Special honour for Wogan, Ryan
Limerick City Council voted to offer the Freedom of the city to both earlier this week.
Mr Ryan is one of the country’s leading portrait artists. He also designed the now out of date £1 coin and the present 50 cent coin.
He donated a series of portraits of famous Limerick people to the Limerick Civic Trust for their Hall of Fame recently.
Mr Wogan has been one of the leading figures in British broadcasting. Following a 40-year-career in both radio and television, the Daily Telegraph recently hailed him the “The Real Master of The Airwaves”.
Both men have already received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Limerick and earlier this year Mr Wogan received the Special Lifetime Achievement Award in Limerick.
Mayor Joe Leddin contacted Mr Wogan yesterday to tell him about the decision to confer the honorary title on him.
Councillor Leddin said: “Terry told me he was honoured and humbled to accept the title of Freeman of Limerick and he looked forward to coming back here again in June.”
Mr Ryan told Mayor Leddin he was “thrilled” to accept the highest honour that Limerick city can confer on its citizens.
Mr Ryan was born in Limerick in 1929 and began what has been an extremely successful career as an artist in the local School of Art. He then attended the National College of Art in Dublin and studied under well-known artists such as Sean Keating and Maurice MacGonigal.
He was elected president of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1982, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the University of Limerick in 1992.
Mr Wogan was born in Limerick in 1938 and educated at Crescent College. In the early 1960s, he entered the world of broadcasting and gradually evolved into a newsreader, announcer and radio disk jockey before hosting a number of variety and quiz shows on the infant RTE television service.
