D-Day hero honoured
Postmark for Mayo woman whose weather reports changed history
AN Post has unveiled a new postmark to commemorate the Mayo postmistress whose weather measurements in 1944 saved D-Day and changed the course of history.
Maureen Sweeney, who was born in June 1923 as Maureen Flavin and died last December, worked as a postmistress in Blacksod.
She was responsible for weather measurements and observations, as the post office also served as a weather station.
She would check them with lighthouse keeper Ted Sweeney, before her records were shared with the Allied Forces.
As a result of her notes, taken on her 21st
‘We couldn’t be more proud of Maureen’
birthday, General Eisenhower gave the command to delay D-Day by one day, until June 6, to spare the allies from attempting to land in stormy conditions.
Recalling the Normandy invasion, which led to the liberation of France and helped to win World War II, Ms Sweeney once said: ‘They could arrange everything, but they couldn’t pre-arrange the weather.’
The lighthouse keeper went on to become her husband; they married in 1946, and the couple had four children.
Yesterday, four generations of the Sweeney family visited An Post’s EXO HQ in the Dublin Docklands to unveil a special postmark that will be applied to millions of letters processed by An Post over the coming weeks.
The postmark features Blacksod Bay Lighthouse and the text ‘Maureen Sweeney, Postmistress 1923-2023’.
David McRedmond, chief executive of An Post, said: ‘We couldn’t be more proud of postmistress Maureen Sweeney, who joins the ranks of those who contribute to the greater good just by doing their job.
‘It used to be said that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”, but who would have thought that the woman that watched the weather changed the course of history?’
Vincent Sweeney, Maureen’s son, said: ‘As a mother and grandmother she influenced our lives, but it is incredible how she influenced the shape of the world in which we now live.
‘She would have loved the notion of it all being remembered in this way.’