Page 39 - The Gonzaga Record 1986
P. 39
taught us. Some years after I left, I remember seeing one of the members
of the community in Dublin battling homewards on his bicycle through
the rain on a dirty winter's evening. I thought of the hardship of his life
compared with those he had taught and what drove men like him to turn
their backs on all that most of us covet and strive to attain. I thought
of Fr O'Conor's last talk to us at the school about giving and not
counting the cost save knowing that one was doing God's holy will. I
don't flatter myself that I have attained that. But the example of those
teachers who did during my schooldays has remained with me as an
example and some ideal to set against the crude materialism and
selfishness I see in so much modern life as I struggle on trying to find
my way forward in this Valley of Darkness.
Biographical Note
Charles Lysaght went from Gonzaga to University College Dublin and
Kings Inns where he read economics and law. In 1960 he won The Irish
Times' trophy for Student Debating. Subsequently he went to Cambridge
University where he became the first Irish-born President of the
Cambridge Union for almost fifty years. He has worked as a law teacher
and legal adviser in London and Dublin and is currently attached to the
Law Reform Commission. In 1979 he published a biography of Brendan
Bracken, a former Mungret boy who became Minister of Information in
the wartime government of Winston Churchill.
37
of the community in Dublin battling homewards on his bicycle through
the rain on a dirty winter's evening. I thought of the hardship of his life
compared with those he had taught and what drove men like him to turn
their backs on all that most of us covet and strive to attain. I thought
of Fr O'Conor's last talk to us at the school about giving and not
counting the cost save knowing that one was doing God's holy will. I
don't flatter myself that I have attained that. But the example of those
teachers who did during my schooldays has remained with me as an
example and some ideal to set against the crude materialism and
selfishness I see in so much modern life as I struggle on trying to find
my way forward in this Valley of Darkness.
Biographical Note
Charles Lysaght went from Gonzaga to University College Dublin and
Kings Inns where he read economics and law. In 1960 he won The Irish
Times' trophy for Student Debating. Subsequently he went to Cambridge
University where he became the first Irish-born President of the
Cambridge Union for almost fifty years. He has worked as a law teacher
and legal adviser in London and Dublin and is currently attached to the
Law Reform Commission. In 1979 he published a biography of Brendan
Bracken, a former Mungret boy who became Minister of Information in
the wartime government of Winston Churchill.
37
