REV. NICHOLAS FLAVIN 1950-2018
The sudden death of Fr. Nicholas Flavin while on holiday in Spain on September 24 2018 brought to an end a remarkable life as student, scientist, athlete, teacher, headmaster, community administrator and pastoral priest. His ministry on the staff of St. Kieran’s College for almost two decades, and then in parish assignments in Rathdowney, Dunamaggin and (on an interim basis) Windgap ensured that he was known to thousands in every part of the diocese of Ossory, north and south. As if that were not enough, he was also a respected administrator of athletics at both county and national level, and helped to mastermind and support the huge resurgence in interest in track and field events in Kilkenny and beyond in the latter part of the twentieth century.
Nicholas Anthony Pacelli Flavin was born in Mullinavat, Co. Kilkenny on August 10 1950, one of four children of Maurice (Mossie) Flavin and his wife Kathleen (Kitty, nee Ryan). The Flavins had originated in Fenor, Co. Waterford, where the family operated a forge, and one Nicholas Flavin was the first to locate in Co. Kilkenny, establishing himself in business at Templeorum around the turn of the twentieth century. He married Brigid Aylward of Harristown, Mullinavat, one of the ‘Gabha’ or ‘Blacksmith’ Aylwards. Many of his siblings had emigrated to the United States and settled around Boston, but Nicholas’s own family remained in the home area, where he brought up his four sons to the trade (his son Pierce continuing the farrier tradition into the 1980s at Oldcourt). His daughter Margaret (Mrs. McGrath) taught at the one-teacher school then operating at Garrygogue.
Maurice came to the Kilmacow area as a youth with his brother Mick, who operated a forge at Narabane for a period before moving to England, but Maurice returned to the Rossinan area of Mullinavat after his marriage to Kitty Ryan. She was a native of Waterford whose mother Hannah came from Graignamanagh, and whose father Jim, a butcher who worked for Dennys, was from a Wexford family connected to the Ryans of Dunganstown (Kitty was a guest at the celebrations surrounding John F. Kennedy’s visit to the area in 1963).
In 1957 the Flavin family moved to the Kilmacow area, setting up home in Dangan
while Murice worked as an industrial fitter at the National Board and Paper Mills in Grannagh. He died suddenly in 1971 at the age of fifty-eight.
Of the four children of Maurice and Kitty (who died in 2001), a son Thomas died as an infant. All of the others chose science of one sort or another as their area of interest, Jim becoming a laboratory technician, first in Wexford, then in Dublin and later in England, where he became a director of a national testing company; Bea becoming a nurse who underwent specialist training, including almost a decade in Dallas before returning to her native area, where she married Dick Dunphy; and Nicholas, who, after a promising secondary education at St. Kieran’s College from 1963 to 1968, went on to study Science at NUI Maynooth alongside his early seminary studies.
He thus became part of a tradition of scientific scholarship in the diocese that included Fr. Joe Dunphy, Fr. Gerry O’Sullivan, Fr. Joe Delaney, Fr. Seamus Henry and Fr. Fergus Farrell, a contemporary of Nicholas, who obtained his M.Sc at Maynooth before completing his priestly education in Rome, where he was ordained in 1974. Maynooth had an impressive history of achievement in scientific studies since the time of the pioneering physicist Nicholas Callan, featuring major figures in research and education down to the late 1960s, when Joseph Spelman (Maths Physics), Gerard McGreevey (Experimental Physics), Michael Casey OP (Chemistry) and James McMahon (Mathematics) were still single-handedly managing their respective departments of study (science classes were still small and confined to seminarians in those years before the development of NUI Maynooth as a separate entity in the late 1970s).
Nicholas Flavin was ordained priest by Bishop Peter Birch, himself a prominent athlete as a youth, on Sunday June 8th. 1975 in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, alongside three students of St. Kieran’s College (including Fr. Michael Campion of Ossory, and later Hexham and Newcastle) and Fr. John Greene of Ballycallan, a student for the Archdiocese of Dublin (currently on missionary assignment in Chile).
He returned to Maynooth to study for his Higher Diploma in Education under the then professor Brother Seámus V. O’Súilleabháin, a pioneering figure of Clare family background, New York birth and Irish education (he had returned to his mother’s native country in 1933 at the age of 12). He had been appointed in 1966, in effect to succeed Bishop Birch, who had held the position of Professor of Education at the national seminary from 1951 to 1962. The Higher Diploma class was the first to be opened to lay participation in 1967, setting the foundations for the further expansion of the NUI college into a full university; Br. O’Súilleabhain until his early death at age 65 in 1986 (today the Education faculty in Maynooth University has two professors and ten full-time lecturers).
In 1976 Fr. Flavin joined the teaching staff of St. Kieran’s College secondary school, then under the direction of Fr. Seamus McEvoy, who had succeeded Fr. Joe Delaney as Headmaster the previous year. Fr. Delaney had also been a pioneering teacher of Mathematics, and Fr. Flavin now replaced him on the science staff alongside Fr. Seamus Henry, Art Anglim and Seamus Knox, who went on to become a Department of Education inspector in Science. Under the leadership of college president Fr. Tommy Maher, appointed in 1973 and himself a science graduate, the college was about to complete a new teaching complex which it would share with the Vocational School and the facilities for scientific and technical education in both old and new buildings were vastly improved.
Over the next seven years Fr. Flavin would establish a teaching style that defined a new generation of educators in this emerging field: direct, knowledgable, encouraging of student initiative, but also firm, disciplined and focused on results.
