A case of Leaving it late

JAMES Kennedy left school at 15.

That was in 1940 but this year, he sits his Leaving Cert examination, having completed a one year adult Leaving Cert course at the College of Commerce in Cork.

It's been a busy, busy year for him, an interesting, stimulating experience. It was not easy, he says, to re-enter the classroom, to focus his mind and thoughts for five hours daily on matters educational and then go home to write essays, learn facts, figure out the details. But he enjoyed every day of it.

"The history," he says, "that's my favourite subject, but then I always loved anything to do with history. English is no problem either, but then I always liked reading."

Other subjects, geography, business organisation and home economics, presented some problems but no insurmountable ones.

From an academic point of view, he has acquired a huge amount of information, has had his intellectual powers challenged and his mind stretched, but he feels the social element of the course was important too.

The camaraderie of his classmates, a disparate bunch, 25 strong, of all ages and backgrounds, was supportive, encouraging, fun at times. Then there was the interchange of ideas and opinions between teachers and students, the friendly ambience of the college and the great numbers of young people about, the newness of it all.

"I had to leave school at 15. I'd have liked to have stayed on longer, but times were hard then and I had to go out to work," he explains. Jobs were scarce then and wages low in his native Kilkenny, but James found occasional work with farmers or on building sites, before joining his father in the Army in 1942.

There he stayed, doing the routine things, manoeuvres up and down the State, until his discharge in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, in 1946 at the end of the "Emergency".

For a while afterwards he worked with Sisk's, the builders, in Dublin, but then he joined other ex-soldiers on a cattle boat bound for south Wales they had heard there was money to be made in the mines.

"Tough? You can say that again. I worked in the deepest coal mine there. We thought it was bad until we heard the stories from older miners. Before the war, conditions were atrocious, sweat labour, foul air.

"We saw the results every Friday when we were queuing up for our pay there was another window next to us with a queue of ex-miners, men in their 40s, but no longer able to work. Their lungs were damaged, health gone, on the scrap heap.

"No, I didn't stay there long, about two years. Met some good people there. Decent men, the Welsh. They have a tradition, too, of going down in the mines. We hadn't so most of us were back home within two years."

SO IT was back to the Army again for James. There were very few options then, and though he had no great love for the regimented life, he enlisted with the First Motor Squadron in Athlone and did his retraining in the Curragh under a famous Cavan footballer, John Joe O'Reilly.

He remained in the Army until he reached retirement age and lived most of his life in Fermoy, Co Cork, where he still lives today. He married a Fermoy woman in the 1950s and had many opportunities for promotion but, because of his wife's attachment to her native town, he refused the offers a number of times.

He could have reached the rank of sergeant major, if he had been willing to move, he says however, he feels the lack of a formal education was the biggest obstacle to realising his full potential.

Was that where the learning bug originated? "To an extent, yes," he says.

"But besides that I had a grand uncle by the name of Hunt in Kilkenny, long ago, and the people all looked up to him. Do you see, he was the only one around among the working class people who could read and write well. He'd fill in all the forms for the local people, write letters to husbands who were away in the war, because a lot of the wives couldn't write at that time. So I suppose there was a certain respect for learning and knowledge ingrained in me.

"I knew education was important, though I never got the chance at it, so I was always trying to find out how I'd get back into the education system."

The first attempt was made at a local school in Fermoy, where the Open University held an introductory meeting, after which he embarked on a year long foundation course for arts. His success in this encouraged him to continue, but the system was not very satisfactory and the cost was high. So when he saw the notice in the Examiner about the adult Leaving course, he applied, was accepted and having completed the year is delighted that he has stayed the course and hopes for success in August when the results come out.

From here, where next? "I have applied for arts in UCC," he says. "I think they take about 100 mature students. I've been up to the college and filled in all the forms but I don't know how they select the lucky ones. I'd love to do history and archaeology.

"I think I'd love the atmosphere there the library, the world of learning, of books. I hope I make it."