Noel was in my class in the small church school I attended for two years before going away to Rochelle. He was quiet and keen to learn as I was, but his, too, was a poor family. I remember one day, probably in the summer of 1939, he and I had 6d (old pennies) each to spend at the summer fete held in Glen Ban, the private girls' school in Abbeyleix. We met and walked to the school which was not far from his home on the Ballinakill Road. There we spent our money wisely.
In our last summer in the South School we were entered for the Bishop's Medal exam in Scripture and we went together across the field at the back of the church to the Vicarage where we sat the exam under the watchful eye of Archdeacon Nevill. We had an hour's break for lunch but I don't recall that we had been given anything to eat. We spent the time playing in the field. It was a beautiful sunny day and I remember how happy we were.
When I won my scholarship and went away to Rochelle, Noel started at the local Preston School, a small two-teacher secondary school that Ted, Henry and Helen attended as did my Uncle Eddy earlier. Noel wrote regularly to me while I was in Rochelle and he obviously admired me because I had won a scholarship and gone away to boarding school. When I left school and was about to go to College, Noel travelled to Belfast to join the Royal Navy and he was sent to Malta where he remained till he was 50 and retired.
On his first leave home I happened to be home, too, and we walked back together from church and Noel asked me if I'd marry him on his next leave in five years' time. At the time, I had lots of ambitions for a more adventurous life so I told Noel I didn't love him and wouldn't marry him. I confided in my sister, Helen, and she asked me to pass him on to her. She'd have had him and she stayed in touch with him for the rest of her life.
Helen came home from NZ for Mike's and my 25th wedding anniversary in 1984 and she planned a big celebration for us to which she invited Noel and his wife. By then he was a tall, white-haired handsome man and Anna asked me who he was and then said she wondered why naval officers were always so handsome and that Noel, although he had white hair was by far the handsomest man there and she couldn't understand why I had turned down his offer of marriage all those years ago.
In recent years I was in touch with Noel again when he was living with his daughter in Plymouth. I heard from her at Christmas that Noel had died on 14th May 2013, and I had spoken to him on the phone not long before that. I remember asking him if he ever regretted not having gone to University and he replied that he had had a very happy and fulfilled life and that his granddaughter had graduated and he promised to send me a photo of himself with her at her graduation ceremony. In the photograph I had to smile when I noticed his big feet!
He also told me of his sadness when he first went away to Belfast and his father travelled with him on the train to Dublin and waved him off on the train to Belfast and it puzzled him because his father seemed to want to cling on to him for as long as he could. Soon after reaching Malta he knew why. His father had known he was dying and that it was the last time he would see his youngest son. Noel never understood how his father afforded the fare to accompany him to Dublin.