My wife says I have an awful habit: that I keep putting things off, I’m a procrastinator. And she’s right.
I had heard that Marie White wasn’t well and I had plans to go see her and had every intention of doing so, but between one thing and another I didn’t. And then Marie died.
You might be wondering who Marie White is, so let me tell you a wee bit about her. But first let me give you a bit of background.
I was editor of the Derry Journal for 25 years. It was during the Troubles and I spent countless hours talking with John Hume, Martin McGuinness, Bishop Edward Daly and all the other movers and shakers in Derry society at that time.
After I stepped down from the editor’s chair I spent a few months wandering aimlessly about until I was invited to do writing classes with the Galliagh Women’s Group. And this was to prove probably the biggest learning experience of my life. This was a side of Derry I didn’t really know.
Galliagh is, according to a number of reports, ‘one of the most deprived areas of UK’ and I recall that at one stage the unemployment rate there was 80%.
On the first day at the GWG, the main woman, Marie Gillespie, told me that there had been three deaths of young people in the area in little over 10 days. Things, she said, needed to change big time.
Anyway, in I go to meet the women in my group and what a group they turned out to be. They were all great but for some reason I gelled totally with Marie White.
Not too far off 80, she was full of life and fun. God did I enjoy her company. There is an old Irish word for a story-teller, a seanchaí, and Marie was one. She could hold the room spellbound with her stories.
One day she had us all, almost literally, under the table with laughter when she told of the aunts of a well-known Derry man who were renowned for their big feet. I have never seen women laugh so heartily. And all I will say now is the punchline cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
Or the wonderful story she told of her childhood when the ice-cream man came around the Creggan. Marie, who had got an ice lolly earlier in the day, demanded she get another one. Her mum, who was out chatting to neighbours, didn’t have the money, but rather than embarrass herself in public, said: “Marie, run in to the hall and get my purse off the top of the piano.”
Marie trotted off and was half way in the hall when the thought struck: “Jeez, we don’t have a piano…”
Like most of the women in that class, Marie had worked in the shirt factories. It was tough work but they all seem to have enjoyed it immensely. She got married and had a family but tragedy struck when her husband died young. She was left to rear a family on her own.
It must have been a sort of deja vu for her as her father had also died prematurely.
Marie, for me, came to symbolise that old Derry that has now all but gone. These were tough women – they had to be – but they were also the salt of the earth. They didn’t take any crap but they would carry you on their backs.
Whilst the Humes and McGuinnesses of this world were out front, these were the women who kept the homes and the families together during those awful years of the Troubles. For me they were the real heroes of those terrible times.
What I found really remarkable was that despite all their trials and tribulations, they had a zest for life and for living. When something knocked them down, they got back up again.
Marie, I found, had a never-ending sense of fun. Every class she would arrive in with an apple, put it in front of me and wanted to know did that make her the teacher’s pet.
You had to laugh…
Marie White died two weeks ago. And her friend, Rosie Doherty, told me I would have to write about her “in that column you write in The Irish News” – and I now have.
And I can say she was my friend too.
It was an honour and a privilege to have known her.
Whilst the Humes and McGuinnesses of this world were out front, these were the women who kept the homes and the families together during those awful years of the Troubles. For me they were the real heroes of those terrible times