PATRICK Rice is not a man to let life get him down. That he still gets up at the crack of dawn every morning to run seven miles and does 60 push-ups a day is testament to his physical and mental strength.

So it should be no surprise that Mr Rice, from Bobblestock, decided to detail his story in two books – Lonesome Stray and Dare To Dream – describing the years from his difficult start in life to the emotional turmoil of caring for his beloved wife Jean when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Mr Rice spent his childhood in an industrial school in Ireland for allegedly stealing alms when he was two.

He only knew why he was sent to St Patrick’s for Boys School in County Kilkenny four years ago, when he requested to look at some documents under the Irish Freedom of Information Act.

Industrial schools were set up in Ireland in 1868 to care for neglected, orphaned or abandoned children and were run by religious orders.

“I never had an education and I was cut off from the outside world,” he explains.

“I didn’t know why I was sent there until I read the documents, which said that I stole alms when I was two. I never knew a girl when I was a young child and never celebrated any birthdays.”

Mr Rice said that abuse was common practice in the schools, but the leaders thought that it was for “the good of the children”.

He moved to Artane Industrial School in Dublin when he was 10 and considered a “young adult”.

The school, which accommodated 800 boys, became notorious for the physical and mental abuse that the children suffered.

He left the school when he was 16 and was handed over to a woman, who he found out was his birth mother.

“Because of years of neglect and the abuse that I suffered, I was uneducated, emotionally barren and my developmental levels were stunted, so my mother passed me on to my 20-year-old sister,” he said.

He then joined the RAF before his life completely changed when he met his future wife Jean, a factory worker, in County Durham.

The couple were married for 52 years, but even with those years being the happiest in Mr Rice’s life, he had to cope with his wife being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1996.

“I took her to see a specialist and my heart sank when she couldn’t even master simple memory and co-ordination tests,” said Mr Rice.

“The results revealed she had Alzheimer’s.”

The couple lived in a large house in Dinmore, but by December 2001 her condition worsened and she was taken to a nursing home.

“I visited her every day and spent up to eight or nine hours with her,” he said. “To see her fade in front of my eyes was too much to endure.”

Mr Rice rejected hospice help because he was adamant that he could care for her 24 hours a day.

To everyone’s amazement, he did just that and the couple spent a further four years and nine months together before she died in December 2007.

Since his wife’s death, Mr Rice still leads an active life and regularly gets up at the crack of dawn to go on his runs and does his 60 push-ups a day.

“People still can’t believe some of the things when they read it,” Mr Rice added. “And I have to say, it does take a while to get your head around it.”