Throughout his secondary, university and seminary education, and in his early years as a priest, Nicholas Flavin was a prominent athlete locally and in college competitions, helping to build up the winning record of Kilmacow entrants in track and field events that resulted in the establishment in 1977 of St. Senan’s AC where he was a committee member from then until 1984. On the track 1978 was his best year: he won first place in the County Intermediate Cross Country and third in the Senior Cross Country, helping his team to win first place in each and the club win the competition for best overall senior team in the county in that year (something it would not achieve again until 2008). It was also his worst year - he had a knee injury that sidelined him from competition for the next two years, but after a brief return a recurrence forced him to retire. He then turned his attention to administration, becoming secretary of the county athletics board from 1980 to 1983, Vice-President of Leinster BLOE (the junior athletics board) during the same period and of National BLOE in 1983 and 1984, and registrar of the Leinster BLE (senior board) in 1982 and 1983. In all of these positions, he promoted principles that were to be adopted on a national basis in junior athletics, particularly the ban on juveniles running of marathons or road races longer than their established cross country distance.
It was no surprise that when Fr. McEvoy was appointed Parish Priest of Lisdowney in 1983, Nicholas Flavin became Headmaster at St. Kieran’s, at the same time as the presidency of the college passed to Fr. Martin Campion. They would lead the college through one of the most dynamic periods in the history of Irish education, embracing the new emphasis on computer learning in a serious manner that culminated in the opening of the college’s computer centre by Donal Creed, Minister of State at the Department of Education, in March 1984.
During his twelve-year tenure as headmaster, the College maintained its high standards of academic achievement, expanding its staff by over 30% and introducing a variety of new curricula and support services. The college also maintained its dominance in championship hurling, winning the Dr. Croke Cup in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1996 and featuring in the All-Ireland final in 1984, 1987 and 1991. He would continue his support for Gaelic games in his parish appointments, at one time serving as a selector for Laois senior hurling teams.
In 1995 Fr. Flavin was succeeded as headmaster by his colleague and the college’s first lay headmaster, Micheál Ó Diarmada. He took a sabbatical by attending Trinity College to study for a Master’s Degree in Education. This was followed by appointment to a curacy in Rathdowney, where his parish priest was the former longtime college dean and spiritual director Fr. Timothy O’Connor.
In Rathdowney he found a community that had survived the economic downturn of the early 1990s with its main industry (meat processing) intact, and would soon benefit from the construction of a major retail outlet complex, which opened in 2001. He worked with local interests to create a greater community support system with an emphasis on facilities and services, including the promotion of the credit union.
In the same year he was appointed parish priest of Dunamaggin, succeeding Fr. William Dalton on the latter’s appointment to Callan. Here he took over one of the diocese’s most rural parishes, with its three villages of Dunamaggin, Kilmoganny and Kells at the heart of the south-west part of the diocese alongside the neighboring parishes of Aghaviller and Windgap (where he would also assume responsibility as parish priest from 2012 to 2016, following the death of Fr. Martin Cleere).
Here once again Fr. Flavin threw himself into the dynamic role not only of spiritual guide and pastoral minister, but also of community activist, going so far as to become the local correspondent of the ‘Kilkenny People’, where he became the channel for communicating all of the local happenings and events.
Despite the onset of a debilitating illness, he maintained his energy levels and involvements, supervising single-handedly the activities at four churches and four national schools at the height of his responsibility for the two adjoining parishes. He also had a great pastoral and community interest in St. Joseph’s Home in Kilmoganny, and was thrilled when it achieved a sparkling positive report in a HIQA inspection in February 2018, which contained the remark ‘Many (residents) told the inspector this was like home, only better. All residents spoken with said they felt safe and cared for.’ (the only complaint was that the radiators were too hot and a possible danger to unguarded contact).
Though he sometimes courted controversy (as in his blessing of the local hunt meeting), he was also at the forefront in supporting community campaigns, as in the movement for the restoration of the post office service in Kilmoganny, and, among leisure activities, was an enthusiastic member of the local Bridge group.
There are many models of priesthood in evidence in these uncertain times, and Fr. Flavin adopted one which was based on a solid faith underpinned by his scientific and organised approach to every task, as well as a commitment to service in the community and to the individual and the family. He played a significant role as one of the three elected priest members of the diocesan Pastoral Council and a board member of Kilkenny Leader Partnership.
His recreations were sports, history, Spain and current affairs, though not always in that order. He had an extraordinary ability to crunch polling numbers before during and after elections. He was writing a history of Dunamaggin when he died, and learning Spanish so he could better communicate with his neighbors around the holiday villa owned by his family. And he found in Dunamaggin the perfect story of striving for GAA glory - in both hurling and football - even though sadly he would not live to enjoy the results of their 2017-18 season, when they won county and Leinster club honours.
‘Strict but fair’ and ‘a stickler for detail’ were some of the phrases that were used in his regard as an educator and a sports administrator down through the years, but in the area of priestly commitment he had one focus only, and that was the service of the People of God. His commitment was total. No distraction or personal priority would interfere with his dedication to a liturgy, a visit to the sick or troubled, or a pastoral task.
To his bereaved sister Bea, brother Jim, sister-in law Jana and his extended family, the deepest sympathy must be extended, and the record of his unique contribution to the history and well-being of the diocese, the community and his individual parishioners preserved. May be rest in peace.