The couple met and married in England in June 1956. Mary, reared in Doneraile, north west Cork, was working as a housekeeper. Frank was working as a carpenter on the power stations. From the age of twelve, he had served his apprenticeship with a great-uncle in Mallow. Frank’s Waterford-born father was in charge of driving the sugar beet in from Mallow train station to the factory.
In 1952, fifteen-year-old Frank went ‘on my own’ to England and began working on the Aldermaston power station outside Reading. He swiftly became part of an Irish gang that roamed around England, living in camps and hostels, working on the power stations and tearing off ration stamps for their breakfast, lunch and tea. By the time he married, he’d become a foreman.
Frank and Mary returned to Ireland in 1960. Mary concentrated on raising their children, six boys and four girls and Frank headed off around Ireland with his toolbox in pursuit of an income. One of his first commissions was to build the Rippon piano factory in Shannon. He then worked with McInernys on the construction of a new jet runway at Shannon airport to accommodate the first long-range jet aircraft, such as the Boeing 720, that had just begun operating on the route. Frank remembers it well, ‘It was exciting to see these new planes coming in.’ By the 1970s he was working on housing developments in Limerick, Galway and Tallaght.
‘I’m a carpenter by trade but I’m retired now,’ says Frank. ‘When you get over seventy, you may throw the towel in and go fishing.’ The last carpentry job Frank did was to gather a load of pine logs, bring them to the south bank of the Blackwater and turn them into a cabin. Elevated on sturdy stilts four feet above ground, the cabin is safely out of harm’s way should the river burst its banks. The walls are lined with newspaper clippings, rods, boots, thank you letters, photographs, birds nests, chainsaws and other notices. A photograph displays the biggest fish he ever caught, a twenty-two-pounder. The view is of a fine wrought iron bridge – that Frank also built – across the Blackwater and, on the horizon, a horse-filled paddock, an old limekiln and a tree-lined avenue leading to an old Norman castle.
There can be no doubting that if Frank put ten cents in a box every time he swore, he’d probably be able to buy Latvia by now and, as it happens, if Frank could live anywhere else, it would most likely be Latvia. A son-in-law owns a lakeside property out there and on a recent visit, Frank was much taken with the country, declaring it to be ‘way ahead of Ireland’. He was particularly taken by a crèche full of mini motor cars so that ‘the little ones learn how to use gears and indicators and all that’.
Frank Maher passed away on 31 May 2014.
With thanks to Ballyvolane House.