Councillor Beryl Holland by Bobby Hanvey

 

Today, at Belmont Tower, our Helen Brooker was having her Christmas Craft Fair and we had mince pies and stollen with mulled wine. At the door we met Anne Johnston, who drew the maps for my books.

 

At our Ullans Academy meeting in the Tower, I spoke with our two guests Robin Newton and Denny Vittie of my friendship with Beryl Holland, the former DUP Councillor in Bangor..In speaking of the death of Ruby Cooling her name was evoked by the great Jack Gallagher, the best teacher to come out of Orangefield, of Van Morrison, Brian Keenan and David Ervine fame. Jake liked Ruby Cooling and she was like Beryl Holland, Mary O’Fee, Old man Tughan, George Green, a part of the fabric of Bangor. His Great grandfather Gilbert Oliver sailed out of Bangor as a master mariner in the late 19th century on the Bebbington so he had a special affinity with the town and he went to live behind the Gasworks in January 1964 when he and his beloved and lovely wife Lily  were just married. 

 

James O’Fee has a memory of canvassing Beryl on one occasion without changing her views; and another of her shaking her walking stick at them from the door of her bungalow in Ballyholme as their election bus passed by. I myself was introduced to Beryl by Edna Hanna, who was a nurse in the old Crawfordburn Hospital, which I covered as a Senior House Officer for my Consultant Geriatrician at Boyd House, Ards Hospital, Dr Eddie Knox, of whom I was particularly fond. It was also through Edna that I first met my good and now family friend Rev Dr Ian Paisley, a great hero of both women..

 

Beryl and Edna persuaded me to become a founder member of his new Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, which he founded in 1971 with Desmond Boal, Johnny McQuade and others. I then however became more involved in my medical career, and concentrated on writing my first book, Cruthin, the Ancient Kindred, eventually published in 1974. I was working in Carnan Street, Shankill Road, Belfast on Johnny’s biography when he died in 1984. Johnny, as a professional boxer, was the first “Hurricane Higgins” and a Chindit in Burma during the Second World War. My tapes on him were stolen from the Farset Offices on the Crumlin Road.

 

Since the early seventies, I have also had  a close family friendship with Andy Tyrie, whom I first met through Glenn Barr of the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party.  I had first encountered Glenn at a Vanguard meeting in Hamilton House, Bangor, on the invitation of Mary O’Fee. He shared the platform with David Trimble, who was in my class at Bangor Grammar School, and George Green, the best mate in the B Specials with my old friend Jimmy Leckey of Conlig.Through the incompararable Andy I met Jackie Hewitt and then Freddie Proctor, which led to the formation of Farset in Ainsworth Avenue, followed by my joining the Ulster Unionist Party in 1989 .