JOHN McGAHERN's father, Frank, was the first person who walked the streets of Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, in uniform without being armed, historian Frank Brennan told students at the John McGahern International Seminar.
He pointed out that the father was a "mysterious figure in many ways" with very little known about his origins. He had come came to Ballinamore in 1922 as a Garda sergeant. It was a time when Ireland was recovering from the terrible War of Independence followed by "the even more vicious civil war", Mr Brennan pointed out.
He said it had been a very brave decision by the authorities to send out an unarmed police force, a decision which showed courage by the administration as well as by the men on the ground.
As the Garda had to build up an officer corps, Mr Brennan said that recruits who stood out because of their education and leadership qualities tended to be appointed as sergeants. Frank McGahern had gone to the famous Latin school in Moyne, Co Longford, and had also been a leader of a flying column in the War of Independence.
Mr Brennan told those attending the seminar that, according to John McGahern, his father rarely spoke of his early days in Ballinamore but he did break his "embargo on the past" once to recall the time the bank was robbed by the Doherty gang. The bank on the main street was directly across the road from the then Garda barracks, currently Reynolds estate agents.
In Memoir, McGahern recalled the bank had been robbed by the Doherty gang, who had been in the IRA and had fought on the Republican side in the Civil War, but he also noted this "was a private enterprise". He recalled hearing his father remark casually that if he had been armed that day, "not one of them would have left Ballinamore alive".
Mr Brennan told the gathering that if a community was lucky enough to have a writer of serious calibre in its midst "that area will be forever remembered".
McGahern spent 50 of his 71 years in the local area, he said.
