Author of Handball Supremo, Fr Tom Looney. Photo: Killarney Advertiser. Unbeatable: Father Tom Jones: Handball Supremo, by Tom Looney (Red Stripe Press, €14.99)
Tom Jones was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry, on December 23, 1868. In his early years, he attended the local Christian Brothers school and the local Dominican Classical school. As he intended to study for the priesthood in the diocese of Kerry, at the age of twenty-one, he spent a year as a boarder in St Brendan’s College, Killarney – the Junior Diocesan Seminary. Subsequently, he enrolled in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he excelled at his studies and at sport, particularly handball.
Tom and three others were ordained for the diocese of Kerry in 1896. However, as Bishop John Coffey did not need their service, he loaned them out to other dioceses. Tom found himself assigned to the diocese of Down and Connor, and for the next few years ministered first in the parish of Newtownards and later in that of Glenarm in the Glens of Antrim. Tom was next loaned out to the diocese of Leeds in England, where he was appointed curate in the parish of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire in 1895. It was an area where many Irish immigrants were employed in the woollen industry, and there Tom enjoyed being with his ‘own people’.
Tom next volunteered for the Australian mission, and he was assigned to the diocese of Rockmount. This extended across a huge area contiguous to Brisbane and had just 30,000 Catholics scattered across eighteen parochial districts, many of them greater than any diocese. Tom served as the parish priest of Winton from 1900 to 1902. The appointment could not scarcely have been more onerous. At times it involved treks on horseback of nine hundred miles to assist and visit members of his flock. From Winton Tom was transferred to Chartres Towers, an outback gold-mining town. After serving there for a year he had a break-down in his health which prompted Bishop Coffey to call him home.
Reputation
Whenever Tom went his reputation went before him. By his late teens, he was regarded as being an exceptional handballer, seemingly winning almost every competition he entered. After taking up the challenges of the leading handball players across Munster and defeating them he was given the title ‘Handball Supremo’. Even in his later years he liked to challenge well-known handballers to a match which he generally succeeded in winning.
Tom was also famous arising from a daring cliff rescue which he conducted on April 26, 1916. The saga began when a German submarine sank the Norwegian merchant ship, the Carmanian, off the Kerry coast. The crew escaped in their two life-boats. But one of the life-boats in a storm drifted perilously close to the rocks and cliffs at Slea Head on the Dingle peninsula and was in danger of being broken up by being crushed against them.
On being alerted about the situation Tom, who then was a curate in nearby Ballyferriter, and three local men threw ropes down to the life-boat. Then Tom scaled down to the life-boat on eight occasions and helped each of the exhausted sailors to safety on the cliff top. The rescue made newspaper headlines at home and abroad; and Haakon VI, King of Norway, presented Tom with an inscribed silver gilded cup for his daring rescue of the endangered sailors.
An excellent linguist and scholar, he published Irish translations of French and German classics. He was also a ‘man of music’ and became an accomplished player of the uillean pipe”
Following his return from Australia, Tom resumed his ministry in his home diocese. He served as a curate in Glenbeigh (1906-1909), Balllyferriter (1909-1916), Killorglin (1916-1921), Dingle (1921-1928) and Cahirciveen (1928-1931). Then he was appointed parish priest of Glenbeigh, where he served until he died on September 19, 1950.
During those years, he exhibited other remarkable talents. An excellent linguist and scholar, he published Irish translations of French and German classics. He was also a ‘man of music’ and became an accomplished player of the uillean pipes.
In the last years of his life, Tom’s reputation was somewhat tarnished by stories about his then miserliness. This, however, did not deter his parishioners in Glenbeigh from erecting in his honour a magnificent community centre complete with a professional-sized handball alley.
Tom Looney is to be warmly applauded for drawing due attention in this biography to a truly remarkable priest of the Diocese of Kerry.