Unfortunately I got a phone call nobody wants to get. I answer the phone, voice on the other end "Did you hear the news". It's never good when a phone conversation starts like this, "No" I respond, then I am told the tragic news that my old friend Neil "Gummy" McKeown had suddenly passed away. I, like everyone who knew him, was devastated to hear of his sudden passing.
I'd known Neil pretty much all his life, as we grew up on the same street in Rathmullen Park and spent our formative years in primary school together, pretty much in the same class throughout the happy years we spent in St John's and St Paul's.