A Personal Tribute to Aidan McCaul (1938-2024) by His Eldest Son Aodán McCaul

A personal tribute to Aidan McCaul (1938-2024) by his eldest son Aodán McCaul

Aidan Joseph McCaul was born 26-Jan-1938 on a farm in a place called Corrinshigo, near
Cootehill in Cavan, the youngest of 8 children. With the passing of Aunty Maggie early last
year at the remarkable age of 100, he was the last surviving sibling. Suffice to say, that hit
Aidan very hard. Aidan was probably treasured even more so by them because his
immediate older brother Hugh died at the age of 1 after a botched cleft palate operation in
Cavan hospital. At each family occasion – usually weddings – they always insisted on having
a photograph of all the siblings together, which came to mark the passage of time, as their
numbers dwindled. Remembering them all – May, Maggie, Nan, Tessie, Pat, Thomas, Hugh
and now Aidan, along with his father Hugh & his mother Mary-Anne. His love of all things
Cavan never left him and he still read the Anglo Celt newspaper every week. He loved nothing
more than going back to Cavan and visiting all his nephews and nieces there.
He was also very fond of my mother’s side of the family, especially our grandparents Michael
and Hannah O’Mahoney who lived in Church Street here in Millstreet in the late 1970s after my
grandfather retired, in a house rental arranged by my father in a house owned by James
Manley. Also, Joan Bennett – our mother’s sister, who died during Covid, who we weren’t
able to say a proper goodbye to at the time. He made a particular point of mentioning that
the two remaining O’Mahonys who are still alive – Pat O’Mahony in Waterford and Denis
O’Mahony in San Francisco be mentioned in his death notice.
Aidan went to school first in Mahera national school, and when that school closed, Lisarney.
His educational career was short and as it had been all through Irish initially, in his own words,
not very beneficial. Well, to be honest, those weren’t really the words he used. However,
there was an innate intelligence there, notably in maths where he never needed a calculator
throughout his life. He had an incredible memory for figures – phone numbers, car
registrations. Life in general, and his interest in current affairs – the paper was a daily staple of
his life, for a long time The Irish Independent, but there was a late in life switch to The Irish
Examiner with The Sindo on the Sunday. That was his real school along with the RTÉ News.
Having left school at 11, he worked on the rural electrification scheme in Cavan. That was
still going strong in 1949. Later, he worked in various hardware shops throughout the country
learning his trade before joining Duffys in Hacketstown, Co Carlow.

At a wedding one time in Cavan one of his contemporaries when Aidan was in his twenties
told us that his main interests then were the GAA and dancing. Dancing may well have been a
euphemism for chasing women, though he did love waltzing.
Another lifelong interest was cars, but before that he had a string of motorbikes – Triumphs
mainly I believe. His first car was an Austin A10, followed by numerous Volkswagen Beetles.
After that it was Fords – Escorts and Cortinas, there was a Hyundai Sante Fe in there
somewhere as well. However, he always had an ambition to have a “Good Car”.
It was while living in Hackettstown that he met our mother Kitty “at a dance in Dublin”. They
got married on the 2 nd August 1966 at 11am in Donnybrook church in Dublin. They settled
initially in Rathvilly in Co. Carlow.
Exactly 12 months to the day and the hour, 2nd August 1967 at 11am I was born in the Coombe
hospital in Dublin. A notable fact here is that Aidan did not attend the birth. He was at a
wedding and it was his sister May who drove my mother to the maternity hospital.

