (ornaments etc) everything was donated to the Children’s Holiday Home Stall. We’d be there every Saturday.

“That holiday means so much to the children. It’s great for them to get away from the city to the sea and see there's a big world waiting for them.”

The Limerick Person of the Month award is sponsored by the Limerick Leader, media agency Southern, and the Clayton Hotel Limerick.