Latest news with #MaureenWalsh
The Sun
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Emotional scenes as Westlife stars turn up to support Louis Walsh as he pays final farewell to mum after health battle
WESTLIFE stars turned up to support Louis Walsh as the band manager paid a final farewell to his beloved mum. The X Factor star's mum Maureen, nee Healy, who lived in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, passed away on Monday, June 2, aged 94 following a lengthy illness. 6 6 6 The mother-of-nine had been battling Alzheimer's for the past decade, with Louis telling Woman Magazine in 2015: 'She doesn't know me. But she's fine, healthy and happy and doesn't know any better.' She was remembered locally as the 'warmhearted matriarch' of a large and close-knit family. Apart from Louis, Maureen, who was predeceased by her husband, Frank, is also survived by daughters Evelyn (O'Connor), and Sara (Keogh), sons, Paul, Frank, Eamon, Padraic, Joseph and Noel and their extended family members. She is also survived by 19 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The funeral mass took place in the nearby Church of the Holy Family at 12 noon today and was followed by the burial in Kilkinure Cemetery. Louis, who wore a black suit with a white shirt and black tie, looked distraught as he walked behind the coffin to the church. Dozens of family, friends and locals gathered outside on the streets to follow the hearse and pay their final respects. Luminaries from the music world including Westlife stars Shane Filan, Kian Egan and Nicky Byrne joined brokenhearted family, neighbours and friends. Kian was pictured with his arm around Louis after the funeral mass. While Shane and his wife Gillian both looked emotional as they walked hand-in-hand together to the ceremony. Former Eurovision singer Dana also was also seen showing her support for her beloved pal. Michael English, the 94 year old's favourite country music singer, sang a selection of hymns at her funeral Mass in the Church of the Holy Family, close to the neat home where she reared eight children. In a touching eulogy, one of Maureen's daughters, Sara Keogh described her as 'extraordinary'. She stated: 'We celebrate all the 94 years of the extraordinary woman Maureen was and the incredible mark she left on all of us. 'We had a great upbringing. We wanted for nothing. She pushed us to make the best of ourselves - she didn't do a bad job, I think." Sara spoke of the lifelong hospitality shown by her mother to all comers, at all hours, her ability as a cook and homemaker. She recalled her mother going to work for Western Care Association, which provides services to people with intellectual disabilities and neurodiverse needs, in the 1970s. 'KINDNESS AND LOVE' She added: 'This gave her a new lease of life. She loved every minute of it. This was where she made some of her best friends in life'. Her son Frank, told mourners, Maureen was at the heart of her family's lives. He said: 'We all loved her, respected her. She was a woman of great strength, loyalty and grace. 'Her life was not one of enormous gestures but countless small actions of goodness, kindness and love. 'She was hardworking, had great faith and found joy in the simple things. Mourners were told that GAA matches, playing cards; 25 and Bridge, as well as country music, set dancing, and fancy dress were amongst the loves of Maureen's life. Fr Michael Quinn, chief celebrant of the funeral Mass, spoke of the immense loss to Maureen's family; her eight children, 20 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. He went on to describe her as a person of great faith with particular devotion to Padre Pio. Symbols carried to the altar included Maureen's Rosary beads, a picture of Padre Pio, a Mayo flag, a transistor radio noting the endless satisfaction she got from listening to local Midwest Radio, a rolling pin (love of baking), a family photo, a pack of cards and a copy of her favourite reading material, Ireland's Own magazine. 6 6 6
BreakingNews.ie
7 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Funeral to take place of Maureen Walsh, mother of Louis Walsh
The funeral will take place on Thursday of Maureen Walsh, the mother of Westlife manager and former X factor judge and Boyzone manager Louis Walsh. Mrs Walsh (94) of Church Street, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo passed away on Monday. She was predeceased by her husband Frank, her daughter Catherine, her parents Martin and Delia, her brother Sean and her son-in-law Pat O'Connor. Advertisement She is survived by her adult children Evelyn, Louis, Paul, Frank, Eamon, Padraic, Joseph, Noel and Sara. She will also be sadly missed by her son in law and daughters-in-law, her 20 grandchildren, her two great-grandchildren, her siblings Anne, Christeen and Martin, extended family, nieces, nephews, neighbours and a wide circle of friends. Maureen will repose at her home in Church Street, Kiltimagh on Wednesday evening from 4pm to 8pm. Her removal will take place from her home on Thursday morning to the Church of the Holy Family, Kiltimagh for funeral mass at noon followed by burial in Kilkinure Cemetery, Kiltimagh. The funeral mass can be viewed on Advertisement Mourners are asked to give donations in lieu of flowers to Mrs Walsh spent the last decade of her life at Attracta's Nursing Home in Charlestown, Co Mayo. She is remembered locally as having been the warm hearted head of a large and close family. She worked for many years with Western Care in Ballinamore and had lived with Alzheimer's disease for over a decade. In 2014 Louis Walsh told the Irish Independent that he was very close to his mother whose motto was 'your health is his wealth". He added that Maureen had advised him to be 'nice to people' and to 'enjoy life".
