Tánaiste Micheál Martin has announced this year’s recipients of the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad, with Magdalene Laundry baby Maria Doyle-Cuche among the 13 recipients.
Maria, who was born in a Magdalene Laundry and now lives in France, received the Award for “Inclusion and Equality”.
The Awards will be presented by President Michael D. Higgins at a ceremony in Áras an Uachtaráin.
Maria’s story is an inspirational one. Born in 1965 to a single mother in a Magdalene Laundry, at two days old she was taken by a stranger to Saint Andrew’s church to be baptized. Mother and baby then spent five months in the Magdalene Laundry, before being rescued by Maria’s maternal grandmother.
Maria lived a happy life in Cox's Demesne, Council Housing estate, in Dundalk, with her mammy, stepfather Patrick McCabe, and stepsiblings. When she became blind at nine, she was subsequently sent to Saint Mary’s School for the Blind in Dublin when she was ten. At the time, there was no future for a little blind girl. The specialist said with a bit of luck she would be able to become a telephone operator later on. She was miserable, and even stopped singing which was her passion; she had won her first singing competition at the age of five. However, Maria escaped from the Dublin boarding school and found her way home on foot, all the way to Dundalk, where her family welcomed her and decided that she would remain at home with them, attending school locally.
That feisty Irish spirit has never left Maria since and has only grown stronger over the years. She made the right move when despite the odds, she refused to renounce her dream of becoming a star, and she sang on every possible occasion. Just a few years later, when she was thirteen she was talent-spotted by Beatrice Neylon, the owner of an American travel agency, which brought American tourists to Ireland. Neylon, with her clients, attended the Maytime Festival in Dundalk each year, and that is where she saw Maria perform. She was amazed by Maria’s talent and courage and invited her to sing in the US and to avail of the trip to consult top American specialists for her blindness. Maria, who was accompanied on the trip by her mammy, sang for Irish Americans from Boston to Las Vegas. She received the keys to the cities of West Haven and New Haven. The mayor of West Haven, impressed by the young girl’s strength and courage, had a proclamation drawn up for her and even had a day, the 28 November 1978 named after her!
At nineteen, Maria represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1985, in Göteborg, Sweden. As ‘Maria Christian’, she sang, “Wait until the Weekend Comes”, finishing in sixth place for her country.
After meeting her French husband in Ireland, Maria left her homeland in 1992. Standing in the middle of one of France’s biggest train stations, newlywed and pregnant, she felt lost. Nothing seemed familiar; however, she looked towards the heavens and vowed that someday, everybody in this new country would learn who she was.
Over the next 25 years, she raised seven children, in a small rural village in the east of France. After she wrote her autobiography in French, in 2018, entitled “One Can Only Truly See with the Heart”, published by Plon”, a major French publishing house, she was awarded the Stanislas medal by the renowned Stanislas Academy in 2019. This prize is awarded for a prose work, relating to Lorraine. Just as Maria had brought honor to Ireland, she also brought honor to Lorraine, her adopted homeland in France.
Two years later, as a semi-finalist in the “Voice France ”, she sang in front of millions, on French TV, accompanied by five of her seven children.
She received a standing ovation when she sang “Danny Boy”, and the next day her picture was in magazines and newspapers all over France! Before millions, Maria performed as a blind Irish woman and advocated that nobody should have to hide a disability.
Sadly, many still feel that they have to conceal a disability to avoid discrimination but times are changing, and Maria is at the fore of that progression and fight for inclusion and equality.
She has definitely proven wrong the people who said the only thing she could aspire to was to become a telephone operator, and that having a family would be impossible. She categorically refused to live down to others’ expectations and her strength and actions have helped many to adjust their own bar higher. A spiritual woman, she feels that she is guided by the stars; however, over the past decades, it has been her guiding others. For the past few years, she has sat beside ambassadors, professors, and politicians at the Assemblée Nationale, as a jury member for the “French Debating Association” tournament, created in 1994 by Irishman, Declan Mc Cavana.
She has led a trail-blazing and inspirational life and career and was the first-ever Irish woman to sing in the Pantheon (June 2022). Singing “Ave Maria” acapella, her fabulous voice filled the huge edifice, where along with honoring Louis Braille, she also paid homage to the ghosts of eighty-one of France’s most eminent who are buried there, including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Simone Veil, and Voltaire.
After her amazing Pantheon performance, at the 70th anniversary of Louis Braille’s pantheonization, she was appointed an ambassador for “Voir Ensemble” (“See Together”), the most important French association for the blind. She visits institutions for blind children and shares her story, often encouraging them “If I could do all these things, you can also fulfill your dreams”.
This courageous Irish woman’s name will forever be entwined with Louis Braille and his heritage. On 15 September 2023, she was one of four key speakers at a French Ministry of Culture meeting to prepare including the learning and use of Braille in the intangible cultural heritage of humanity at UNESCO. Maria feels visually impaired, the world over, should have the advantage of learning how to use Braille.
She has been doing Ireland proud abroad since she was thirteen. This year she gave a concert in Madrid; her biological father, Theodore Gonzale’s home county. She hopes that one day he will discover her existence and hopefully, this is another of Maria’s dreams, which will be realized. I hope that her life story, or a film about her life, will soon be made in English, so that people, all over the world, may enjoy this Irish woman’s inspirational tale.
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