He then got a job with Buckleys Stores in Cork in 1968, initially as Manager of their Cork
store on Academy Street – which was the Cashs of its time and moved to Shamrock Lawn,
Inchvale Close in Douglas in Cork. Six months later he was switched to Buckleys Stores in
Millstreet and that was his final move, buying his house in Minor Row from Patrick Buckley for
IR£6,000. A lot of house inflation since then.
He became a confirmed Corkman and Millstreet man, revelling in the success of Millstreet
GAA – Cork County Senior Football Champions with 4 players + another on the panel of the
Cork 1973 All-Ireland football winning team. He was so proud organising the Buckleys open
top truck that carried John Coleman, Humphrey Kelleher, Connie Hartnett, Denis Long and
Thomas Kelleher along with the rest of that victorious team. Locals carried flaming torches
alongside the truck that night as it paraded through the town.
Mentioning John Coleman, a neighbour throughout Dad’s life in Minor Row, I cannot not
mention Billy Coleman. As children, Aidan had us all down in Colemans Garage in Minor
Row before the big rallies where the rally car was being prepared and the Circuit of Ireland
Rally was an integral part of Easter in our house. Invariably we were standing on ditches
somewhere locally supporting Billy Coleman.
After he met my mother, a lifelong interest developed in horse racing. He was a permanent
fixture at the local Racecourses – Mallow, Killarney, Tralee and always went to Listowel every
year to meet his sister Nan and her husband Steven. He broadened his horizons further in the
1990s and started going to Leopardstown with us. He even realised a lifetime ambition when
he got to Cheltenham in 2010. We took him and for years afterwards he never tired of telling
people that he never saw two horse and jockeys so fearless and fast tearing into the final fence
as that day when Kaite Walsh and Nina Carberry battled it out up the Cheltenham hill. For
many years after I got married, we also took him every year for many years to Galway
Races. There was fierce excitement when More Rainbows won the Galway Hurdle for
Aidan’s nephew Oliver Farrell. Even more so when we quite literally followed the exploits of
Cache Creek when his niece Josephine Hughes and her husband Seán bought that horse. He
was in the big-time now, blue-blood flat racing in the parade ring in Leopardstown with the
owners, rubbing shoulders with Coolmore and the Magniers. Shoutout here to his racing buddy
Mick Callaghan who was very good to Aidan in his later years, always calling for Aidan to
take him racing and including him. When he said he had no interest in watching Cheltenham
this year, that was as clearcut a message that he wasn’t much longer for this world.
Having now put down permanent roots in Millstreet, he became a Director in Buckleys. It is
hard to comprehend now how important Buckleys was to the town back then. It was huge.
Steel, Timber stockholders, Builders providers, Televisions etc. Huge ships sailed into Cork
docks full of timber, then hauled to Millstreet to the yard where Dairygold is now. They had
one of the first roof truss manufacturing plants in Ireland. They had their own brand of
television (Granada) manufactured in two plants in the UK.
But what is often forgotten is that Aidan was also the undertaker for Buckleys along with his
lifelong friend Denis Kelleher, known to everyone as “Strack”. They had a huge old American
Zephyr car for a hearse. No funeral homes in those days and the hearse and coffins were
stored in a galvanised shed near the old creamery in the Tanyard. I remember many freshly
bereaved families being taken into the front room in Minor Row making their funeral
arrangements with Aidan. One thing that I heard mentioned about him at the time was that
people noticed he always stayed until the very end of the burial in the cemetery and that
seemed to be remarked upon and appreciated by locals. One time we even got a delivery of
coffins out of hours, so they were put in our garage up the side of the house where we tested
them out.

