Today sees the funeral of my uncle and godfather Ernest Michael Graham, who passed away in hospital back home in Northern Ireland earlier this week on Monday 26th June 2023.
A resident of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Michael was my mum's wee brother, born on July 12th 1955 to Martha Jane Bill
Elisabeth Watton Smyth and Ernest Graham. My Protestant grandfather named his new
son after his father and a Catholic friend of his in the shipyards, quite possibly to
make a point, as he despised sectarianism! The earliest documented story
I have concerning Michael in fact comes from a letter written by my
grandfather in 1955, a few weeks after Michael was born, who was
despondent that he had to sell his beloved camera, brought back from
Saudi Arabia, in order to buy a pram for his new son - and commenting
that his son had to have been born "on July 12th, of all days"! He was one of seven children born to Martha, with siblings Ernest (1943-1943, died in infancy), Edna, Bill, Charlotte (1950-2013), Mark (1962-1976), and Nicolle.
Michael was educated at Sunnylands Primary School and then Carrickfergus Intermediate Secondary Modern School, although spent much of his time mitching off classes! This was Michael as a teenager at Salia Avenue, in Sunnylands, Carrickfergus:
At
the age of 16, in January 1971, he made his way to Helensburgh,
Scotland, for my christening, where he became my godfather, alongside my
aunt Sheila as godmother from my father's side:
Upon leaving school, Michael worked at the local Crazy Prices superstore, before taking up work at Standard
Telephones in Whiteabbey. From
the 1980s he was based in the Castlemara estate of Carrickfergus, living
with my grandmother, and looking after her until her
death in July 2001.
Michael spent most of his life in
Carrick, where he worked as a painter and decorator. When I lived in
Scotland as a child he visited on a couple of occasions, and I would
regularly bump into him on my visits back home to Carrick in later
years, and occasionally have a drink with him in the town, as on this
occasion (below) in 1999 at Dobbin's Inn, with my mum in tow also. My youngest brother also fondly remembers Michael buying him his first pint, when he turned 18.
The
most extraordinary bumping into Michael story, however, was not in Northern
Ireland, but here in Scotland. About 18 years ago, when living in
Largs, I walked out of a shop one day and saw him getting off a tour
bus. It turned out he had decided to go on a tour of Scotland for the
weekend, and the first stop was Largs, with the first person he bumped
into on the street being me! He had no idea I was based in Largs (we had
only moved there a year or two before), and the tour of the town he
thought he would be doing rapidly changed into a visit by him to see my
eldest son, who was at our childminder's, followed by me taking him to a
local pub for a quick catch up, before he then had to jump on the bus
again a couple of hours later to resume the tour.
It's been a few years since I last saw Michael, at my mum's funeral in 2013. He was a nice auld lad, never the "big I am", and he will be sorely missed.
RIP Uncle Michael, from all the Patons, and don't let my mother and Martha chew the ears aff ye when ye get upstairs!
Chris
Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
No comments:
Post a Comment