A Tipperary craftsman who can never recall an idle day in his life

Tipperary man Johnny Sheehan left school in his native Killusty at the age of fourteen and a half.
After working for a number of months with a local farmer, milking three cattle and putting the harness on a horse that was so much bigger than him that he had to stand on a manger to reach it, he then embarked on a career in the construction industry that took him all over the world.

Johnny’s formal education may have ended in his mid-teens but he learned all he knows in the eight decades that followed in the university of life.

Now living back home in Fethard, he cannot recall an idle day in his ninety-nine years. And now, just four months short of his 100th birthday, he is still not someone to sit around the house doing nothing.

A carpenter by trade from his early years, he is now an accomplished wood turner, turning out a wide range of wood products from his workshop at the rear of his home in St. Patrick’s Place.

“I might take a rest in the morning, and then after lunch I will go out to the workshop and work on the lathe”, says Johnny. His range of finely crafted products includes lamp stands, candlesticks, bowls and pens.

CAREER
Johnny’s career, that took him all over Ireland and Britain, as well as to Australia and Nigeria, taught him many skills that he has carried from job to job. A key time for him was while working in Chesterfield in England, and he enrolled for night classes in a local college where he learned skills that later stood to him in jobs across the globe, including subjects such as calculus and trigonometry that were crucial in the construction trade.

After leaving his first job as a farm hand after twelve months, Johnny later worked on a number of other farms in the locality. He also became a ploughman and then worked with his father who was a carpenter, and his jobs included working on Athassel Abbey in Golden.
He then decided to move to England for work where his travels took him to many towns and cities. That was in 1953 and his first job was as a labourer at an oil refinery in Liverpool, but his skills eventually got him a job on the site as a carpenter.

CARPENTER
He then moved as a carpenter to a major carbonisation plant in Chesterfield. “I didn’t know where Chesterfield was but I wanted to get out of Liverpool and working in the muck”, he recalls. “I spent four years there and I was the last chippy on the job out of 65”, he remarks.

His next port of call was Jarrow in the north east of England where he was put in charge of setting up a brick kiln, and moved on later to the head office in Derby and from there to Bristol.

JUDO CLUB
After a short time home in Fethard, he returned to the UK, and spent time working in London, Hereford, Nottingham and Cardiff. During his many years in the UK, Johnny never bothered going out socialising at night or becoming part of the pub life, instead he took up judo and aikido – a talent he later put to good use when establishing a judo club in Fethard on his return.
His time in Cardiff proved significant for Johnny where he worked on the wooden structures of large cooling towers. He spent six and a half years there and during that time he was sent to work on a similar job in Australia where he spent twelve months.

NIGERIA
“I was in charge of the job there in Queensland and I had a great crew of workers”, he states, adding that he was also involved in establishing a judo club in the area as well.

On his return to Ireland, he worked on a number of jobs in the Wexford area until his company sent him abroad again, this time to Nigeria, where a large part of the work was on roads construction. He didn’t enjoy his time in Nigeria as much as in Australia, recalling that there was often bad feeling among the locals with Europeans coming to work there. “We were told to go home but we just had to ignore it”, Johnny says.

VINEGAR HILL
On his return to Ireland, he worked in Wexford again, in Rosslare Harbour and on a water treatment plant near Vinegar Hill, and then moved on to Dublin where his career took a change from construction to demolition.
After first working on the demolition of a complex of houses, his next major job was the demolition of the famed Royal Hibernian Hotel on Dublin’s Dawson Street. Johnny (pictured above with his brothers) recalls a humorous interaction with a lady as the work was about to begin.
“She ran up the stairs when she saw us and said she hoped that we weren’t demolishing the beautiful hotel where she had spent her wedding night. I told her that we weren’t demolishing it, only repairing it”, he points out with a grin.

Johnny then returned closer to home to work on the construction of Bru Boru in Cashel where he was in charge of the scheme and spent four years there.

And once he was back in his native county, he then got a job as Clerk of Works with Tipperary County Council. Part of his work involved the supervision of building a new reservoir in Killenaule, including two and a half miles of water mains. He moved from there to Bagnelstown in County Carlow.

By then he was back living in Fethard with his wife Peg and their children, and he devoted a lot of his time to the formation of a judo club in the town. “There was such interest in it that we had to have two sessions”, he says.
He also renewed his interest in wood turning and spends a few hours on it every day.

“I worked all my life and I still cannot sit down and do nothing”, he explains. He has his own list of products that he makes but also gets new ideas from specialised wood-turning magazines.

And that sums up a large part of his philosophy of life while he was working across three continents. He was not only a diligent and assiduous worker, and a highly regarded foreman and supervisor, but someone who solved problems and devised new strategies that proved hugely beneficial to his bosses.

As he does now with his wood-turning, his brain was always active as he sought out new approaches and designs, the legacy not only of his time in college in Chesterfield – a time he looks back on with great fondness – but his eight decades of always learning on the job.

Johnny’s wife Peg, who sadly passed away eight years ago, was a huge support as he travelled around to his various jobs at home and abroad. “I never went without asking her and if she had any objection at all, then I wouldn’t go. She was a wonderful person as she looked after the children while I was away”. Peg (nee Connors) was a fluent Irish speaker from Newcastle.

Johnny and Peg had four children – three daughters, Terry, Mary and Phyllis, and a son, Tony, who died nineteen years ago aged fifty-one. Tony was a renowned clay-pigeon shooter, a multiple national champion and represented Ireland on a number of occasions.

Johnny  and as he looks back on a full and active life, he can still recall details from his first job on the farm in Killusty, right up to his last. He proved to be a master craftsman, with skills that won him admiration wherever he worked.

But don’t tell him to rest up, take life easy and enjoy retirement. It’s a word that was never in his vocabulary and never will be as he faces into his second century.