Friendship

Thank You for Being a Friend

In September 1941 I started as a boarder in Rochelle School, Cork, and the following year Hazel joined our class as a day-girl. She was a year younger than the rest of us.

One day she approached me and shyly said that her mother wanted her to invite one of the boarders home for tea and she had chosen me. That was the start of a special friendship, not just with Hazel but with her parents. I enjoyed many weekends and outings with them over the remaining years at school. I like to hope that I became like a second daughter to Agnes and Leonard.

Hazel was an only child and her home life was very different from mine as there were six of us and my parents were poor while her dad was in a well paid, secure job.

After school, Hazel went to University in UCC Cork while, due to lack of funds, I had to make the most of a place in a Teacher Training College in Dublin. (I later studied part-time for a degree.) It kept us apart for a few of those heady 'coming-of-age' years but our friendship survived. Hazel studied Marine Science in Cork since it was the only place in Ireland to study it.

Hazel's first job was with Irish Fisheries and my first teaching post brought us both to Dublin. Her parents then moved to Dublin and once again I was a frequent guest of theirs. Hazel and I shared a love of tennis and we played together regularly and then cycled miles out of the city to her home where her mother would cook a wonderful tea for us. As we waited for the meal we would enjoy delicious milk-shakes. We both continued to play hockey, too.

Hazel married in 1955 and she had three children. I married in 1959, but I was 43 years old when we adopted Anna, so for years Ian, Melissa and Margot had been almost like our children, too. Hazel is Anna's godmother and we have remained close friends to this day.

Hazel, like her parents, is really kind and thoughtful and always ready to put herself out to help others. I was never able to return their hospitality till I had my own home and it was only recently that Hazel discovered just how poor my family were. She says now that she wishes she had known so that she could have found some way to help. I was always only too well aware of the gap and very sensitive about it.

When I had an operation for a total knee replacement (six weeks before I wrote this entry, intially) Hazel turned up unexpectedly in Cannock, after Christmas, to spend some time helping me convalesce. We enjoyed games of Scrabble as we used to, long ago, and we reminisced about the past. We planned more time together doing the same in the coming years. While she was here with me, we were also visited by her son and his wife and two lads who had been in Lapland with Anna and her husband.

Hazel's three children remained close to us, so the friendship that began as an invitation to tea in Cork in 1941 has grown and blossomed beyond our wildest dreams and extends today to her six grand-children. It is now a major aspect of my own daughter's life, since her children were like cousins to her during her adulthood in particular.

When Hazel was still in Cork and mom was in the training college, Pat would go up through Washington Park and the old country roads (which are now suburban Dublin) to have tea with Hazel's parents and that friendship continued through their lives. I would spend

Between 1955 Hazel and 1965 Hazel was no longer in Dublin...she was in UCC for her undergrad and then her masters and then worked for the department of fisheries.. She describes going out into the loch on the SHannon on the electricity supply damm in the middle of the night, searching for fish for the Fisheries department in Dublin. Hazel would sometimes see

Melissa and Ian, Hazel's children, travelled to Dublin and had a wonderful time with them when they were about 9 and 10 in about 1969. That was the first time that they ever flew anywhere. They drove to Heathrow from Wellin Garden City to pick them up. Ian remembers picking mushrooms that they picked and ate near WGC. They also visited them when they were in Penkridge in c. 1970 by flying to Liverpool and being picked up from there.

Surprise party in Wyatville for Ian's mother's 60th and Pat went over for that. His father had died just before that.

When mom was c. 80 she did a surprise meeting for Hazel in Brussels airport.

When Ian did his degree in Portsmouth, he would sometimes pass through Cannock en route back to Dublin. His grandfather had a cousin that he got on well with in Hollywell in Chester so he would often spend a night or two in Cannock and a night or two in Chester to see Ivy. At that time, Melissa was 5 or 6 years in NZ and Margaux was either in South Wales or in Scotland.

Pat visited Brussels twice. Once with and once without dad. Mom travelled with Iona and Mark to Brussels when Ciara was having a reunion and she split her time between Ian and Ciara.