Liz
(This photo was taken a few years before I met Des. He was visiting his aunt,1962, sitting on the Bann Bridge, trying out his new Brownie 127 Kodak camera....Elizabeth to the left, kerbside!)
REMINISCENCES 60 YEARS AND MY STORY
The earliest memory I have is Chrissie and Sandy’s wedding,16 March 1953. After the ceremony I gave Chrissie a horseshoe. Someone put confetti in my hand and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. I remember looking around and seeing this stuff flying in the air so I just threw it up over my head. Everyone laughed and I had no idea what they were laughing at! I also remember there was a party at Aunt Tennie’s boarding house. I was not one bit amused at the fact we children had to eat in the kitchen instead of sitting with all the other guests in the dining room.
I can remember staying at Sandy and Chrissies new home and sleeping in a bed made by putting two armchairs together. There are so many memories of Chrissie and Sandy and the “wains” as we called Sandra and Yvonne! Saturday nights with the Connolly sisters visiting and Sandra and Yvonne having their bath and getting their pyjamas on in front of the fire.
One of my best ever Christmas’s was at Sandy and Chrissies. Christmas morning 1963 when I woke up there was this huge box wrapped up with my name on it. I was so excited unwrapping it wondering what on earth it could be. The big cardboard box was full of newspaper so it must be fragile! When I came to the end of the paper I found one of Yvonne’s “wee tittly”, her dummy! Sandy had well and truly fooled me and I laughed! However in was brought my real Christmas present and it was something I had longed for, a red anorak. It was my first anorak and in the photo Des took of me and Chrissie going over the Bann Bridge in the 60’s I am wearing it.
Going over the fields to Chrissies was a happy bonus in otherwise ordinary childhood days. Other children maybe had grandparents to visit but we had Sandy, Chrissie and the “wains”.
"The wains" to day!!
CHURCHLANDS ROAD.
33 Churchlands road was my home from the age of 6mths until I went to university 1968. What a wonderful street it was! I never remember the door being locked until after Daddy died in 1971. Mummy was nearly always at home when we children were at home. Not that she ever played with us! Mums didn’t do that, they washed, ironed, cleaned, cooked, baked and shopped. We ate all our meals except breakfast at the table in the dining room but Daddy never ate at the table. His meals were always served on a tray at the fireside! Breakfast we ate in front of the small stove we had in the kitchen as it was warm. For Christmas the dining table was moved into the sitting room and then Daddy and his brother Uncle George joined us at the table. Chrissie and family always came for tea on Christmas evening as it was Chrissie's birthday.
We all had our own places at the table and places were set with knives and forks. I never thought about it then but I realise now what a wonderful memory it is having been part of a family who sat down together and ate and talked at meal times!
Mummy rarely sat down but she always sat and ate with us.
Churchland road houses were part of the big re-housing and building that went on after the Second World War. There were four “blocks” of four houses on the right hand side of the street (with your back towards the town) and later other blocks were built on the left hand side. They were not as big as our houses and had a different lay out. The house we lived in was of a high standard and because of Max’s poor health. We were allocated an “end” house which had a little stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in one of the three bedrooms. Downstairs was a hall leading from the front door straight through to the kitchen at the back. To the left immediately when you came through the front door was the door into the sitting room. There was a door from the kitchen and the sitting room into a small dining room. To the right when you came through the front door was a hall stand where we hung our coats. Forward to the right was the staircase taking you upstairs to the three bedrooms and bathroom and separate toilet.
There were two double bedrooms and one single bedroom. The single bedroom was Margaret and mine and we shared a single iron bed. Our room was tiny but there was room for a small dressing table and chest of drawers...60's style that held our clothes.
The hot water tank was in a cupboard in the bathroom and this cupboard (called the hot press!), was where we kept towels and “aired” clothes.
At the top end of the street were a telephone box and a post box.
I can vaguely remember the gas lamps and the lamplighter coming each evening on his bike to light the lamps. Gas was piped to all the houses to fuel the gas cookers. A footpath ran along both sides of the road and here we played “hops”,
“Tip cat”, “marbles” and “tin tops”. We girls played with skipping ropes on the road as there were next to no cars in the “heights” as our housing area was nicknamed.
