Fr. Myles passed away peacefully in Belfast on November 10th. and was buried at Holy Cross Ardoyne on November 14th.
Fr. Myles was elected ROW Person of the Year 2017 and received the PV Doyle trophy from President Brian Duncan. Fr. Myles made an inspirational acceptance speech which he started by quoting the words of James Connolly “the weakest link is ignorance” and he continued, in a riveting address, to remind his audience of the important contributions made by people like Nano Nagle, Catherine McAuley, Mother Mary Aikenhead and Blessed Edmond Rice in breaking the chain of ignorance, which made slaves of the people of Ireland, in their times and later. Fr Myles said that attending a Christian Brothers school like Westland Row inspired him to become a priest.
Fr. Myles’s working life was spent mainly in one of Northern Ireland’s “black spots”, the Ardoyne in North Belfast. in 1977 he set up the Flax Trust to bring about reconciliation through economic development. Since then he has been responsible for establishing a wide variety of projects and provide help to many charities. Fr. Myles took his message to America in 1988 when he founded the Flax Trust/America.
Fr. Myles lived an extraordinary life of service to his local community and further afield. On the night of his presentation in 2017 he presented a substantial five figure cheque to school principal, Kate Byrne, which was a great help to our old alma mater. Myles was a man of whom all ROW people can be truly proud. There will not be his likes again. God rest you old friend.
PPU News Blog 
Jack lived a full life as his wide range of interests and involvement testify. No one from the class of ‘71 will ever forget the raging debates we had in our class on the mayor events of our times with Jack to the fore . It was with great joy in January this year the team gathered in the Westbury to celebrate when I had the pleasure of being presented as Ppu of the year . It was of course Jack who led the cheers on behalf of our team ,class ‘71 , it was a proud moment for us all. The long list of emails to the site testify to the shock and sadness we all feel on the loss of our team leader Jack. Our lasting memory of you Jack will be the variety , intensity and joy that you brought with you when we met, we’ll have happy memories Jack,Rest in peace.
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