The life and work of a priest who did pioneering work in speech therapy is being celebrated in an exhibition at University College Cork. His techniques were particularly successful in helping people who stammered.
In January 1961, the BBC televised a programme, It Happened to Me, which recounted the life of Fr Christy O’Flynn, an 80-year-old parish priest of Passage West, who had by then become a legend in his native Cork.
More than 30 years earlier, Fr O’Flynn had opened a school of drama, music and philosophy, next to Shandon steeple in Cork city, which became known as the Loft.
The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at UCC recently hosted an exhibition to celebrate the priest’s work and the progress made in the last few decades in providing speech and language therapy for the people of Cork.
The exhibition features images from Fr O’Flynn’s life, panels describing his work in the Loft, a bust and artefacts such as handwritten notes.
It was officially launched at the Jennings Gallery, Brookfield Health Sciences Complex, UCC, and runs until November 4th.