As a child I remember our street as being very long and I felt very secure in those surroundings. Our world was contained in that street.
We did however venture out into the big world and that started with school.
I was four years old when I started school and it did not begin well! I remember crying in class and Miss Creelman asking me what was wrong. I lied and said I had a sore head when the real problem was I was terrified of her and wanted home to Mummy.
After the bad start I began to like school and learning and learned quickly. Danny and I were in the same class though he was a year older. There were two sisters who taught in Killowen Primary school and unfortunately for them became known to us as Fat Miss Thompson and Thin Miss Thompson (for obvious reasons). F.M.T. gave us reading time in class if we had done our work well or we could buy reading time for a small sum of money. I think that’s where I discovered the joy of reading and that it was encouraged as something positive. In T.M.T. class we had a cardboard box to keep our knitting or sewing in, and so began my love affair with containers, boxes, baskets.
One of the other teachers, a lady whose name I can’t remember used to prepare us for the yearly festival where we competed with the other schools in verse speaking and choir singing.
In 1956 I won first prize for verse speaking, reciting “Why do bells for Christmas ring”......see photo page 94
"Christmas Song No. 2" (1899)
Words by Lydia Avery Coonley
1.
Why do bells for Christmas ring?
Why do little children sing?
Once a lovely, shining star,
Seen by shepherds from afar,
Gently moved until its light
Made a manger cradle bright.
2.
There a darling baby lay,
Pillowed soft upon the hay,
And His mother sang and smiled:
"This is Christ, the Holy Child."
So the bells for Christmas ring,
So the little children sing.
Our choirs were also successful sometimes.
One of my best friends from primary school was Adela Caldwell.She and I would eat our packed lunches together at lunch time. Sometimes in the winter Mummy would come to the school at lunch time with our sandwiches and hot tea in a "billy can". We would eat sitting on the hot pipes that provided the school heating.
When I was in my last year at primary school we were sent to the Intermediate school to do an 11 plus exam. I passed this exam and this meant I was to go to the grammar school instead of going to the Intermediate school where all my other class mates were going. I was the only pupil from my school that year to pass the 11 plus. Daddy was very proud and I got a watch from him and he also bought me a bike to get to school as it was on the other side of the town to where I lived. I was really scared at the idea of going to the High School where I knew no-one but Mummy got a neighbour girl, Myra Tennant, whose Mum she knew, to take me the first day and I soon got to make new friends. I loved the High School and was an average student.
Sometimes I took a packed lunch to school and some days I walked home to eat lunch. One lunch time had a dramatic end to it. When Max started work after he finished school, he bought himself a vespa scooter to take him to and from work. One lunch time in the early 1960's he offered to take me back to school on the vespa. As he only had one helmet and being the gentleman he always was he insisted I wore the helmet for the journey back. When we were going down the steep hill on Captain Street we had an old car in front of us which decided to stop suddenly. Max could not overtake as there was no way to see if there was oncoming trafic and I thought.."wonder what Max is going to do now??"
There was a lorry parked, along the footpath, facing us, to the left and a tree growing on the footpath. I remember the lorry driver was sitting in his cab eating his lunch.What Max managed to do was negotiate the vespa up on to the footpath between the lorry and the tree. I came off first and watched Max and the vespa gliding further down the path. We got up shocked but unhurt. When we looked at the helmet there was a large dent in it and I obviously had hit the ground but was unaware of it. Without the helmet my head would have had a very big hole in it !!! What we did then was, I walked on to school and Max went to work and I'm not even sure our parents ever heard of the incident.
Mummy and Daddy were not well off financially. I was very fortunate to have parents who believed in education, even for girls, as it can’t have been easy for them to find the money for my uniform and books. We had to buy our own books and stationary unlike the Intermediate where everything was free. School work was demanding and most of my teenage years were spent doing homework even at the week-ends.
Meeting Des!
