After an unbroken 62 years of teaching and preparing her students for examinations, Athenry music teacher Ann Walsh has finally turned the key in her Yamaha piano and decided to call it a day.
Four generations of music students have studied weekly with Mrs. Walsh and she is rightly proud of the excellent results they have achieved in their Royal Irish Academy of Music examinations up through the grades to RIAM Senior Certificate level.
BY FRANCIS KENNEDY
Ann was born in Athenry, the daughter of Stephen and Ellen (nee Haverty) Jordan, and she began teaching music at the age of 19 in Loreto Convent, Killarney.
Having spent a few years in Kerry, she moved to Muckross Park Dominican Convent in Dublin where she spent four happy years.
She then moved back to Athenry where she met her future husband, Joe Walsh, who worked at Athenry Rail Station with C.I.E.
Before they married in 1961, Ann continued to teach privately from the family home in Davis Street where this writer was one of her students.
Setting up home on Church Street, Joe and Ann raised three children, Hilary, Catherine and Andrienne. She continued to teach piano, both from her new home and in two Mountbellew schools, Holy Rosary College and the primary school.
Her husband Joe died in 2001 and now and then she takes a trip to London to visit her children and their families.
She is happiest sitting at the piano and hers will never be locked. Occasionally she packs her keyboard in her car and drives to the local nursing home to play for the residents and staff.
“I’m sure I will miss the teaching”, Mrs. Walsh says, “but as I already devote a lot of my time to organising entertainment for the residents in Maryfield Nursing Home where I arrange all the musical afternoons, music will still play a big part in my life.”
On most Sundays throughout the year, Ann arranges for a group of musicians to entertain the residents for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
“I am very grateful to all the musicians who have obliged me over the past few years”, she says, “and now that I have more time on my hands, I hope to find even more musical volunteers!”