DESPITE the battering wind and rain, a sizeable crowd showed up at the St Brendan’s Church Pastoral Centre on Friday night for the launch of a special booklet with great photos and stories from a remarkable estate.

The publication in question, ‘The Street Where You Live – Memories Of St Brendan’s Park’, launched by former resident Mikey Sheehy, was put together by a committee from St Brendan’s Park, and contains fantastic photos of residents down through the years, with wonderful stories and anecdotes.

“We held a reunion earlier this year and it was a great success,” said Johnny Bonner of the book committee, with the other members being Anne Pullen, Martina Ronan, Tim Slattery and Noreen O’Leary.

“We had 400 plus at the Austin Stacks clubhouse that night and it was said that we can’t leave it at that and we should get a book together. So a number of us decided to form a committee and got on with the work,” said Johnny.

Continued below…

Since March the committee has been working, gathering photos and compiling old stories to make the finished  product an excellent read for anyone, not just people from St Brendan’s Park.

“We had so much information and photos it could have been a 64 page rather than a 32 page booklet,” said Johnny. “It charts people who have been successful in sports, stories from characters of the estate and much more.”

“We find that people are not buying just one, but taking five or six as it’s reaching out to diaspora and they’ll get a jolt from the past.”

Launching the book, Mikey Sheehy recalled special memories growing up in the estate and commended the committee and the hard work that went into the booklet.

Those present enjoyed refreshments and perused the many old photos on display on the ‘memory wall’.

There was a suggested donation of €3 for the booklet with all proceeds going to Kerry/Cork Health Link Bus, Tralee Branch of MS and Kerry Hospice.

Scroll down for photos…