TRIBUTE TO MARGARET ANDERSON, nee GRIFFIN 17/6/1921 – 22/7/2011

TRIBUTE TO MARGARET ANDERSON, nee GRIFFIN

17/6/1921 – 22/7/2011 

Margaret (Madge) Anderson, who died in Dublin on July 22, was a native of Kildimo, being born in Ballyculhane on June 17, 1921.  She would later make claim to being the same age as the Irish State, as the Truce came into effect on July 11 that same year.  Her parents were Tom and Ellen Griffin (nee Sheahan) and she was the youngest of their thirteen children, four of whom died in their infancy.  At the age of five she was enrolled in Kildimo National School where Miss Goggin and Mrs Cahill kept strict control.  Madge loved to learn and took a special interest in the Irish language which was enjoying new impetus in the schools of the fledgling state.  Mrs Cahill saw the potential in her young student and encouraged her to enrol for the exams for ‘Post Office Learners’ and ‘Civil Service Writing Assistants’.  Securing first place in the Post Office exam and a place in the Civil Service exam, she opted for the former because this could be pursued in Limerick.  She was just past her fifteenth birthday when she began her two years training in the GPO in Limerick and this was followed by another two years on probation.  Ten old Irish pounds secured her a bicycle from McGanns of Mungret, which carried her to and from Limerick and even to Thurles on one occasion to sorrowfully experience her team’s defeat to Cork in a Munster Final.  Her Post Office career took her to Clonakilty and Tipperary town, in which latter place she met the young Tom Anderson from Roesboro outside the town.  Tom was a psychiatric nurse in Clonmel and it was here that the young couple set up home following their marriage in 1949.  Due to the marriage bar which then operated, Madge became a full-time housewife and mother to Helen, Anne, Mary and Bobby while Tom followed promotional moves to Kilkenny and Portrane and finally settling in Mount Merrion. 

Madge held a great love for Kildimo and her old home where she regularly visited her sister Eily and her brother Chris, while linking up with her sister Kitty and brother George from England.  She also maintained close links with her brother Tom’s family in Ballynacarriga and brother Jim’s family in Knockroe.  Of her own family only George presently survives as a sprightly 95 year old. 

From her mother’s love of reading, the young Madge developed an interest in literature which endured all her life and from which she would draw an appropriate quotation as the occasion demanded.  To within a week of her death, she completed the ‘Irish Times’ cryptic crossword in around fifteen minutes.  Her love of literature prompted her to leave a memorial in words to her family in 2008, entitled ‘The Light of Other Days’.  This ‘light of other days’ Madge directed to the unsung heroes who as she quoted ‘not only drew water from  the well, but were those who also dug that same well’  and these were the people that Madge wanted to be remembered along with her husband Tom who shared her life for forty-five years.

The late Madge was laid to rest beside her beloved Tom in Shanganagh cemetery on July 26^th 2011.  She is sadly mourned by all who knew her especially Helen, Mary and Bobby in Dublin and Anne in New York where she is Ambassador to the United Nations, together with her brother George and her Dublin and Kildimo relations and friends.  Ar dheis Dé to raibh a hanam .