Irish Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Irish Times chess columnist JJ Walsh retires after 70 years: ‘Everything has to come to an end. I'd rather go out on top'
Jim (JJ) Walsh's first chess column in The Irish Times appeared on July 21st, 1955. On the front page of the newspaper there were reports that the price of a telegram was doubling and former second World War allies were bickering over the fate of a divided Germany. As he recalls, he was in the right place at the right time. His father owned a pharmacy next door to The Irish Times, then based on D'Olier Street. Mr Walsh learned how to play chess after convalescing in hospital when he was 12 years old. He was a student at Belvedere College in Dublin and had developed tuberculosis (TB). READ MORE He was a good player, though, by his own admission, no grandmaster, but his enthusiasm and ability impressed the features editor Jack White. White wanted a weekly chess column to accompany the bridge column on the same page. Mr Walsh protested that he was no journalist either, but he gave it a go. In 2016, he became the longest-running chess columnist in history surpassing the 61 years and six months by Hermann Helms of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In a more fractured media landscape, Mr Walsh's 69 years and 10 months may never be surpassed. Mr Walsh surpassed 15,000 columns in 2021. As of last weekend it was puzzle number 15,896. Photograph: Dan Dennison/The Irish Times Chess has given him so much, he says. He met his wife Maureen through chess and they travelled the world. She died in 2009 from Parkinson's disease. He went to Moscow to play chess in 1956 along with an Irish civil servant who was paranoid that he would be discovered travelling behind the Iron Curtain and lose his job. Because so few people travelled to the Soviet Union in those days, Mr Walsh offered his reminiscences from the trip to the now defunct Sunday Dispatch newspaper in Britain. They insisted on dressing him in a heavy overcoat and fur hat for his photograph, as if it had been taken in Moscow.. Mr Walsh found himself in demand during the epic match between the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky and the United States' Bobby Fischer in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1972. Interest in this Cold War clash was unsurpassed in the history of chess. The minutiae of every game, move-by-move, that the pair played was telexed to newsrooms around the world from Iceland and Mr Walsh was called in to interpret them. 'It was like a knitting pattern to the subeditors. They hadn't a clue. So anyway, the chief subeditor would ring me to come in and he would send me home in a taxi around midnight.' His weekly column morphed into a daily chess puzzle in 1972, and since then, he has been submitting one to The Irish Times, six days a week, 52 weeks of the year, 53 years and counting. Mr Walsh surpassed 15,000 columns in 2021. As of last weekend it was puzzle number 15,896. In the beginning he would work out six weeks' worth of chess puzzles, 36 in total, and post them to The Irish Times. In latter years he learned to work a computer programme and would put the puzzles on a memory stick and hand them to his good friend and neighbour Colm Fitzpatrick, the former manager of The Irish Times print works. Mr Fitzpatrick emailed the puzzles to The Irish Times. The now 93-year-old is retiring this month from his column. He would have loved to have made it to 70 years, he says. But, it's a good time to call it quits, Mr Walsh says, with his retirement falling in the same week as a new Pope in the Vatican and Joe Duffy retiring from RTÉ's Liveline programme. He gets tired very quickly now, he says, and is afraid of making mistakes. 'I gave a man my number. He used to ring me up. He would say: 'There's a mistake in this morning's paper.' I would look and tell him he put the board the wrong way around.' Chess is a game of infinite possibilities and Mr Walsh has drawn his inspiration over the years from multiple sources. He kept notebooks of all his own chess games from 1945 to 2002, the last year he played competitively. He has 1,000 books on chess in an upstairs room of the house, which he is sadly no longer able to access himself because of his physical fragility. 'Everything has to come to an end,' he says. 'I'd rather go out on top.' Mr Walsh's historical chess columns will continue to feature on The Irish Times Bulletin page for the near future