The year I was at home before begining at Trinity I got close to Eileen Shirlow a girl from my class at school. At school we had different friends but when she began "dating" brother Danny I had to carry letters between them. When Danny moved to London to join the Metropolitan Police their romance ended and for a time Eileen was sad and needed a friend to talk to. We became friends and one day she told me she had the perfect "boy" for me, her cousin Desi, who would be visiting them soon. At this time in my life I was determined to become a social worker and change the world!!!??
I agreed however to go home to her and meet this Desi.
The evening I went, we chatted and waited for this Desi to arrive. 
After a while a young man came in and started talking to us and my thoughts were..."she must be joking". It evolved that this was not the famous Desi but the lodger who was living there at the time.
Just before I left to go home Desi arrived in and we were introduced. The rest as they say is history! Eileen arranged that we would all meet up at Morellis in Portstewart that same evening, so our first date was with Eileen and Ozzae, Eileens cousin Lorraine and her then boyfriend.
After “O-levels” and two “A-levels” I applied to University to do Social Studies. I had to be 20yrs to begin the course so I had a year in hand. I was nearly 19 when I finished school June 14, 1967. 18th August I started working in Belfast in Dr Barnardos as a Child Care Assistant. The children in care lived in family groups and each group had two child care assistants to look after them. There was no training or introduction and although I liked the children I felt very inadequate as a carer. My time in Barnardos wasn’t long as Mummy and Daddy’s health wasn’t good so in November I finished and came home to Churchlands again.
I was at home looking after Mum and Dad until I started Trinity College Dublin, October 1968. At Trinity I was accepted to do a two year Diploma course in Social Studies. Brother Max was in the kitchen with me when I opened the letter telling me I had been accepted.
The two years I was at Trinity I boarded with a couple Stanley and Doreen Bolton in Rathfarnham. They were a young couple with two small children Alan and Shirley. Stanley was from Cork and was a travelling salesman. I had great difficulty understanding his strong dialect but they were both very caring and friendly. The first year I stayed I had a single room but my second year I shared with Jean Stewart (Gibson) a friend from Coleraine High School. She and I were active in The Christian Union at Trinity and had some good friends there. One of the girls, Heather Patton, baked and decorated Des's and my wedding cake. She later married and went to France as a missionary.
A television programme during my time in Trinity was to set me on the path to Sweden. I was a very religous young girl and believed God has a path for each individual. Des and I knew we loved each other but I did not want to "commit" until I knew what God wanted with my life. Des at this time was first in Bible school in Edinburgh and in my second year was an Assistant to the Methodist minister in Dungannon.
We were asked at college to watch a television programme from Sweden which at this time in the late 60's was the promised land for social workers. The documentary explained the idea of the state helping the individual from "The cradle to the Grave". There wasn't the poverty or poor housing found in many countries, however the rate of suicides and alcoholism was as high as in America! The Swedes had solved material problems but "Spiritual" health did not follow. Being very idealistic and with the arrogance of youth I decided that God's plan for me was to come to Sweden and make people happy???!!!
There were three big problems with this for me... I did not want to leave my home in Coleraine which I loved, I did not want to leave my elderly parents and I now thought I would lose Des as he was planning to become a Methodist minister in Ireland.
After Trinity I got a job as Social Worker with County Londonderry Welfare Authority in 1970. I worked in the Limavady and Dungiven area until Steven was born February 1972. Our office was the gate lodge to Roe Park, now a Radisson hotel. That gate lodge is now in ruins! (as in 2008)
OTHER RELEVANT PHOTOS!
Schoolgirl Elizabeth,1959 
Peter/Lorna's Wedding 1964
Eileen Shirlow at Churchlands 
Sunnydale, Clare, COOKSTOWN Garden, 1969
The HAPPY couple on their engagement week end in Dublin, March, 1970
Parents at our wedding, Rose Gardens, Coleraine, February 1971
The O'Brien six!
Margaret in pensive mood
Love birds, Danny & Shirley 
Peter/Lorna 1964
G Max, the man himself.... with proud family, and above at his MBE celebration