He loved the bog, cutting turf in Gneeves in the late 1970s, and badminton. Later the only
game he played was cards – 45 drives & 45 parties at our home with Tadhg and Kathleen
Crowley, Dinny and Mary Cashman and the Long sisters from Liscahane.
On the home front Maura, Yvonne, Denis and Tony followed me into this world. However, idyllic
family life ground to a halt in the late 1970s when his wife, our mother Kitty, got sick. Though
she lived another 15 years, she deteriorated throughout that time and she died in 1992. That
was a big blow to all of us and Aidan never remarried. We remember her as well.
In 1981 economic disaster struck the town and our family. As a consequence of the credit
crunch, Buckley Stores collapsed. 200+ jobs gone from a small town.
However, Aidan decided to start his own business albeit on a much smaller scale, with Tim
Long as his first employee. Aidan and Tim were joined at the hip, working all their lives
together, first in Buckleys, and then in the shop. They were the Darby + Joan of the hardware
world. Tim was never really an employee in the ordinary sense of the word. Tim was family,
and still is. As such we remember his wife Noreen who was the real Joan to Tim’s Darby.
Aidan rented the AOH hall in Minor Row from Kit Radley and started his own
hardware/furniture shop. Such had been his standing in Buckley and the respect they had for
him, all of Buckleys former suppliers agreed to supply him and gave him credit. It was wing and a
prayer territory. The County Sheriff was a regular visitor in the early days. But the business
survived and everyone got paid. The business was decidedly of the low rent variety. The cash
register was a biscuit tin. The shop itself could best be described as a shopfitter’s nightmare
– everything was second-hand, be it carpet stands, the paint mixer, shelves, everything.
Transport for the business was a purple Ford Cortina estate, with a crudely painted colour
co-ordinated purple homemade roofrack running the length of the car, pulling a monstrosity
of a double axled trailer covered in tarpaulin. The trailer was owned by Donal O’Connor – the
vet across the road from us in Minor Row. The whole setup would not have looked out of
place in an old Western movie.
A year later he moved to the Square to the old Buckleys Stores offices and converted that
building into a shop. Slowly getting bigger, he got a yellow Hiace van and he toured every
laneway and byway of Boherbue, Rathmore, Knockagree, Gneeveguilla, Ballydesmond,
Kiskeam, Cullen, Millstreet – you name it – delivering beds, furniture, and fitting carpets and
floorcovering with John Rahilly and Sylvie. There was no timber flooring in those days.
Eventually the Hiace became a Ford Transit and he got his “Good Car” – firstly a BMW, but
ultimately a Mercedes. At which point he suddenly realised he didn’t like the Mercedes. So, it
was back to a BMW.
Reading the comments in the shop’s Facebook page, one customer paid tribute to Aidan,
saying he never OVERSOLD anything in the shop. Which was very true. There was no hard
sell. Aidan was forever incredulous at the markup being charged at some of the big-name
outlets. He always believed in not taking too much of a profit, and he took it to heart if he
bought something at the wrong price and had to charge his customers too much. He was very
fair to all his customers.
A big part of life in Millstreet in the 1980s was meetings – loads of meetings. Aidan played
his own small part in the recovery of the town on the Industrial Sub-Committee of the
Community Council along with Ken Brennan, Seán O’Riordan, Noel C Duggan, Tom
Meaney, Noel Buckley, Christy Fitzgerald and many others too numerous to mention, which notably
brought the Apple (now Alps) and Molex (now Cloverhill Foods) factories to the town. This town was lucky to have such great visionaries when it needed them most. It owes them all,
including my father, a great depth of gratitude.
Another unknown fact about Aidan is that he quietly guaranteed the loans of other former
Buckleys staff to help them start their own businesses. This could have backfired badly on
him, but credit to all involved, they were all very hardworking and none of those guarantees
were ever called upon.
Aidan made great friends in Millstreet, many now departed. The people who he worked with
in Buckleys – Patrick Buckley, Donal Guiney, Pat McCarthy, Phil O’Sullivan, John Hobbs,
Paddy Harkins, Kathleen Cronin (Kelcro) just a few names that come to mind. Aidan was not
much of a drinker, but he had a Sunday night ritual where he went up to the Wallis Arms
Hotel to meet Dick Pomeroy and Matty Owen O’Sullivan to get all the news. He later migrated to
McCarthys where the late Dr Pat Casey was a great friend. Later still, it was Pomeroy’s The
Clara Inn. Latterly Eily Buckley and Ursula Pomeroy were very good to him, as were his
neighbours in Minor Row especially Marguerite Kelleher.
The arrival of grandchildren – Eoin, Lavinia, Leanne, Cian, Katie, Caoimhe, Gráinne and
Shane brought a new focus for Aidan. He adored them all and went to all their concerts,
matches, graduations, christenings, communions and confirmations.
Aidan was lucky to have Tony’s Marie, and Yvonne’s Andrias who treated him like their own
father who were very caring to him right to the end. Marie especially will really miss him.
When Yvonne married Andrias, Aidan hit the jackpot with the “Cooleys”. Seán and Mary looked
after him way beyond the call of duty, especially after our mother died, taking him on
holidays with them in Banna Beach and elsewhere, also with the “Nifty Fiftys” – I don’t know
their official name – The Dromtariffe senior citizens club – who had their own trips.
He was a confirmed technophobe. His phone was a dumb Doro phone. Even texting was
beyond him. His phone was where all texts went to die. He resisted card machines in the
shop to the bitter end, only capitulating at the start of Covid. Up to then cash only, there’s an
ATM in AIB. Even today there’s no scanning, or barcodes. Just a pricing gun with paper
tags. However, somehow, he had no problem handling the remote control of the TV.
He also had a nasty habit at race meetings of suddenly disappearing when he needed to
back a horse. There was something in his psyche where he didn’t want you to know what he
had put on, and you usually only heard about the winners.
He loved flowers, not just in the shop, but also visiting gardens such as Fota, with Muckross
in Killarney a lifelong favourite place.
Aidan had been reasonably lucky health-wise, enjoying a full life well into his 86 th year. He
was still driving and working in the shop. Meeting the locals and the customers in the shop
probably kept him going. He never retired. He was 86 in January.
He went into hospital on 23rd August of last year after his consultant became concerned
following many recurring infections. That turned out to be double pneumonia followed swiftly
by a heart attack and another stent to add to three that he already had. While he did get home
for a few weeks around Christmas, the recurring infections continued and he was readmitted to
CUH on Friday 4th January, then quickly moving back into the Bons where he saw out his life
on St Patrick’s Day 2024.  Thanks especially to his GPs Dr Michael Casey and Dr Heffernan,
and particularly to Dr Susan O’Shea, Dr Conor O’Shea and Dr Catherine Molloy in the Bons
who looked after him with such kindness over the past six months, as well as all the Bons Secours nursing staff in St Finbarr’s and St Joseph’s wards and the Critical Care Unit. Thanks
also to Frank and Mairéad in Reen’s Pharmacy and also the staff of Mulcahy’s pharmacy.
His quality of life was gone. He knew at the end that he was dying and told Dr Molloy he
wanted to go with no drama, no fuss. There were no Goodbyes. No profound last words.
Thanks go to Davy Tarrant the undertaker and his staff, Fr Jack Fitzgerald. His Requiem Mass
was, as he wished, a seamless service with no fuss.
He was a quiet man, shy at times. But I would like to think he would have been delighted to
see the turnouts on Monday and Tuesday. He’d have spent hours reading the many kind
messages. The minutes silence before the St. Patrick’s Day parade would have particularly
impressed him.
Sin Sin. Tá saol Aodán MacCatmhaoil críocnaithe anois. Bhí Aidan annamh, agus an rud is
annamh is iontach. Ní bheidh a leithéid arís in ár measc.
Ar Dheis Dé a Anam.