IRELAND
Irish Central
Mike Farragher @brainonshamrox June 15,2014
My father was a teenager when “The Quiet Man” was shot. He saw some of the filming at the Ballyglunin train station, which is on the outskirts of Tuam and just over the stone fence on the family farm.
One of the earliest and fondest memories he has centers around catching shillings on the train tracks that John Wayne threw out to himself and the other star-struck local kids on the set.
There is a cruel irony that “The Quiet Man,” the most beloved movie in Irish culture, would be filmed in and around Tuam, a town that kept quiet about burying babies in the backyard even while the movie was being made.
The horrific news reports out of the town that is home to my richest childhood memories are so hard to bear that I have no interest in rehashing them here in this space. But there are some key omissions in the narrative that are worth calling out.
In following this story, I haven’t really seen or heard anyone address the termites in the floorboard of Irish DNA that made the very existence of a home for unwed mothers and babies necessary in the first place.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.