JOHN COLLINS

Kilkenny

 

The death of John Collins in 2009 removed one of the few remaining links with an era of education in Kilkenny when St. Kieran’s College was a major lay and ecclesiastical institution with a resident population of over 500.

    When he joined the staff of the college to teach English in 1955, there were approximately 350 boarding students there, and 70 day-boys. The ‘other side of the house’, the ecclesiastical department, had over 150 students.

    The college presidents in these decades were Canons Pat Dunphy, Gabriel Loughry and (from 1964) John Holohan; the teaching staff on the ‘layside’ included men like Fr. Tommy Maher (later President), Fr. Jack Kennedy and Fr. Timmy O’Connor from among the clerical ranks, and Ned Costello, Paddy McSweeney and Joe Lambe among the lay teachers. 

John Collins outlived most  of his colleagues from that time, and, sadly, some who joined the staff long after he did, men like Alfie Sheehy, Billy Roche, Jim Carew and Denis Philpott. 

    With Monsignor Maher, Archdeacon Paddy Grace (a former seminary professor), Fr. Percy Grant (a former college bursar), Fr. John Duggan (retired in U.S.) and layman Joe Lambe (who joined the St. Kieran’s staff in 1956), John was among the last of the 1950s era to survive.

    John Collins came from a humble rural background in East Cork, and in his conversation about his life was always respectful of the grounding that this gave him. He was always grateful too for the sacrifices that allowed him to go on to secondary education at St. Colman’s in Fermoy. He then spent some time as a clerical student in Maynooth, where he graduated in Arts, before soon securing his first – and last – permanent teaching position in St. Kieran’s.

    On the face of it, his approach to teaching was unremarkable. He covered the prescribed texts in a calm and controlled manner, brought the gentle humour of P. G. Wodehouse and Giovanni Guareschi into ‘free class’ readings, and produced term-end exam papers that were maybe a little more challenging and demanding than normal.

    But there were a few remarkable aspects of his teaching. One was his essential respect for the individual student, whom he treated with fairness and honesty and expected the same in return. He got it.

    The other was the way he brought humour into the classroom, something that wasn’t often done, and where it was, was generally based on the teacher’s idea of what was funny. Not with John – he once said that he wished he could hear all of the under-breath remarks that students made in his class, because he knew some of them were funnier than his own. 

    It was unheard of for a teacher to encourage anything that might result in a classroom getting out of control, and that was the other aspect of John Collins as a teacher: he could control a class without the threat of violence. He communicated the seriousness of the business at hand without raising his voice; his students understood the situation and respected him for his approach and his capability.

    Even though students of the time were not supposed to be interested in the personal lives of their teachers, there was universal delight in John’s betrothal to Augusta Hughes, a fellow secondary teacher with a strong Kilkenny family connection. 

    Cork and Kilkenny came together to produce four children who benefitted from John’s interest in career guidance, to which he devoted himself on the St. Kieran’s staff from 1969 onwards as the college’s first full-time counsellor.

   As a result, Martin, Augusta, Joe and Mary Collins all chose science or engineering-related careers that made them early models of a well-regulated family in the New Ireland (and indeed the New Europe), though the Collins farming heritage was honoured  in one case through a veterinary specialisation. 

    In 1988 John became Vice-Principal of St. Kieran’s, a position he held until 1993. Persistent ill-health continued throughout his early retirement, but he made the best of his lot and after some years at the familiar ‘corner house’ on the College Road, he and Augusta moved to a snug apartment just down the street. From there John kept up an involvement with groups like Probus, the retired professionals’ organisation, and a heavy schedule of family commitments to children and grandchildren.

    John Collins, teacher, mentor and gentleman of the old school (in every sense of the words), went to his reward at Waterford Regional Hospital on January 26th. 2009. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.