FRANK McEVOY 1925-2012

Kilkenny

 

MAJOR PLAYER IN KILKENNY'S EMERGENCE AS CENTRE OF CULTURE

 

Frank McEvoy was a native of Kilkenny, where he was born on November

14th. 1925. He spent his early life (from the age of two to the age of

sixteen) in his mother's county of Meath, near the village of Kilskyre

(often denoted as Kilskeer), a parish area that (with Ballinlough)

straddles the county border with Westmeath. He attended St. Finian's

College, Mullingar, for some years but repaired permanently thereafter

to the precincts of the Marble City, where his family had a long

connection with the Dunmore area, and a more recent one with farming

in what is now the inner urban area of Kilkenny City.

 

He continued his education at St. Kieran's College, from which he

graduated in 1944, and took up employment as a solicitor's clerk. In

1947 he visited The Netherlands, and this trip was the inspiration of

his first appearance in print, on an agricultural theme, in 1947 in

the Carlow Nationalist.

 

In the mid-fifties, Frank spent a lengthy period as a patient in a

tubercolosis sanatorium, almost an essential for the contemplation of

truth and future literary endeavour. During this time he produced an

article for the Irish Times (details of which are no longer remembered

or traceable) and a novel which was positively received by a leading

London publisher.

 

On restoration to health, he entered local government service with

Kilkenny County Committee of Agriculture, from which he retired as

Administrative Officer in 1987. For seven years he ran a small select

bookshop, trading as Hebron Books, in the rooms above Manning Travel

on Kilkenny's High Street.

 

He lived all his life in the residence attached to the family

farm on Hebron Road, near Nowlan Park. In 1965 he married Marie Finn,

a member of a John Street family connected to Finn's Leinster Journal.

She died in November of the following year. Their son Feargal is a

planning officer with Liverpool City Council, and has four children.

Frank's first involvement with Kilkenny's cultural life was as

honorary secretary of Kilkenny Arts Society, whose early efforts

included a series of annual debates, organised by Hubert Butler and

broadcast by Radio Eireann, on the burning issues of the day (the

Common Market, the Irish language et al.).

 

As an off-shoot of the Arts Society, Kilkenny Literary Society came

into existence in 1960, founded by James Delehanty with Frank's

enthusiastic support. The Society's inaugural lecture was given by

Kate O'Brien. In the succeeding seasons, every eminent Irish writer

addressed the society – Padraic Colum, Seán Ó Faoláin, Patrick

Kavanagh, Brian Coffey, Mary Lavin, Francis Stewart and a tyro Séamus

Heaney among them.

 

The Kilkenny Magazine, with James Delehanty as editor, was also

founded in 1960. It became a prominent, and almost unique, vehicle for

the channeling of both novice and established Irish literary talent.

Frank McEvoy was Associate Editor for the first nine issues in the

decade-long life-cycle of the publication.  He also contributed

half-a-dozen short stories to the magazine, and produced twenty-five

reviews of books, local and national, literary and historical, ranging

from The Shell Guide to Ireland to Patrick Kavanagh's Self-Portrait.

 

In 1962, Frank took over the editing of the St. Kieran's College

Record, a publication launched in 1956 under the editorship of James

Maher, a Callan-born scholar of literary bent. In the six issues of

the publication that he produced over the next decade there are only a

handful of articles that bear the McEvoy name, most notably an

interview with his fellow St. Kieran's alumnus, the writer Tom Kilroy.

The rest of his creative output is hidden in the anonymous chronicling

of the achievements and memories of other St. Kieran's alumni, and he

also facilitated the publication of schoolday reminiscences by

fellow-literati and paparati like James Delehanty, Leo Holohan (a

literary civil servant), Noel Moran (an editor with the Sunday

Independent), Edward Lawler (Ireland's first full-time public

relations manager) and Richard Furniss (a Kilkenny-born mining

industry public relations executive in Africa and Australia).

Hubert Butler also led the revival of the Kilkenny Archaeological

Society, and Frank was a member of this organisation too from its

early years, acting as  its secretary on a number of occasions. He was

chairman of the society from 1980 to 1983, and edited the Old Kilkenny

Review in 1984, 1985 and 1986. He contributed over twenty major

articles and reviews to the publication, as well as dozens of

occasional pieces, throughout his – and its – life.

 

His only major published work, an edition of the Life and Adventures

of James Freney, the memoirs of the notorious highwayman, apppeared in

1988. In the same year he visited Russia and wrote a lively account of

his travels in The Kilkenny People under the typical title

'Perestroika, We Like Ya.'

 

In 1991 his 1960 Kilkenny Magazine short story 'Beyond the Window'

was re-published in The Kilkenny Anthology. His diary-sourced account

of the visit of Patrick Kavanagh to Kilkenny was included in the

Diaries of Ireland anthology in 1998. His other diverse literary

interests – in the Waterford playwright Teresa Deevy and the

Kilkenny-born writers Francis Hackett and Francis McManus – have never

issued in more than transitory reviews and presentations, but his

fascination with the Mountgarrett branch of the Butlers resulted in

the preparation and performance of a drama at a Butler rally in 1976.

 

Frank McEvoy died at Drakelands Nursing Home in Kilkenny in January 2012.