Read online here: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-41750898.html
Just as Alice Leahy has dedicated her time to improving lives removed from community, so Alice O’Shea has seen the benefits of living in the heart of one, giving and receiving kindness.
The song is called Living Next Door to Alice but this week I found myself living in the orbit of two different Alices.
Song link
Both reached major milestones and their respective journeys tell something about the world we live in, how varied and different it can be, how harsh and warm.
Alice Leahy celebrated 50 years of running an organisation that is a sanctuary for those at the margins of society. Alice O’Shea celebrated 100 years of being alive.
They don’t know each other, they live in very different worlds, but their respective stories are all about community.
On Tuesday, there was an event in Dublin’s City Hall to celebrate 50 years of the Alice Leahy Trust.
The place was full, which is a reflection of the respect and affection in which Alice is held. It was also testament to what she has achieved.
The results of her work are scattered around the country and beyond.
There are people out there who went through a tough time and ended up on the streets at some point in the last half century.
During that period such people sought out the trust premises on Bride Rd in the city.
Therein they found a place where they were allowed to fully feel like human beings, a lacuna from harsh lives lived on the street.
It might have been a cup of tea, a conversation with somebody at the same station in life, just the opportunity to sit and dream of better times.
A visiting academic from Scotland related in 1983 what she saw when she visited the basement premises.
“There is a pleasant waiting room, a small informal surgery, a bathroom, and a storeroom with a washing machine, clean clothes, soap, shampoo, nail varnish and what seemed like thousands of toilet rolls,” Kay Carmichael wrote.
“Men drifted into the waiting room and surgery, asking for a razor, a bath, a clean shirt, a pair of shoes. Each was greeted by name, treated with respect, and loving care.”
Over 40 years later the only real addition is the sound of RTÉ lyric fm playing in the background.
Basic needs of homeless people don’t change
The basic needs of those who are described as rough sleepers don’t change. Socks can make a big difference to quality of life.
A wash that is unhurried and undertaken with proper soap or shampoo sheds a layer of unwanted skin.
A shave for a man can make him feel new. A woman will find direction and help to apply make-up, allowing her to, for a few hours at least, feel like a million dollars, before her reality crowds in again.
Ms Carmichael’s account of entering the Bride Rd premises is contained in a book produced to commemorate the half century that the trust has been around.
(Declaration of interest: I was involved in putting the book together.)
It is titled Outsiders, which is how Alice describes those who visit the premises. Finding oneself on the outside can happen a lot easier than most imagine.
A bad childhood, a broken relationship, a job lost, even the development of a fondness for drink into the throes of addiction.
Behind the sight of a person who lives on the street is usually the kind of backstory to which most of us could relate.
And while society looks the other way, Alice Leahy has, for 50 years, quietly and sensitively looked to improve the lives of those who have hit misfortune.
“Alice and her team do not see colour, race, ethnicity, creed, class, nationality,” Alice Leahy Trust chair Maol Mhuire Tynan told the gathering at City Hall.
“They only see the human being. Their common language is the language of human kindness. Everybody understands that.”
In such a milieu the work of the trust serves to provide comfort and raise spirits all along the perimeter of society.
Tuesday was also the day that another Alice reached a major milestone. Alice O’Shea from Caherciveen in Co Kerry hit 100 years of age.
Last Sunday we had a party for her in the Ring Of Kerry Hotel in the town.
Staff at the hotel asked Alice’s daughter, Marie, whether the birthday girl would be in a wheelchair or have a walking aid. This was an understandable supposition about somebody who had reached a century.
But Alice didn’t need either. She still takes her own walk along the road outside her home. Not as frequently as she used to because her hearing isn’t as sharp, but she’s well capable of it.
Alice O’Shea from Caherciveen, Co Kerry, was 100 years old last week and celebrated with a party in the Ring Of Kerry Hotel in the town.
Alice lives in the house where she was born. It is located about a mile outside the town, just off the main road and looks out on Valentia Harbour, in an area once described by a local politician as “blessed by nature but cursed by peripherality”.
When the new state was in its infancy the local authority cottage was occupied by her parents.
At some point it was bought by the family. Alice married Floss O’Shea from New St in the town and there they lived until Floss’s death in the 1980s.
She still lives there with her daughter, Marie. The party was sprung at short notice.
She told Marie she didn’t want to say anything about it until November kicked in, lest she not make it as far as the big day. There was no fear of that.
They came from the USA and from the UK and from various parts of this country. For the occasion Alice sat in a chair at the top of the room as the 90 guests celebrated her.
“I’m like the queen,” she said to me, laughing, and we all came and went, not to pay homage but to offer congratulations and bask in the reflected glow of a person much appreciated.
Apart from a brief stint in England, Alice has lived in this remote area all her life.
She has hardly ever been to Dublin, and infrequently visited Cork, usually to catch up with a few friends, including my mother.
She doesn’t claim to have any secrets, but elements of how she has lived speak for themselves.
For the most part she was a social butterfly, always visiting neighbours, often in rotation for a chat and just to check in, particularly on those who were less fortunate than she with their health.
Her other secret is obvious within minutes of engaging her in conversation. She laughs a lot, a habit that should always be treasured for, if nothing else, its effect on all aspects of good health.
As the Atlantic rain beat against the hotel windows, the place was a cocoon, a rare chance for a community to come together in honour of a life still going strong through winter years.
Just as Alice Leahy has dedicated her time to improving lives removed from community, so Alice O’Shea has seen the benefits of living in the heart of one, giving and receiving kindness, an elemental force too often underrated and undervalued.
