Gerry Moran recalls three momentous events in his life

 

There are three things that people of my generation know for sure.
One: we know for sure where we were when JFK was assassinated.
Two: we know for sure where we were when Packie Bonner saved and David O’Leary scored.
And, three: we know for sure where we were when Elvis Presley, the King of Rock & Roll, died, aged 42, on 16th August. 1977.

A few of us were walking out of the CBS school after an evening of study for the famous County Council Scholarship when Lar Hunt, one of the nicest teachers to walk this earth, came rushing towards us, saying “Boys, boys, President Kennedy has been assassinated.”

We looked at Lar, somewhat puzzled until he realised that we didn’t know what ‘assassinated’ meant. “Boys,” he said, “President Kennedy has been shot.”
We walked slowly, silently, home that night suddenly aware that there was a big, bad world out there.

I was in John Cleere’s bar, in Kilkenny, glued to the television, biting my nails, when Packie Bonner saved against Romania’s Timofte. And when David O’Leary scored, the pub, quite literally, erupted.
I have never known such exhilaration, such unbridled joy at a sporting occasion before or since. I have never hugged so many men in my life and I have never kissed so many women. None of them my wife!

16th August, 1977. I was lying on a sun bed, on the patio of my sister’s home in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. My sister was working with the United Nations there and invited me over for a holiday.

I was listening to the BBC World Service on the radio when I heard some Elvis Presley songs being played. Rather unusual, I thought, for the BBC World Service to be playing popular music. And then a plummy British voice reminded us that Elvis Aaron Presley had died at his Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 42. I was stunned. And profoundly saddened.

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