“People have often asked how they can get involved and help, well this is an easy way to get involved,” is how Michael Feeney, chairman of the Mayo Peace Park, described the new Friends of Mayo Peace Park initiative which was launched in Breaffy House Resort last week. This new drive by the Mayo Peace Park Committee is asking for people to join the friends group for a one off fee of €50. For that donation you will get copy of the 328 page commemorative book, a friends of Mayo Peace Park certificate, and a special Mayo Peace Park jacket pen.
The initiative has been launched to get some new funding for the park to carry out a number of improvements on the park and to keep it as up to date as possible. “It's funding to put in some extra lights for security, some more memorials, and to add some more inscriptions, to update the website, and to do promotional work that needs to be done over the next year or two.”
Since it was officially opened last year the park has seen a huge surge in interest from all over the globe according to Mr Feeney. “We have had a phenomenal amount of new names inscribed on the park since we opened it, we did an awful lot of work in September on names from World War One and World War Two. Even since then more and more have come in. It's spreading internationally, the message has gone out there to the people, when people find out about it they contact us and ask why isn't my uncle, father, or grandfather on it, it has gone huge since we opened it. See there were people who would have left Ireland and be registered in America, Australia, or Canada and wouldn't have had addresses here, but would have come from Mayo originally so we didn't know about them.”
Mr Feeney also said he was glad that since the original idea for the park started a number of years ago it has allowed people who would have been forgotten to be remembered by their families and others for what they gave in wars around the world. “When we started this, people didn't know they had these war dead, people said to me what war dead? What are you talking about? It was a hidden secret that was ignored in history for one reason or another, the people who were engaged in those wars just didn't speak about it. The fact is 1,018 names on the World War One monument of those who were killed have been inscribed on the monument, and more are to go up, and then you had 32 names from World War Two when we opened the park last year and there's now over 70. We have had to put up a whole new memorial that's almost filled now.”
If you would like to become a friend of the Mayo Peace Park you can get in touch with them at [email protected]
