Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Irish Institute Mexico City

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Recently, stumbled across the website for the "Irish Institute" of Mexico City.
It is a prestigious school for boys (now with a separate section for girls.) I spent many hours at meetings in the little conference room with the horse-shoe table!
 A quick reading of the site (in Spanish) says that the school was founded in 1966 by Fr. Marcial Maciel. Factually correct. I think it a shame that there is no mention of the first Legionaries who helped get it going! Fr. Juan Manuel Fernandez Amenabar, now deceased, was the first Director. He didn't speak a word of English but he was an extraordinary priest. I will be forever grateful for the positive impact he made on my life. Can you say, "joie de vivre?" That was Juan Manuel! The first two Irish founders were Fr. John Walsh, from Wexford in Ireland and yours truly. Jose Luis Diaz was seconded to us from the Instituto Cumbres. When we opened for business in February, 1966 the school had 80 students in elementary school.


Later, we opened the secondary and high schools. Fr. Amenabar's legacy includes the roof top swimming pool. During the 10 years I was there, we interacted a lot with Fr. Maciel, the Founder of the Legionaries
My memoirs are almost ready for publication. There are lots of fun stories about those days! The Mexican Olympic Swim Team trained in that pool for the 1968 Olympics!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

fr john walsh is my uncle