Paul Gleeson 

THE DEATH has occurred of Dublin republican Paul Gleeson. He died on 6 January aged 57.

Paul was a lifelong republican and a few weeks before his death he wrote a statement which he asked to have printed in An Phoblacht. Below we carry it in full.

``I joined Na Fianna Eireann at the age of nine years. I joined the Irish Republican Army at the age of 16 after serving as a scout and officer of Na Fianna.

``I was interned for a year and ten months in the Curragh concentration camp during the 1956 campaign.

``I believe that the fight for Irish freedom being waged by the Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army today in the six north eastern counties of my country is the same war as started by the men and women of 1916. I believe it is also the same war for independence engaged in by my father George `The Dodger' Gleeson when he was a member, and subsequently quartermaster, of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army.

``I also wish to state that I hold the same principles and beliefs as I held during my internment.

``I wish success to our freedom fighters of today.''

Paul was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

Tom Egan

``I wound up in Belfast, and being a foreigner from `Eire', I had to have a residence permit to live in Ulster.'' This is how Tom Egan, a keen Gaelgeoir form Longford, described coming, with his wife Anne, to live in Belfast in 1940. The comment is typical of a wit as dry as the AGM of the Pioneer and Total Abstinence Society. Sadly Tom, aged 84, passed away in New York on 12 January. Anne, from Tynan, Co. Armagh, died some years earlier. In the interim Tom was doubly afflicted with the death of their son Mark, one of their five children.

I had the good fortune to know the Egans for twenty years and thankfully was able to meet Tom while visiting New York last year. Typically, when I arrived he was engaged with a neighbour in lighthearted banter at the entrance to their apartment block.

Like so many Irish people, trying to earn a living brought the Egans from Ireland to London - where they met and married - to Dublin, Belfast, Canada and eventually New York in the late 50s.

During their seventeen years in Belfast - where their children were born - the Egans came to know the late Jimmy Steele and Maire Drumm and Joe Cahill.

With the onset of the `Troubles' the Egans joined the Bronx chapter of the Irish Northern Aid Committee. As INAC activists their work is legend. Their quiet and totally unassuming manner disarmed anyone with a dollar in their pocket. Donors always had the benefit of a feelgood factor when dealing with them. Their reputation as activists is only surpassed by their reputation as solid decent human beings who were both personally generous in every sense.

Anyone who knew Tom Egan - provided their ego survived the subtle ravages of his tongue - was enriched by the experience.

He was a man of many parts; a good husband and father, scrupulously honest and hard working, an `oul' devil who loved the craic, a great friend, a great friend of Irish freedom, a patriot. His passing has impoverished all who knew him. Gone but forever with us.

To the remaining Egan children, the Egan family circle, Tom's many comrades and friends I extend deepest condolences on behalf of all in Ireland who knew him.

Eamonn McCrory.