JOSEPH LAMBE (1927-2015)

Kilkenny

 

When Joe Lambe died in February 2015, he had been retired for

almost a generation from his chosen vocation of teaching and, as he

would have wished, there were no elaborate public tributes to mark his

passing.

    But those who remembered the Irish education scene in the 1950s and

1960s were aware that Joe’s pioneering work in educational psychology

changed the way in which young people in Kilkenny were regarded and

treated as they came to grips with the challenge of learning.

    Joe was born in Boherbue, Co. Cork, on 16 November 1927, the son of

Daniel Lambe, a member of the Garda Siochana, and his wife Margaret

(nee Scully). Dan was a native of Moycarkey, near Thurles, and was

active during ‘The Troubles’; Margaret came from the Emo area of east

Laois.

    When a move to Skibbereen in the late 1930s threatened the future

education of his children, Dan asked to be assigned to a larger centre

and was offered Mullingar or Kilkenny. The Lambes chose Kilkenny,

setting up home at Golf View Terrace. There they brought up their three

children, Joe (aged ten at the time of the move), Paddy (who later

inherited a Scully pub in Athy and died in 1995), and Margaret, who

married Tom Crotty of the Carlow branch of the bakery family, and who

survives her brothers.

    Joe completed his primary schooling at Kilkenny CBS and then went on

to study as a day student at St. Kieran’s College, where he showed

early promise alongside several other luminaries of the period, including

his lifelong friends Canice Treacy (later a priest of the Archdiocese of

Washington, now deceased) and Frank Muldowney (now retired from

his position as a leading Dublin practitioner and professor of medicine).

During this time, however, Joe suffered from a bout of rheumatic fever

which did permanent damage to his heart.

    When he graduated from St. Kieran’s Joe's first instinct was to test a

vocation to the priesthood, and because the diocese of Ossory was

‘closed’ at the time to aspirants, he enrolled in Clonliffe as a student for

the Archdiocese of Dublin. The vocation test proved negative and, with

the advice and encouragement of some contemporaries, and the benefit

of a scholarship, he went on to UCD to study Economics. It was a

choice that he often lamented on the grounds that his natural leanings,

as he later discovered, were to languages or perhaps even law, the

subject chosen by his good friend the late Paddy Kilroy.

    His first teaching appointment was to the staff of the Mill Hill Fathers’

College in Freshford for a few years, but the early 1950s found him

back in St. Kieran’s, where he taught Maths and other subjects for the

rest of his academic life. He never aspired to the higher reaches of

instruction, focusing his attention more on the individual student and the

learning process. Dozens of former students credited him with saving

them from certain destruction by patiently explaining the basic principles

of the subject, and teachers who took over Joe’s students in later years

always claimed they were easier to teach for that reason.

    On a trip to Wales with the Legion of Mary’s Irish-speaking offshoot An

Realt, Joe met Maisie Finnerty, the daughter of a Mayo Garda then

stationed in Portlaoise. They soon married, and Maisie, a national

teacher, worked first in the St. John’s parish school then located in

Dunmore, and later at the Lake School in Michael Street.

In 1965 Joe and Maisie went to Stockton, California, as part of an

initiative promoted by Bishop Peter Birch to learn the working methods

of a social/evangelical movement known as the Cursillo. Although the

Lambes did not continue their involvement in the movement in Ireland,

the theory behind it intrigued Joe and in 1968 he enrolled in the degree

course in Psychology at UCD.

    With his qualification in hand, he then began to combine his teaching

duties at St. Kieran’s with clinical sessions for the South Eastern Health

Board, and then private consultancy at his house. Hundreds of young

people benefitted from his direction and advice as to study problems,

personal difficulties, life choices, and careers. In an era when careers

guidance was limited and mental health support for young people nonexistent,

    Joe pioneered an approach that must have saved many young

lives from confusion, desperation or worse. He was, in that regard,

ahead of his time.

    Alongside this, Joe maintained a deep sense of the spiritual, often

carrying a copy of the bible to Mass, and once writing in the ‘St. Kieran’s

Record’ an extended analysis of man’s place in the world and his

relationship with God.

    Joe’s eventual retirement allowed him to develop his interest in golf

(though he was the lesser light in a household where his wife had a

handicap of three) and music, where he used his excellent singing voice

to good effect in musical evening with his friends Martin O’Reilly and

Carmel Cashin. Sadly, his enjoyment was interrupted at an early stage

by the death of Maisie from cancer in 1999.

    In the wake of her death, Joe strove to remain active, maintaining his

proficiency in languages. He understood or spoke Greek, Latin, Irish,

French and German, achieving an A in the honours Leaving Cert

German paper in the 1990s and a first class honours diploma in the

Irish language when he was aged 82.

    He was also involved in Keep Kilkenny Beautiful and PROBUS, the

organisation for retired business executives and professionals. Most of

all, he took comfort in the success of his three children – Canice (a

pioneering information technologist and now head of technology at a

software company), Joyce (who holds a Ph.D. in nutrition science) and

Clare (a make-up artist for the film industry) – and the arrival of his eight

grand-children.

    This learned, courteous and deferential gentleman ‘of the old school’ (in

every way), long a familiar figure and good neighbour in the

Castlecomer Road residential area of the city, departed this life on 3rd

February 2015. May he rest in peace