Radio producer and author famed for 'Goodnight Ballivor' memoir

OBITUARY: John Quinn, Ballivor and Galway

It is entirely fitting that John Quinn’s passing, sudden as it was, occurred on a significant day in the history of Irish broadcasting – the launch date of RTÉ Radio’s centenary celebrations. For the Ballivor man was a central part of that institution for a quarter of that century, having spent over 25 years at Montrose as a producer and broadcaster. And when he retired from that role another quarter of a century ago, he became a prolific author, writing, editing and contributing to numerous books up until last October.

His seminal work as far as the people of Meath are concerned is ‘Goodnight Ballivor, I’ll Sleep in Trim’. What began as a radio memoir of his childhood in the village became a book, and finally a short film documentary, simply entitled ‘Goodnight Ballivor’, produced and directed by Donal Haughey of Hawkeye Films for TG4 in 2009. It is one of those expressions that nobody knows the origin of, but perhaps came from an inebriated fellow, who unable to get a bed in Ballivor for the night, curses the village, declaring he’ll head to the nearest town.

There is another saying, sometimes used in a derogatory manner, that while “you can take the man out of the bog, you can’t take the bog out of the man.” For John Quinn, while he was taken out of Ballivor when his garda sergeant father retired in June 1955, his home turf of Ballivor was never taken out of him. In fact, he admits that at the beginning of Haughey’s film.

He never left the village at all, he said, and when he read the name Ballivor in a sports report in a newspaper, in a volume, or hears it on television, his heart fluttered.

He had spent his youth as a ‘limb of the law’ in the village, before heading off to boarding school at the Patrician College, Ballyfin, Co Laois, an institution which was also to become a subject of a radio documentary in his later life. He won the President’s Medal for best results in the 1959 Leaving Certificate there.

After his time in Ballyfin, he studied as a teacher in St Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra, graduating in 1961. His first teaching post was in the then new suburb of Finglas in Dublin, where he taught from 1961 until he got married in 1968.

His bride was Olive McKeever, and he had met her in the most inauspicious of circumstances – at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown where they were both being treated for tuberculosis in the sanatorium there – although on different wards. In November 1965, having returned from a study tour in the United States with a group of teachers earlier that year, he was admitted to Blanchardstown, where he would stay for nine months. Five months into his stay, he caught sight of a “smasher from unit 4” – wearing a black leather coat, no less. But in his rush to hear a racing commentary as Arkle beat Height of Fashion by a neck in the Leopardstown Chase, he let a door close in her face. Making further inquiries, he discovered she was Olive McKeever from Stackallen, sister of Meath footballer, Peter. Correspondence was smuggled between wards, and a romance began, culminating with their marriage by her uncle Monsignor McKeever, then parish priest of Trim, in September 1968. Those letters exchanged were to assume a very poignant relevance in later years.

The newly-weds lived in the west of Ireland for a year, where John taught in Benada Abbey in Sligo, before he returned to Navan to take up a post in St Patrick’s Classical School. His teaching career was a short one however, as in 1970, he was appointed a general editor at the educational publishers, CJ Fallon Ltd. Five years later, he became education officer at RTÉ, part of a team behind a pilot schools radio service.

The work involved visiting schools all over Connemara and the Erris peninsula in Mayo, evaluating the programmes and the reactions to them amongst pupils and teachers. The Quinns, with two daughters, Lisa and Deirdre, lived in Oranmore, Co Galway for a while before settling in Greystones, Co Wicklow, where son Declan John arrived.

RTE encouraged John to pursue an MA in Education at University College, Dublin, and when Tom McArdle, one of the original Radio Scoile producers, moved to television, John applied for and was successful in getting the vacant radio position. His first role was producing Niall Toibin reading Frank O’Connor’s story ‘First Confession’ for a Junior English series. Over the next few years, he moved from a children’s magazine programme to series for parents. In 1981, he won the prestigious Governor of Tokyo award at the Japan Prize, a major international competition for radio. It was for ‘The Miracle Tree’, a programme on language development in the young child, the first of two such awards.

As someone who had grown up listening to radio, he was in his dream job.

Olive, meanwhile, was involved in the establishment with neighbours of the Open Door Day Centre for the Physically Disabled in Bray.

‘The Open Mind’ series began on RTÉ radio in 1989 and ran for 13 years. John edited 'The Open Mind Lecture Series' (1999), with contributions from Gordon Wilson, John Hume and George Mitchell. An interview series, ‘With Ewan and Peggy’, on Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger won a Jacob's Award in 1993.

Encouraged by Olive, John had begun writing fiction, and his first book, a children’s novel, ‘The Summer of Lily and Esme’ won the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award in 1992. His children's books have sold over 30,000 copies.

