My dear Grandpa,
A huge, huge apology. This letter is 76 years late,
Hanging on the wal in my office is an electric clock
but then I was only three when so sadly you died. You made of Carrigadoon green slate cut in the shape of
were the ideal grandfather, kindly, gentle and often laugh- Ireland and also a slate from the roof of your house.
ing. In so many relationships myth replaces reality, in the Cousin Eunice, in Canada, whom I discovered via the telling - but NOT in your case! I remember so wel your Internet, sent me wonderful photos of your father Thomas big white walrus moustache that I use to pull thinking that complete with Brunel-type top hat and a monstrous it was something attached to your merry face that I could machine he invented, to fit iron rims onto wooden wheels.
tug off and stick under the nose of Old Bear, my beloved She also sent me pictures of you and grandmamma, teddy.
which I had previously not seen.
The more I have learned about you, the more my
I’ve sponsored a Wil iam Rutherford Wil iams
very precious memories have been stirred and given so
hurling shield in your memory, for Tipperary schoolboys. I much more meaning. When I started to research your life was proud to present it. How I wished you’d been there.
I discovered that you were born in County Tipperary,
At the presentation a delightful little girl looked at me most close to the Kilkenny border. You later lived in
accusingly and said - ‘Mister, there’s no shield for the Kilmoganny where I have stayed twice in the guest house camogie.’ I promised there would be one next year. And that was once your school.
there was, but horror of horrors, they named it the Mike Wil iams memorial shield!
Your mother’s family home, Kilmoganny House,
lower down the hill from the school is charming and set in With the help of a genealogist, I discovered that
the most beautiful grounds. I learned that her father - your you moved to Pembrokeshire in the 1870’s, where your grandfather - was a farmer and the trees he planted,
father was appointed manager of the Porthgain slate
around 1850, are now enormous.
quarries, Llannrhian, near St David’s. What another beautiful spot that is, right on the Pembrokeshire coast.
I’ve seen the cottage where you were born, in the
slate quarries, on the banks of the pretty river Lingaun, in I researched Grandfather Abbott Laker’s lineage,
the parish of Ahenny. Though now a long since aban-
too. What an extraordinary fellow he was and so different doned and overgrown quarry, the restored countryside is from you! There is a story of him trying to get past a lovely. I visited your next house in Kilmacoliver, where woman who kept dithering left and right in front of him.
you moved, when you were about three. It is at the end of Short on patience, he apparently roared - ‘For heaven’s a long leafy boreen. Shooing his cows away from the
sake, Woman, STAND STILL and let me pass - you’re
front door, the present owner greeted me minus his teeth, like a ship without a rudder!’ I can imagine that in a similar which I later discovered grinning at me, in a glass jar on situation you would have said - ‘Sure now, just one more the mantelpiece! Grandmama and most certainly dear time, m’ dear, then I real y must go!’
Aunt Mary, your sister, would NOT have approved! Aunt
Mary’s son, cousin Vincent, I discovered, served as an
Well grandpa, I’m up to my limit of 750 words. How
officer in the Artists’ Rifles (“the Suicide Club”) during the good it has been to think of you. One thing’s for sure; it Great War. It was she, I learnt, who so generously paid won’t be another 76 years before I write to you again!
for my father’s education at the King’s School, Chester.
God bless.
The view from your former garden, of Carrigadoon
Love you
Hill, where the remarkable green slate comes from, is just glorious. Taking in so much intoxicating scenery, I felt