Sarah loved outdoor life and her travels

MORE than four decades ago, Sarah Jennings, who died on April 18, 2017, came to Dundalk to teach in the local CBS primary school.

This was in the early seventies when Christian Brothers’ schools were mostly all-male. Over the years, women staff grew and she became assistant principal of her school in a town she loved.

The joy of teaching for her was about meeting her new crop of students each year, seeing them grow and develop, while still keeping track of those who had passed through her hands. A little boast of hers was that in all her years teaching she never favoured one pupil over another.

After retiring, gardening became one of her joys. She used to make the annual pilgrimage to the monastery in Collon to buy her new crop of bulbs and flowers. It was like an earthy swap for her new school year of pupils.

There was a purity about pottering around, dirtying her hands with the freshly turned earth in her garden in Blackrock which became her home in 1987. And in full view of the legendary Cooley mountains, standing sentinel across the bay, she found a deep satisfaction watching her flowers bloom.

Her love of the outdoor life extended beyond her home place. Long before cheap airlines and easy jetting whisked travellers to faraway places, she liked to travel and one memorable holiday was a hitch-hiking trip to Rome. And a come-whatmay attitude - an essential quality for any hitch-hiker - was something she never lost.

She ran up a fair bit of mileage too on her regular day trips to Dublin, a shorter excursion but in keeping with her fondness for being on the move.

In the hospital when they were preparing her for surgery (an intervention she never regained consciousness from) she was asking the foreign doctors and nurses - between pangs of pain - where they came from and telling them about holidays she had spent on their side of the world or plans to go there.

She was unfamiliar with illness and that allowed her to indulge her biggest love: her independence, and she lived it to the full, enjoying the afterglow of a game of golf or bridge, leaving life in full stride having played a game of both the week before.

She was a member of Dundalk Historical Society and fittingly, like a requiem for a love of her roots, she was brought back to her native Dunmore (County Galway) to be buried with her ancestors. This was following a funeral Mass in Blackrock church, where Father Padraig Keenan captured beautifully the essence of her life.

She is survived by her sisters, Brigid, Kay, Maureen and Róisín, nieces, nephews, wider family members and friends.