Early Life
Born in Bundoran, County Donegal, McEniff's parents were Mr. John McEniff from Newbliss, County Monaghan, and Elizabeth Begley from Carrickmore, County Tyrone, and were married in Bundoran in 1935. McEniff has three brothers: P.J. McEniff (retired dentist), Seán McEniff (Donegal County Councillor) and Liam McEniff (doctor), and one sister, Mary McGlynn (retired hotel accountant).
"From the age of eight or nine my mother had me washing dishes on a biscuit tin at the Holyrood, " Brian said in a Tribune interview in 2004.
McEniff went to Bundoran Primary School. At the age of 12 he attended St. Macarten's College, a boarding school, in Monaghan Town. Following this, at the age of 17, he went to Cathal Burgha Street College in Dublin where he studied Hotel Management for three years.
In 1962 he went to Canada in order to gain valuable work experience, and worked for four years in the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. It was there that he met and married Catherine O'Leary, a Cork native, and they went on to have three children while living in Canada. McEniff returned to Ireland in 1966 and got involved in the Donegal GAA, playing at county level for Donegal, on the same team as the current Donegal County Manager (the most senior civil servant with Donegal County Council), Michael McLoone.
Read more about this topic: Brian Mc Eniff
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)