Dear Christian Brothers and teachers,

ALITTLE over two years after my mother died in November 1943 and six weeks before my father died in March 1946, I was entrusted to your care in St Vincent De Paul Male Orphanage in Glasnevin, Dublin. I was 11 years old, and I was to remain in your care for the next six-and-a-half years. And I want to say a very sincere belated thank you for guiding and helping me throughout those years, preparing me for life.

My overall memories of those years are good, even if there were a few dark moments when certain members of the order misunderstood their calling. But those memories are hugely overshadowed by you, Brother Thomas Anthony Egan. You gave me a love of gardening and neat green lawns. You, Brother Edmund Ryall, you nurtured me academically, taught me good manners and how to dress myself presentably. And you Finbarr O’Leary, you introduced me to Shakespeare and the world of literature and gave me a love of the written word — all staples in the life I was to lead in time. Each of you was a member of a great team of educators and mentors to the boarders and day-boys of St Vincent’s alike. But to those of us who were parentless, sometimes doubly so, that team was “family” and “significant others” in our teenage progression towards adulthood and the world after St Vincent’s.

My experience of growing up in an institution run by the Irish Christian Brothers was benign, wholesome and productive. Some have even said it was the “other side of the coin”. So, thank you all.

Ronnie Kelly, Bishopstown, Cork