A visit to Leitrim County
submitted by Wayne Dilts

     In 1983, I married Lorraine (Lorrie) Theresa named after her mother and her aunt who still lived in Ireland and who Lorrie had never met. Four years later, Lorrie and I went to Ireland with her Dad, Tom as our personal guide. He made sure we experienced Bunratty Village and Castle, the Cliffs of Moher, Blarney Castle, and so many other “tourist” sites that he had seen countless times before, but had never seen during his time there as a child. He also took us to his hometown, Dowra, and spoke in a running commentary on what we were seeing, who we were visiting, telling us the about the family that was living in this house, or the names of those who had lived in the one that was now abandoned. There were too many of the latter. At those where someone still lived, we would get out of the car and walk into the house unannounced and without knocking. Although Lorrie and I were strangers to these people, we were made welcome because we were part of Tom’s family. The homeowners there were excited to see Tom again, many of them he had known for their entire lives Tom took us all to the family plot in the Fahy Cemetery. On the way down a very tight little road, I drove the car off the side and into the “shough.” The bottom of the car got hung up on the stones that lined the ditch and we would have to get towed out.

Tom went to a local farmhouse where the farmer came and pulled us out with his tractor. He wouldn’t take any money for his effort or kindness and within hours the entire town knew the story. At the cemetery, we cleared weeds growing up around the granite stone that Tom had paid for that bore the family name. But the most poignant time of the entire trip was when we visited the old homestead. The view from the top of the “driveway” (which was actually only a path) overlooking the Lough Allen valley and the mountain range beyond is truly breathtaking. There are several fields between the Loughy Road and the house site. You can’t see the remains of the house or byre from the road since they are now surrounded by trees. The thick stone walls of the house were still standing as they had been for probably a couple of hundred years. But the thatch roof was long gone, and there were no windows left. We crawled through an open window to get inside. It was hard to imagine a large family living in these three small rooms, but they had. We gathered some soil from the homestead in a jar and brought it home with us, where we had it encased along with pictures of Tom on his property and gave it to him. A man should never be too far from his native soil.