Foynes Flying Boat Museum on the Shannon estuary yesterday celebrated its 10th birthday and the 60th anniversary of Pan-American Airways' first scheduled passenger flight across the north Atlantic to Foynes.
It was a day of memories for many people and a nostalgic occasion for the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, as her grandfather, Eamon de Valera, was in Foynes that day 60 years ago to welcome the pioneering crews and their passengers.
The Minister launched a tour-year millennium calendar as a tribute to those who flew the flying boats from 1937 to 1945 and the people who worked in Foynes at the time. The calendar features such famous passengers as Humphrey Bogart, Gracie Fields, Ernest Hemingway, J.F. Kennedy, and Douglas Fairbanks.
The guest of honour yesterday was Ms Maureen O'Hara Blair, whose late husband, Capt Charles Blair, was one of the pilots of the flying boat days. In July 1976 the veteran 79-year-old actress and her husband arrived in Foynes on the Southern Cross.
Charlie Blair returned 31 years after he had left, taking the last flying boat out of the airport at Foynes to New York in October 1945. He also piloted the first land plane back to the new airport at Rineanna, now Shannon. Maureen O'Hara often remarked: "Charlie was the last to leave and the first to return."
Over the past six months, an archive and library have been developed at the flying boat museum under the guidance of the archivist, Mr David O'Regan, with financial assistance from the Heritage Council, the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, and Limerick County Council.
Ms de Valera said: "Foynes is unique in Ireland and maybe also in Europe in that in the late 1930s and early 1940s all possible means of transport were based here. From 1939 to 1945, Foynes was the centre of the aviation world. "At that time, Foynes boasted a commercial harbour, an international airport, a passenger train service, a passenger bus service and hackneys. Can any other rural village with a population of approximately 500 boast such a history?"
The Minister said that since the museum opened more than 160,000 visitors had passed through. It had rightly won many rewards and was recognised as a model of its kind. Foynes now had a good tourist trade. When the museum opened, there was no other visitor attraction in the area between Tralee and Limerick city on the N69. Today there are over 10 centres and a thriving N69 tourism association.
"While this is an opportunity to salute Foynes and its unique history, it is also a chance to congratulate Margaret O'Shaughnessy, the museum curator, for her dedicated work in bringing this museum to reality," the Minister said.