Pat Smyth, a civil servant with the National Assistance Board in West Tyrone from the 1930's to the 1950's, recalls his memories, experiences and the larger than life personalities he encountered on the way.       

When I gained the tenancy of Frank O'Kane's apartments at High Street I was a very lucky man. They were commodious, in good order and furnished basically as they had been when Frank and his family had lived there. Frank was the leading licensed vintner in the town and in the top bracket of Omagh society.

I got the tenancy of all the first floor apartments but there was one big snag, which we did not discover immediately. We had a back boiler but this fed not only the kitchen and bathroom taps but also the hot tap in the bar below the apartment.

When we put on a roaring fire of rationed coal to heat the water for a bath, the supply very often mysteriously vanished after ten at night. Barmen were using our hot water out of laziness instead of using Frank's geyser, as they should have! Frank read the riot act to his staff from time to time but they tended to forget. With coal rationed and infants to cater for, we found that situation most vexatious.
   
Down through the years, many generations of children were probably reared on premises similar to ours, but my wife and I never did get used to having neither outdoor clothes drying facilities or a garden. We even had to carry the children up the stairs to leave baby carriages in the ground floor hallway where we could neither hear nor see them, so we had to look for a nursemaid.

Brigid Kearney or 'Dodo' as our children christened her joined our family in 1947 and she remained close until she passed away within a few months of her 100th birthday in the mid-nineteen-sixties. She hailed from Clanbogan and she was 'a hardy one' (to use an Oma-ism) with a heart of corn.

Latterly, she lived in what was then a newly opened Camowen old people's home beside the county hospital and her sole moan was that she was the only resident who was normal in mind and body. That is to say, she didn't have much in common with the others.

Apart from anything else, she was much older. In her young days she had travelled to America by sailing ship to work as a servant girl, a six-week trip, and she had been around so many corners in the course of her long life that she had graduated from the university of the world with honours.
   
She was a unique personality, straight as a die, and with absolutely no tolerance of humbug or badness in any form. She was a devout Catholic and Irish to the core. Heaven help anyone who dared to disparage the Church, or anything Irish.

She had short fuse and her fiery temper often boiled over. In the case of her local unionist arch-rival Sam McCrea, who constantly provoked her when they met on the street, she would have lashed out, not only with her tongue, but maybe with her umbrella as well.
   
Happily, I had got to know her soon after I had taken up residence in Omagh and when my wife and I went out with our first-born in the pram, she showed more than the normal level of interest in the baby.

When I consulted Cissie Tierney, my former landlady, about getting a woman to wheel out the baby, she immediately suggested Biddy Kearney. Knowing the good lady was at least eighty, I demurred, but Cissie simply said 'If you can get her to do it you'll never rue it, but be careful how you go about it, she's touchy'.
   
Next time I saw Brigid, I asked her advice 'Could you recommend a good reliable woman to wheel out the child?' Rather coyly she replied 'I would love to do it, Mr. Smyth, if your wife would have us'.
   
When Brigid Kearney first sallied forth down High Street with a bairn (baby) in a well-dressed pram she was the cynosure of all eyes among her peers because of her advanced years. When her charge formed a close bond with a little satin-bound pink blanket and sucked it instead of her thumb, Brigid was mortified.

She kept a sharp eye out for pram-peepers, whipped the thing and stuffed it under the mattress, leaving a very peeved baby on the inspection line. The same baby soon learned to use two little fists to hold on. Like Mary's little lamb, everywhere the baby went the blanket was sure to go.

Its owner christened it her 'my' and her mother couldn't even wrest it from the child to wash it. Instead she was driven to use the scissors and split the 'my' so that she could wash one half daily. Day and night the 'my' was held on to by its owner. A peculiar coloured rabbit joined it eventually. It was the 'wee-o' and held fast with the 'my' for good measure.   

One of our children was pale and when Brigid was abroad with her on one raw winter's day Jim McGlynn, Brigid's nephew accosted her. 'Where did you get that wee thing? It'll never live. Get it home quick to its mother. It shouldn't be out in weather like this'. She was fit to be tied. Knowing she had a quick temper Jim had just been taking the mickey out of the dear old lady.
   
Maureen, the second girl, was the apple of Brigid's eye. 'My wee Morr-ee-un' she always called her. It would have been a long time since Brigid had had charge of a child from infancy, if ever, which may explain the close bond. Anyhow, the sun rose and set on wee Morr-ee-un. When Joan, the third, arrived the novelty of a newborn to wheel out had palled a bit.
   
Brigid was a petite, well-dressed lady of the kind sometimes alluded locally as 'the banty breed' and immensely elated when she set off daily or maybe twice daily, with her charges.

