Mammy’s boy Johnny Ronan, his ma and me
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother, said Abraham Lincoln.
A not-quite-as-famous bearded wise man, but one who clearly feels the same about his own angelic mother is Johnny Ronan. I met him with his mother Pauline the other week.
I always had the impression of the internationally respected tycoon as being something of a hard, even foreboding soul. Au contraire, he is more of a big pussycat. Primarily, because he and I ended up hugging his beloved mother, especially after I said that she reminded me very much of my own dear, and sadly departed, mother Maureen. Discussing mothers in Cafe en Seine of a Friday evening? Johnny is evidently a post-feminist new man. He brings his beloved mama to Cafe en Seine, after all.
It was after a great day at the Mustard Seed Communities lunch across the road in Fire, at Mansion House. (With the help in Ireland of men like Billy Glennon, Seamus Lynch, Michael O’Reilly, and Cahir O’Higgins, MSC is a charity committed to caring for the most unsafe members of society, chief among them disabled and abandoned children in Jamaica, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Zimbabwe; places where children with disabilities are routinely, and horrifyingly, abandoned.)
At the lunch in Fire, Monsignor Gregory Ramkissoon (who started the charity in 1978) was full of praise for Johnny and all the assistance he has given him over the years.
The Monsignor even recalled staying at Johnny’s house in Wicklow many years ago; and when he awoke, Johnny gave him an envelope with a donation to the charity, €25,000 in cash for the most vulnerable kids in one of the poorest parts of the world.
Clearly Johnny’s mammy, Pauline, has raised him properly.