Former students of the late Don O\u2019Leary are campaigning to have one of Cork\u2019s newest pedestrian bridges named after the man they remember as \u201can advocate, an educator, and a friend\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Leary, who passed away in October at the age of 68, after living with terminal cancer for five years, had served for more than 18 years as director of the Cork Life Centre.<\/p>\n
During that time, working with a volunteer-led staff, he helped provide one-to-one, relationship-based tuition to hundreds of young Cork people failed by Ireland\u2019s mainstream education system.<\/p>\n
Paying tribute to Mr O\u2019Leary after his death, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin recalled working with the Ballyphehane native over several years to improve employment conditions in the centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe believed in the dignity of every individual, and the capacity of every individual to grow,\u201d Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis contribution to the Cork Life Centre and to many, many young people was very, very positive, and he has left a significant legacy in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now several of those young people are calling on Cork City Council to name one of the city\u2019s two newest bridges after Mr O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n
Darcy Faye, who graduated from the Life Centre in 2018, said Mr O\u2019Leary had, for so many young people, offered them a bridge to education and greater confidence, and it would be appropriate that his name be remembered on a bridge in the city he loved.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon was all about empowering young people to find their voice and to stand up for what they believe in, and we believe that because Don is someone who helped so many of us, he shouldn\u2019t be forgotten,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Cork City Council said a public consultation process was ongoing, inviting proposals from the public to name the bridges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cProposals to commemorate living persons are not generally encouraged. Nominees should be deceased, preferably at least 20 years previously,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
However, they added, an exception to those guidelines can be considered by the council \u201cif deemed appropriate\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The deadline for submissions is January 26.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Leary\u2019s son, Don Jr, said his father \u201cwould never have stopped giving out, but he would have been so proud of the fine young people they are\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if this goes nowhere, the effort that his past pupils have put into this is all the tribute that he would want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former students of the late Don O\u2019Leary are campaigning to have one of Cork\u2019s newest pedestrian bridges named…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,11040,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-239130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-cork-people","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}