She worshipped the children, and it broke our hearts six years later when we had to break the news that I had been transferred to my hometown. Although by then well on in years, it wasn't long till she boarded a bus for Lurgan and paid us a visit. She got off the bus, fresh as paint, but a bit annoyed because some young woman had taken sick on the journey and made a mess.
   
Dodo roamed far and wide with the children and any time we deputised we had to go and see the clucky hen in the coop at Spillar's Place near King James Bridge, or to say 'Hello' to a grey horse away out near the army camp at Lisonelly, or go to see the 'fairy washing' on the hedgerow up the wee road bordering the golf links.
   
When the weather was adverse, she haunted Wellworth's store where the proprietor, Fred Moore, who had formerly shared digs with me, and the then Manager, Matt Boggs, teased the life out of her and our eldest child, Anne, as well. Fred kept the teasing going endlessly.

He would threaten to come to our house - and tell the toddler exactly where she lived. Anne asserted he wouldn't get in as the door was locked. Fred would produce a key... Anne would tell him she would snib the door ... Fred would tell her she couldn't reach up... Anne would retort that she would stand on a chair... and so the fun went on day after day. Dodo would retell it all.

Sadly Fred met a tragic death in a road accident near Moneymore while still young, and not long married. He was a most likeable personality.
   
Mellon's shop at George's Street, and a sweet shop at Market St., where one of the Mellon girls worked, were other places that 'Dodo' frequented almost daily. Jean and Mary Mellon had a hairdressing saloon at George's St. The Mellon girls were lovely people but inclined to spoil the Smyth children with kindness.   
   
Dodo was a cousin of Felix Kearney, the poet and she once introduced me to him when he lived at Cannondale. Her nephew, Jim McGlynn, was well known in musical circles locally.
   
Our good and faithful friend was rarely ill, but once she did spend a short time in the General Hospital when Sam McCrea happened to be a patient upstairs as well. The nurses knowing the 'friendly' rivalry, or rather the not-too-friendly rivalry, between them, used to have a bit of craic (joke) conveying any compliments, which either expressed, up and down the stairs.

In collaboration with Pat McGill, the editor of the 'Herald' published a 'Get Well' feature complete with photographs of 'Dodo' and reported how much everyone was missing her. McCrea's comments are best left unquoted!
   
I had a middle-aged gentleman with an unusual background posted to me by Head Office, after the war. Unusual because I was told very little about him except that he was a respectable well-educated gentleman who had fallen on hard times. I was asked to be kind to him, and give him time to learn the ropes. He turned out to be a most cultured and agreeable fellow, a bit on the gullible side, and obviously not accustomed to dealing with clients who were economical with the truth.
   
After an introduction course, which included going with various experienced visiting officers, we let him out on his own to review live cases. He did quite well, almost too well, due to his interest in Irish history, which led him to get absorbed in Dodo's life history.

I knew nothing about this until Dodo tackled me one day. 'Who's that wee yella man you sent out?' she demanded. 'He sat with me till near bedtime. I couldn't get rid of him. He put me over my whole life story, from when I went to America.
When I told him about the Dromore murders he seemed to think I was making it up and me knowed the men well. I also told him who did it, for everybody knows that. They'll never die in their beds them that's left of them. The good Lord will deal with them, like the rest of the nest'.
   
I said little, for I knew how Dodo was apt to get worked up over memories of the massacre of some young men near Dromore during the political troubles of the nineteen-twenties; According to Dodo, they had been dragged from their beds and slaughtered.

Then their bodies had been disembowelled and hung up by the heels from a nearby tree 'dressed' (in butchers' parlance) like pork pigs. 'B' Specials had been blamed and fingers had been pointed at local butchers. Dodo named them all, rehearsed the violent ends that some had suffered and predicted dire consequences for the survivors.
   
Our learned friend was not a native of Ireland and had obviously got carried away when Dodo had responded to his encouragement to reminisce. He did not stay long with me but soon came to see if we would release him at short notice to take up a post with a religious college across the water.

He then revealed that some of his clerical confreres had got him the post. I had suspected that he was a clergyman, frocked or defrocked, and of course the board let him go immediately. Dodo admitted when he left that she had been more amused than annoyed and that she rather liked the wee man
   
Long after we had left Omagh we got a call to Dodo's bedside, a very short time before she passed away in the County Hospital at 99 plus, and she was overjoyed to see us. A more faithful friend no family ever had. She really was uniquely tireless, upright, loyal and dedicated, and she certainly deserves a place in history.

Brigid (Dodo) Kearney -- 1952.

Pat Smyth, 2001