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.

The name 'Omagh' is derived from the Irish words 'Oigh Maigh' which some translate as 'virgin plain,' others as 'The seat of the chiefs'. The O'Neills who ruled it in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, occupied a castle at the top of High Street and they had a fortress at Dublin Road corner.

Since I had my home at the top of High Street for some seven years, and my office (or fortress) at Dublin Road corner, I trod a very historic path a couple of times a day!

Many a night my wife and I lay awake waiting for the clatter of iron-shod hob-nailed boots on that very same path. When the fire-horn sounded, a brave and often volunteer fireman invariably came running down High Street, heading for the fire station, which was also at Dublin Road. We always listened expectantly and he never disappointed us.

I remember 'Bonzo' Donnellan, Omagh's ace driver, prising his sports car out of a jumble of others in the Melville Hotel garage nearby and reversing out on to High Street and around the War Memorial backwards in a single non-stop manoeuvre, with myself as a terrified passenger, one night during the war. I was terrified because of the pitch darkness that prevailed, to comply with the wartime blackout regulations.

The manoeuvre didn't take a feather out of the intrepid Bonzo, although he was minus a lower limb, following an encounter with a lamp-standard at Dublin Road Bridge! As a newcomer to Omagh, I had been shown a dent there as Bonzo's mark.

Miss Doris, Bonzo's good wife, filled a number of teeth for me with fillings that have lasted close on half-a-century, a good advertisement for pre-Health Service dentistry.
   
To kindle fires of Waterson's coal, hawkers from the country with horse-drawn carts piled high with bags of bog fir did a good trade during the war. Sam Maguire, caretaker of John Street Church and our office cleaner, had five or six fires to tend for us and we purchased fir by the cartload.

In the days when snow lay on Glenhordial from November to April, a nice blazing fire was very welcome, especially for outdoor staff that had to reach the last house on the mountain, winter and summer
   
As we proceeded down Market Street, I realised that exactly half-a-century had passed since I had first become acquainted with 'Omey' folk, as 'an import' appointed Area Manager of the National Assistance Board. This thought caused me to scrutinise the passers-by, or at least those over sixty, with curiosity.

How would they have looked in 1943? It was a futile exercise, for no recognition came. I had to accept that fifty years, from youth to age, is a whole lifetime.
   
The 'Sweeterie' at Market Street right in the heart of Omagh, has also gone. To the casual passer-by it was only a wee huckster's shop but to Omagh folk and the 'Wild Geese from Tyrone' scattered worldwide, it was home, presided over by 'Mr. Omagh', the ubiquitous Davy Young.

Dickens's 'The Old Curiosity Shop' came to mind immediately. Davy could have got you all your orders. In fact he got impish glee from achieving the impossible. The walls and windows of his mine-emporium were lined with hand-written messages, mostly requests from all over the country, and far outside it.
   
Davy was a big laughing man but a schoolboy at heart with all of a school-boy's pranks and sense of humour, but practical and inventive. It was there that you could have shined your shoes with his rotating lambs-wool belt or had a shave. It was the 'station' for Donaghy's buses. Omagh's first, and the meeting ground for all. Never a dull moment.
   
Davy ran excursions every Sunday in the summer time to Doon Well and called at the Franciscan Friary in Ards on the return journey. The friars always greeted Davy with open arms. The fare for the return journey was five shillings.
   
Gussie Hynds' electrical store nearby is still flourishing but I was disappointed to find that the jovial founder had just retired when I dropped in. Gussie was Paddy Bogues' right-hand man when the Omagh Players carried all before them - the light that shone.

Without Gussie's expertise and wizardry behind the scenes there would have been no shows. The lighting effects he masterminded with Walter Bradley made the success of Paddy's legendary performance as Ireland's number one producer.

Ethna at the Salmon Leap, Killclogher, Omagh

I traced Gussie to his Crevenagh Road abode, expecting to find him with his feet up, but no way! As District Governor 1160 of Rotary G.B. and Ireland, he is now even more of a whiz kid than when I knew him fifty years ago, still a shining light, but in a new and much extended orbit.

In my reverie, the thought came that I should not dismiss with a mere farewell ten momentous years in my life, and in the history of Omagh, years which had seen the Second World War brought to an end and the foundations laid of the modern welfare state.

More importantly for me, years when I had got married, set up house for the first time and added three young ladies to the population!

As Area Manager of the long-defunct National Assistance Board from 1943 to 1953, I had trained a sizeable team of investigating and adjudicating officers and had had the satisfaction of channelling the largesse of the welfare state to a most needy and deserving people, bringing 'freedom from want' at last, and the final closure of the poor-houses.

It had been a period that had seen the fall of the Churchill Government at Westminster and the advent of Labour with its contrasting outlook on State involvement in social welfare.

A period also in which a young Queen had succeeded to the throne. For the third time in my career as a civil servant, which was then still brief, I had experienced a change of monarch and for a second time seen the flag on the building lowered to half-mast to mark the death of a king.

Another had abdicated. I felt I had a story worth telling and I resolved to write it so that some at least of those that I had rubbed shoulders with might not be forgotten.

Pat Smyth, 2001