Who strikes the first blow for Ire- land? Who wins a wreath that will be green forever? (James Fintan Lalor, Irish Felon, July 1848)
Joe Christle had entered the prism of national politics in 1954, during the IRA campaign against the British army presence in Northern Ireland of the 1950s. He was a leading participant in the Armagh Barracks raid of June 12th, 1954, the first major "decommissioning of arms" of the crown forces in modern times.
In the subsequent October raid on Omagh Barracks, he was injured in the hand while trying to open the front gate of the barracks from the inside. Historians generally accept that the two 1954 raids gave momentum to the IRA campaign of 1956-62.
Joe Christle had sat his Bar finals before the Armagh raid, having previously qualified as a chartered accountant and then as a cost accountant. His earlier schooling with the Christian Brothers at James Street and O'Connell Schools saw his emergence as a leading athlete under the tutelage of Jack Sweeney.
He remained a lifelong admirer of the Christian Brothers and saw to it that his three sons, Mel, Terri and Joe, benefited from the same system of education. He boxed in the National Stadium and took up cycling, enthusiasms he also passed to his sons.
Because of his desire to see a deeper political involvement by Sinn Fein, including the ending of the policy of abstentionism, he soon fell foul of the republican leadership and became an independent voice on the national scene.
His involvement in politics and contesting Dail elections in Dublin South West did not prosper, not least because he was denounced as communistic from the pulpit of Mourne Road Church in the McCarthyite 1950s. Despite that, however, he never wavered in his Catholic faith and his commitment to it.
By 1953 he had founded An Ras Tailteann as a two-day race, to Wexford and back (won by his brother, Colm). The Ras became an eight-day and, ultimately, a 10day race, and the Ireland of the staid 1950s was brightened every summer by the colourful cavalcade through the countryside with exciting finishes and the loud cheers en route.
Names like O'Hanlon, Mangan, Murphy became household words. By the 1960s and 1970s, Joe Christle was introducing teams from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. He started the Stephens Project in 1972 to help the best of Irish cyclists, like Benny Donnelly and John Mangan, get a foothold in continental cycling. The success of An Ras owed everything to his flair for organisation and his ability to motivate.
In his early years, working for the ESB, he saw that ESB workers were badly paid and had conditions as bad as the farm labourers and turf-cutters he had worked alongside in the bleak winter and spring of 1946. He led a bitter strike for better pay and conditions - the first ever in the ESB - in which the workers won a standard of wages which has endured as the standard to be achieved by other categories of workers.
He was twice elected to the statutory tribunal of the ESB before a combination of trade union officials and political pressure excluded him from its non-statutory successor, the Industrial Council.
By 1961 Joe Christle had been appointed by the head of the College of Commerce, Mr Sean O Ceallaigh, as lecturer in law and accountancy. His major contribution to contemporary society was to follow in the years to his retirement in the early years of this decade. He helped pioneer and expand the commercial and legal courses at Rathmines. The diploma in legal studies has more than any other course in the country given strength in depth to all levels of the legal infrastructure in the State, as well as helping thousands to qualify for the professions of solicitor or barrister.
A generation will remember Joe Christle's flamboyant style of lecturing in subjects like constitutional or company law, while his colleagues will recall his gift for organisation and attention to detail which powered the expansion of the range and number of courses offered by the College of Commerce, later a constituent unit of the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Before retiring, he helped the late principal of the college, James Hickey, win validation of degree status for certain college courses.
Joe Christle took a great interest, with his lifelong friend Mr Leo Collins, in the establishment of Ennistown Stud and always retained a lively interest in the prowess of his two racehorses, Double On and Le Ciel. He goes to join Leo in death in Kilmessan Cemetery, where he will be buried today.