Former Fianna Fáil senator and councillor Tony McKenna, who served in the Oireachtas for two terms from 1987 to 1992, has died at the age of 86.
Mr McKenna, from Borrisokane, Co Tipperary, died just two months after his older brother John ‘Mackey’ McKenna (87) who played in four Tipperary All-Ireland winning teams in the 1960s.
The former senator and his brother were from a family of 15 children, 13 boys and two girls, who also included his late brother Ger McKenna, a renowned greyhound trainer who won both the Irish Greyhound Derby and the English Greyhound Derby a number of times. His sister Philomena is the sole surviving sibling.
His father Malachy McKenna was a playwright and winner of the PJ O’Connor drama awards. His mother was Agnes Gavin.
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Mr McKenna served as a senator on the Cultural and Educational Panel in the 19th Seanad from 1987 to 1989. He lost his seat in 1989 but was nominated again by then taoiseach Charlie Haughey and served until 1992.
He was renowned for a 140-mile (224km) journey he made in 1982, in which he soloed a sliotar from Borrisokane through every Tipperary town and up to Dublin to raise funds and highlight the need for a day care facility for the elderly in the town.
He completed the ultra-marathon, controlling a sliotar on his hurl as he ran, over a seven-day period. It took a further 30 years for the facility to be established.
Mr McKenna also served as a county councillor, and chairman, for the then North Tipperary County Council, from the 1970s.
He was mayor of the later merged Tipperary County Council from 2000 to 2001.
A vocational teacher, he graduated from UCD in 1965 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree and completed a postgraduate diploma in remedial education. He was also secretary for the then Marath Manufacturing Company in Tipperary.
A former member of North Tipperary Vocational Education Committee, he chaired the committee from 1999 to 2004 and served a term as senior vice-president of the Irish Vocational Education Association.
He joined Fianna Fáil in 1956 and served as a constituency delegate on the party’s national executive from 1977-1987.
A member of the Irish Greyhound Racing Board, Bord na gCon for a time, he was involved in the reform of drug testing procedures for greyhounds and chaired its internal audit committee.
Mr McKenna, who died on Christmas Eve in Ashlawn House Nursing Home in Nenagh, is pre-deceased by his wife Phyllis and survived by his children Deirdre, Malachy and Tony, his sister Philomena and six grandchildren.
His funeral will take place in Borrisokane on Friday, January 2nd.
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