“For the Love of Mary” A Tale of Courting in the 1960s – Book Launch by Paddy Berry
August 9 @ 4:00 pm
As a young man turning from his teens into his twenties in the 1960s, Paddy Berry had a problem. He had everything, he was tall, fit and healthy. His problem was a secret known only to him. He felt that no young woman would fall in love with a “fella who had a squint!”. He might look at a girl at a dance but felt that instead of looking straight at her beauty, she would think he was looking at another girl beside her. Then, when he was 25, a young nurse named Mary saw him in hospital when he was having his squint straightened. They clapped eyes on each other, he on her two eyes and she on his one. The rest is history.
In this heart-warming account, Paddy Berry laces fact with fiction to protect the identity of some and to tell the story of how he “chased” Mary and how their on-again, off-again relationship endured. They were opposites, Paddy had a passion for traditional Irish singing, sport and business, Mary was lukewarm about it all preferring to meet and chat with people and help them where she could, but she loved it when he brought her to Croke Park for the big GAA games.
Launched by Verona Murphy TD, Ceann Comhairle Dáil Éireann