It was just after eleven o'clock on the morning of Tuesday, November 8th, 1960. The setting was the Irish Press building on Burgh Quay, once the home of the Tivoli vaudeville theatre. In his cramped office overlooking the Liffey, Lieut-Col Matthew J Feehan, editor of the Sunday Press, was detailing what the temple of journalism required of its newest acolyte when the door burst open.
Clutching his notebook and looking straight out of The Front Page, news editor Gerry Fox strode in and tersely announced in steely tones, "Colonel, 10 of our boys butchered in the Congo." My induction period was abruptly terminated for the nonce. And Ireland went into shock at the news that Baluba tribesmen in the former Belgian Congo had ambushed and slaughtered a group of Irish Army peacekeepers.
It was one of those days all right. Darkness and light. Sorrow and joy. And high adrenaline. Because of the nation's fixation on the bloody events in the Congo, another world event slipped a notch down the news agendas. That same day, John F Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected president of the United States.
An auspicious start, by any standards, for my first day in journalism. The dramatic beginning of an episode that ended with a bitter twist.
For it was only when I came to write this vignette that it struck me: my time in the Sunday Press precisely matched the presidential life and death of John F Kennedy, to the day.
Then a fresh-faced, callow teenager lately produced from the high-achieving, low-overhead academy of O'Connell Schools, I had been sent by the Brothers to be interviewed in Irish Press House on O'Connell Street, previously the Elephant House of Elverys, now Supermac.
I must have done well, for shortly thereafter I received a two-page contract which, at this remove, exudes the musty whiff of de Valera's frugal Ireland flavoured with a dash of the Dickensian workhouse.
"You are hereby appointed" it intoned, "subject to approval as hereunder, to the Editorial Staff of the Company as a Junior Journalist, at the salary of £7. 3s. per week, subject to the following conditions:-" Such was my ecstasy at this salubrious news that weeks passed, and the contract was well and truly signed and witnessed and returned, before I paid any attention to the rest of it. Not that it mattered. By then I had entered the holy of holies, and my will was beatifically subservient to the greater good. . . A sample or two give the contract's aroma: "If so required by the head of your department you will, in your own time and at your own expense make yourself proficient in shorthand and typing to the standards laid down for you and furnish if and when required adequate evidence of having the proficiency expected."
Duty, duty, must be done. . . so off to Caffreys College in St. Stephen's Green I went, to absorb the Kabbala of Pitman and master the manual dexterity of touch typing. The shorthand, alas, has evaporated over time, but the high-speed touch typing is a daily resonance.
But there was also in this aged parchment the call to a higher way of life: "It is expected that you will devote yourself diligently to advancing yourself in your chosen profession of Journalism and that you will strive to achieve the standard of competency worthy of that profession; that you will in all things conduct yourself with diligence, honesty and propriety in the course of your duties; that you will not absent yourself from duty without unavoidable cause or without having obtained the permission of the head of your department whose instructions and directions you should faithfully follow and observe." Amen, and glory be.
So I was contracted, articled, bound to the rigours and high chivalric code of Journalism. Mind you, in an accompanying letter from personnel manager Colm Traynor, a more mundane note was struck: "Further to your interview, we are pleased to offer you a position on our staff as a 'copy-boy'."
But in the heady euphoria of youth, this was a difference without distinction in the eyes of the true believer. And so it proved.
The next three years were among the most formative and distinctive of my life. As the floods of memory wash around the brain stems, the three men I admire the most stood out as pillars of the profession: the aforementioned Gerry Fox, finest news editor of his day; production and assistant editor Willie Collins, the veritable daily foundation stone of Ireland's largest-selling newspaper; and the elegant, deadly and deeply kind deputy editor, Dick Wilkes.
But the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. With the classic mixed emotions I tendered my resignation to the Sunday Press and prepared to move across the Liffey to the RTÉ Guide, nestled then in the attic of the GPO.
The traditional farewell bash was arranged in the back snug of Mulligan's of Poolbeg Street, and the hooley was still in its first hour, with the legendary Niall Carroll, political reporter and amanuensis of de Valera, rendering Skibbereen to 50 or so of his colleagues, when yet again the door burst open and a colleague roared at us, "John F Kennedy's been shot in Dallas". It was, of course, Friday, November 22nd, 1963.
In all my years, before or since, I have never seen so many journalists exit a pub so fast.
I had officially ended my tenure in Burgh Quay that evening, but the following morning I was back there to work alongside my former colleagues until the first edition of the Sunday Press appeared. Then it was over.