This article is from page 17 of the 2006-06-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
FRANK Conway’s autograph book is a veritable who’s who of names.
The common denominator linking all the signatories to the little tome is that they all passed through Shannon Airport.
John Wayne, Victor Mature, Doris Day, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier are in Frank’s little pocketbook. So are Muhammed Ali and Charlie Haughey.
Two heavyweights, if in very different ways. Frank met them both and even took a punch in one of his jousts. Not from Ali, who was en route to America after a fight with Henry Cooper in ’67, but from Haughey, who was also going transatlantic.
The punch wasn’t in anger though, more a shadow box because of what happened the day before – February 26, 1985, the day Dessie O’Malley was expelled from Fianna Fáil.
Frank Conway was a member of the National Executive at the time and, along with members from all over the country, was summoned to Dublin for a meeting at which Haughey cited O’Malley, for “conduct unbecoming of a member”.
“It’s him or me,” said Haughey, “And I want it to be unanimous for the good of the party,” he added. Conway was one of only nine out of 82 members to vote against the motion. It was a vote against Haughey.
The following day, Frank was back at work in Shannon when Haughey passed through on this way to New York. “I felt a bit sheepish, I can tell you,” recalls Frank. “They were all clustered around him and then our eyes met across the arrivals hall. I said ‘Here goes Conway, you’re a Fianna Fáil man, go up to him’.
“I moved in and I said ‘Welcome to Shannon Mr Haughey, sorry about yesterday but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’. He shook my hand and stared. Then he gave me a mock left hook to the right cheek. I was startled.”
There was more to come. Years later, when Frank was back on the National Executive, he walked into his first meeting only to hear Haughey say “Ah there you are Conway, you can’t kill a bad thing”.
“I answered by saying ‘You should know yourself’. He laughed. He had the same glint in his eye the day he gave me that mock punch. I took it that all was forgiven and, a few years later, secured a meeting with him in Government Buildings.
“I was working in Shannon and felt that public relations for the airport shouldn’t be done from Dublin. I got nowhere with him, but remember that he was drinking a cup of tea in a lovely fragile cup, looked up and said, ‘Tell me about Clare, Conway, it used to be such a f***ing lovely place’.”
Haughey’s final act was to sign Frank’s book: “To my good friend forever, Charlie Haughey,” he said.
It put him in there with Ali et al.