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Speaking at the library event James McArevey mentioned the four other Blue Plaque awards that Newry Maritime Association was involved in, Max Blaney, Charles Blaney, Thomas Raymond Kelly and Captain Harry Hollywood and explained that they all got their award for one particular reason but Sean Hollywoods was different.
"When you look back at the different genres that were represented that day in St Colman's from his academia and his teaching career, when you look back from his student days, a leader in the civil rights movement. The big march in Newry 72 and he was in charge of the stewards, 150 stewards and they had to divert the march into the Meadow away from the police and army roadblocks in Monaghan Street, just the week after Bloody Sunday and the whole thing passed off peacefully.
"Then Sean was a founding member of the SDLP in 73. His teaching career, English and Drama in the College and then he was head of the department there. His career with Newpoint, excelled as an actor, producer, director and sportsman with Newry Shamrocks and Ulster hurling and football and a bit of soccer as well in the day when the ban was still there. The hallmark that Sean left on all those activities was excellence. Anything he did, he did it with aplomb and he left his signature on it. You could see that day up at St Colman's, 25 years on from his untimely passing the respect and the integrity that he holds and the ambience in the college that day. It was just a fantastic day."
McArevey also touched on how Councillors from the former Newry and Mourne District Council, some of who were present at the event, would have been totally community orientated. "When I think back to people like Jack [Jackie Patterson) a local man reared down at the back of the dam at the back of the cathedral. Jackie is a typical example of a go-to man and a person with the community at heart. He had 50 years of public service, 25 as a Council official in 1965 and 25 as an elected public representative and when the amalgamation came in, Jackie left. Jack was Mayor in 2004 and Frank [Frank Feeley] was Mayor in 2002 when we got city status. It was men like Frank, Jack, Danny Kennedy Andy Moffett, the late John McArdle, people like that that would have assisted and helped and they're very, very badly missed. There's a void there today."
Also speaking at the event Maud Hamill, Ulster History Circle thanked sponsor Mickey Keenan "without Mickey's sponsorship, there wouldn't have been a Blue Plaque. We are a body of people who don't have any money so for every plaque that we do and that plaque was number 272, we have to find the finance." She also thanked the family and St Colman's College as well as James McArevey.
Hamill thinks it is the top plaque she will ever do. "How that man taught for 31 years and died in the service of St Colman's College, taught there, played sport, and did the civil rights and passed on his acting, took part and there's real estate on the table. For you probably he's just a one-off. They broke the mould when Sean Hollywood died and I genuinely mean that
Such was the love of Sean Hollywood. for everyone it was massive. It's the biggest plaque, and I've been involved in more than 100 plaques and led on many of them in the nine historical counties of Ulster but that was the plaque as far as I was concerned.
My top plaque was Mrs. H O'Doherty in Derry who formed the Feis Doire Colmcille after partition. John Hanlon in Crossmaglen the year before last which was wonderful. If you'd told me I'd been sitting listening to the Oriel orchestra 25 years earlier, I'd have said no chance. And Sean Hollywood, which as far as I'm concerned is the top like I'll ever do. Such was the man.