The Quinns moved west again, to Otterbrook in Killeenaran, a thatched house at the end of a boreen that led to an inlet of Galway Bay. It was a very romantic setting but a long distance journey from Dublin and John’s work. Olive’s health began to deteriorate over those years – she had lost a lung and nearly died during her TB sojourn in Blanchardstown in the 1960s, and she was now having blood-clotting and blackout problems. A fall down a stair at her sister’s home in Bray resulted in a broken neck and a three month stay in hospital over Christmas 2000 and the new year. In summer 2001, as a belated Christmas treat, John booked himself and Olive into Kellys of Rosslare, an area they had enjoyed family holidays with the children.

They were celebrating a new closeness in their busy lives and anticipated a new beginning – John too had recovered from prostate cancer. Olive went for a swim in the sea as John held her hand into the water and watched fondly from the shore – it was the last time he would see her alive. After a few strokes, she stopped moving. It was, as John wrote in ‘Sea of Love, Sea of Loss – Letters to Olive’, ‘the end of the adventure’.

After she died, John tried to make sense of the devastating loss by weaving together a selection of their letters, those written in Blanchardstown during their courtship, some written by John after Olive’s death, diary entries, anecdotes, and poems to illuminate his account of their life together. The memorial to her began as a radio documentary and became a touching book in 2003 after Marian Finucane brought him on to discuss the work. John returned to Kelly's of Rosslare on Olive's anniversary every year.

Olive had encouraged John to write more, and after her death and over next 24 years, it seems like he never stopped, almost producing a book a year, be it a compilation, a collaboration, more memories of Ballivor, a commission or a simple booklet for a college reunion.

When O'Brien Press published 'All Changed – Fifty Years of Photographing Ireland' by photographer, Colman Doyle, it was John who was chosen to do the accompanying text; when Noel Dempsey as Education Minister was President of the EU Council of Ministers for Ireland's EU Presidency of 2004, he asked John to produce a book celebrating learning and teaching – 'Ways of Knowing – Bealaigh Eolais'. John dedicated it to 'Olive, who liked to meander'.

In the introduction he wrote: "I am not an educationalist. All I have ever done as a broadcaster was to act as a conduit for the thoughts and ideas of others."

In 1999, Olive, on hearing Seán Boylan speak at a Céifin Conference, had said to John: ‘You know, there’s a book in that fellow!’ But Seán Boylan is not a man who likes to talk about himself, so it took five years of cajoling and convincing before work started on ‘The Will to Win’ published by O’Brien Press in 2006.

In recent years, he has been producing little gems, published by Veritas, including 'Gratias: A Little Book of Gratitude', 'A Book of Beginnings', 'Daily Wisdom (Leánn an Lae)' and 'Stolen Moments', offering thoughts and reflections on life.

A neat 400 page work, 'Homage' - A Salute to Fifty Memorable Minds', was drawn from the many projects he worked on over the years, and pays tribute to 50 well-known people from various fields – the arts, education, politics, business, science, economics, all of whom he interviewed over his career. These include Maeve Binchy, Seamus Heaney, John Hume, Dervla Murphy, Brendan Kennelly, John McGahern and George Mitchell. In each case, John provides a background note on the contributor. In two cases, the Céifin Institute and the Class of '61, he salutes groups rather than an individual. Other names that feature are Noam Chomsky, Denis Donoghue, Gerry Fitt, Michael D Higgins, Alice Leahy, Edna O'Brien, Seán Ó Faoláin, Tony O'Reilly, Thomas Pakenham, Peter Ustinov, TK Whitaker, and Gordon Wilson, and educationalist Sr Cyril Mooney from Wicklow.

'Homage' was intended to be his last work in 2023, but ever the workaholic, he produced a small volume last October, 'The Passing Year' based on his personal journal of ‘remembrances, recollections and ruminations’ of 2024 which was launched in Charlie Byrne’s bookshop in Galway by sculptor, John Behan.

A regular contributor of poetry to the Meath Chronicle on events of significance and important occasions, he edited 'A Little Book of Ledwidge' on the centenary of the death of Slane poet Francis Ledwidge in 2017.

In October of 2024, to mark the opening of the new St Kinneth's library in the old Church of Ireland building in Ballivor, a special night was held to celebrate the life and memories of John Quinn. A showing of 'Goodnight Ballivor, I'll Sleep in Trim' preceded an evening of John recalling the Ballivor of 50 and 60 years ago. Even though he had left Meath in the 1950s, he was a true Meath football fan who was delighted to see the Royal County make a return to the big time last year, even if at the expense of his adopted Galway.

When he retired from RTE, he received a Degree in Literature from University of Limerick in 2003.

Predeceased by Olive, his brother, Noel and sister Kay, John is survived by his daughters, Lisa and Deirdre; son, Declan; daughter-in-law Kelly; grandchildren, Eva, Georgia, Riley, Callan and Senan; sister Mary, nieces, nephews, relatives, neighbours and former RTE colleagues and friends. His funeral took place at the Church of the Annunciation, Clarinbridge, Co Galway, on Monday, with burial at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin, alongside his beloved Olive.