Leisure Centre Talk and Council Reception

Probus Meeting of Wednesday. 18 January 2017.

Following their regular Wednesday meeting in Omagh Golf at which the speaker was Deborah Maxwell, manager of Omagh Leisure Centre, members moved on the “The Grange” for a reception hosted by Mrs Mary Garrity, Chairperson of  Fermanagh and Omagh District Council.

At the regular meeting Deborah Maxwell was introduced by President John McCandless who outlined her career from her days as a pupil in Omagh Academy, through the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, employment in Canada before a spell in charge of visitors to Lough Derg. In 2014 she was appointed Manager of Omagh Leisure Centre with the challenge to maximise the benefit of the new £7.5 m extension.   In a compelling talk Deborah spoke of the benefits of regular exercise and the myths which are often used to avoid exercise, for example, afraid of doing oneself an injury or claiming to be past it.   She quoted several instances of people enjoying and benefiting from regular exercise well into retirement, with many taking up Leisure Centre activities in retirement.   Using photographs she illustrated the  wide range of activities on offer and the various membership schemes available.  Today Omagh Leisure Centre is one of the finest in Northern Ireland, regularly hosting events that draw in visitors and competitors from all over the Province.    She was thanked for her talk and congratulated on providing an excellent service to the community by Probian, Jim McBain, himself a regular user of the facilities provided by the Leisure Centre.

At the close of the meeting members made their way to the Grange, where Mrs Mary Garrity hosted a reception in celebration of the Club’s 40th Anniversary.  With members of Omagh and District Ladies Probus Club also present Mrs Garrity praised both clubs for providing a focus for retired members of the Professional and Business Community, noting that the Ladies Club would be 25 years in existence in 2017.  [The word PROBUS comes from the PRO of Professional and the BUS of Business].  With 135 Probus Clubs in Ireland and thousands worldwide it was, she said, a truly global organisation with the capacity to enrich the lives of many people in many countries.    To mark the occasion she unveiled a banner to celebrate the founding of the Omagh Club in 1977 and shared her pleasure that the the Probus Clubs of Omagh had come together to host the 2017 All-Ireland Probus Rally.  She welcomed the fact that some 350 delegates from all over Ireland would be coming to Omagh in May 2017, seeing it as opportunity to showcase the town and encourage tourism.  To this end she endorsed Council support for the event and accepted an invitation from the organisers to give the Welcome Address at the Rally in the Silverbirch Hotel on Thursday 18th May.  Before leaving “The Grange” members were invited to inspect the new Council Chamber where they were properly impressed by the state-of-the-art debating facilities which have been installed to accommodate the new enlarged Council.