The late Peter Thomas (clutching his medal) and Brian Gardner with Nurse Ciss Tritschler and a couple of patients delighted to meet Waterford’s goalscoring hero and their legendary ’keeper when Blues players visited Ardkeen hospital with the FAI Cup in April 1980.

I found the above photo in a box of old family pictures a few years back. Ciss, one of the Powers (The Castle) from Carrigadustra, Kilmeaden, was my grandmother’s niece. Real name Mary Bridget, she started in the newly opened TB sanatorium — a personal mission of Dr Noel Browne’s — in early 1953.

That was the beginnings of what’s become University Hospital Waterford and her good humour and bedside manner were a tonic over many years in Ardkeen General Hospital.

From a large farming family, Ciss became a familiar and welcome face to patients and families throughout Waterford as one of the most popular nurses ever to work in Ardkeen hospital.

A kind, caring, “people person” by nature, Ciss (real name Mary Bridget) trained in Stoke-on-Trent for four years and started at the newly-opened sub-regional sanatorium on the Dunmore Road in early 1953.

The first incarnation of Ardkeen as a hospital, the institution was recommended and approved in the late-’40s by then-Health Minister, Dr Noel Browne. Born in Bath Street in Waterford city, his entire family, Noel included, had been afflicted by the scourge of pulmonary tuberculosis. He lost both his parents to the disease.

During its years in operation, up to 240 patients (including adolescents and infected children) were treated at a time by 160 staff in the chest unit, which comprised four 40-bed wards. It was a daunting task but Ciss handled all that came with caring for TB sufferers with compassion and professionalism. Her unfailingly chirpy disposition was a tonic in itself.

An experienced nurse by the time Ardkeen became a general hospital at the start of the sixties, midway through that decade Ciss married well-known Waterford city jeweller Bobby Tritschler. The couple lived above his shop on The Quay, and later moved to Ferndale, Ballytruckle. They had one son, Robert, who is now a Garda based in Aglish, West Waterford.

Hanging up her hypo-syringe and bedpan, Ciss finally retired from nursing in 1988 after 35 years’ sterling service. Her absence and work ethic would be keenly felt by her colleagues in the medical unit, who gave her a send-off to remember with a special “This Is Your Life” night in the Bridge Hotel.

The esteem in which Ciss was held by staff was evident when Dr Garrett FitzGerald, the hospital’s general manager, made a special presentation in recognition of her decades of round-the-clock dedication. (She and Bobby were particularly thrilled by a holiday voucher to visit their son, Bob jnr, who was studying in London at the time.)

There was never a doubt but that her career had been a vocation and Ciss was known for running errands and visiting senior citizens when she wasn’t on duty, and later in her own golden years. She simply couldn’t do enough good turns.

Her days of leisure were also spent happily baking for family and friends to her heart’s content; her hearty conversation continuing to warm everyone she came into contact with.

Predeceased by Bobby in ’92, Ciss passed away in the summer of 2015, aged 88, after spending her final years being looked after, as she’d done for others for so long, at Care Choice nursing home in Dungarvan.

She was laid to rest beside her late husband in Ballyduff Lower, where Ciss, one of six boys and six girls, had gone to primary school back in the thirties. She learned well.

Footnotes: 

1) I’d love to know who the two happy lads are (please email me if you do). Their smiles say everything about what getting to see that trophy meant, and how thoughtful and very ordinary our local heroes were in their heyday.

2) I was editor of The Munster Express when Peter Thomas died in January 2023 and this evocative photograph (below) of him signing autographs for Waterford FC fans after the 1972 title win, their fifth championship in seven seasons, was featured on the front page of the tribute edition, while the top image was also included inside.