Last Friday, we were privileged to have John Tobin ,the first man to climb Croagh Patrick in a wheelchair, visit Scoil Padraig Naofa. Accompanied by his mother Anne Tobin, they told us the remarkable story of he conquered the reek, achieving a lifelong dream and raised up to 25,000 euro for five local charities.
The enormous significance of John's achievement was described in detail by Anne using a beautiful photo book Anne created kindly for our school. An especially designed chair 'John's Dream Machine', a team of supporter's including friends, family and the civil defence as well as John's sheer determination enabled him to complete this incredible feat on September 10th 2016. Pupils and teachers listened in awe to their description of the wonderful day which included an escort of MC bikers from his home place of Williamstown to Croagh Patrick., TV coverage by TG4 and outpourings of generosity and hospitality from the community of Williamstown as well as the locals of Westport.
In recognition and support of his inspirational achievements, Mr. Kennelly presented him with a donation towards one of his charities of the Join Our Boys. Third and Second class showed their admiration of his achievements in their presentation of class cards and a small gift of one of his favourite Country Western musicians.
John touched all our hearts with enthusiasm and zest for life. He is always seeking his next challenge and as his Mother Anne stated 'is literally bursting with ability and never sees his disability'. We heard about how his hugely successful endeavour has been recognised by Outsider magazine (Ireland's adventure magazine) who awarded him 'Most Inspiring Person of the Year' Award and John and Anne also appeared on the Ray Darcy show to give an account of his achievement .
We also learned about how John packs his life with adventure, goals and his passions in sport and music. An avid GAA supporter, he never misses a Galway game and is the only supporter granted access to the dressing room of the team. He travels to Portugal once a year to dance the night way to country western stars such as Mike Denver. John sees every day as a new opportunity to achieve and participate in all the wonderful activities and challenges life has to offer.
John is always seeking his next challenge and as his Mother Anne stated 'is literally bursting with ability and never sees his disability'. His story revealed to us having a disability does not hold one back when they have fearlessness, spirit and a love of life. His beautiful smile and cheerful, positive personality lit up the classroom and made us question our own attitudes towards limitations and challenges we encounter in our own lives as well as our perceptions of life with a disability. We are very grateful to John and Anne for the valuable lessons we learned from their visit and will cherish the memories of his visit in their beautiful photo book gift and our photographs from the day. We thank them for sharing their time with us we well as their generous gifts to the school and look forward to hearing of John's adventures in the future.
