My father.

Benny was born at 39 Sandhurst Gardens, Belfast on 13 July 1902, to Benjamin Norman and Josephine Palmer. He had five sisters, Margaret, Anne, the twins Muriel and Olive and Florence

He moved to 4 Grafton Terrace in Rosemount, Derry when he was about one year old, and by 1912 he lived at 17 High Street (pictured left), in the Bogside. He had the education beaten into him (after sconcing off a time or two) by the Christian Brothers at Brow o' the Hill School.

After his father was killed in 1914, times became difficult. His mother took in washing and needlework, and his sisters were taken out of the local convent school and sent to work in the local shirt factories. The family relied on food parcels from Aunt Stacie in Enniscorthy. I havn't been able to find out why the family didn't go back to Wexford, or to the grandparents in Dublin.

Benny continued his education, but worked in the evenings for the Londonderry Sentinel - the local Unionist / Protestant paper ( .. so times must have been very hard .. !)

Although his father died fighting in the British Army in 1914, four years later Benny was fighting for Ireland's freedom in the War of Independence.

In the Civil War that followed, he fought in Michael Collins' Free State Army (see photo - right). He volunteered in Dublin on 14 July 1922, the day after his twentieth birthday. Within four months he had been promoted to Corporal.

Benny trained at the Curragh Camp before being posted to 2 (Second) Southern Command, based in Clonmel, Tipperary by November 1922. His service number was VR 644.

As a teenager in the nineteen-sixties, after Sunday Mass, and a couple of pints at St Cyprians Club, Brockley, London, I listened to my my father waxing lyrical ...

" ... when I was your age, I had bullets wizzing over my head ... "

Unfortunately, I was young, and the young don't listen ... I wasn't interested in his part in Irish history. I wanted to play with my friends ... Now I'm old and keen on my family's history, but I can't go back, and, as the song says, " ... time has closed another boyhood door ... "

Benny was a keen actor, and in the 1920s and 1930s he was a member of the St Columb's Guild's Dramatic Society in Derry, Desmond Crean's Irish Players and later The Limavady Players, receiving a number of excellent reviews for his acting , including the accolade ".. an artistic performance hard to surpass .." and a comparison to the great actor Sir Henry Irving.

Benny worked in the North of Ireland Shipyard on Strand Road in Derry, until 1936, when he moved, with his mother, to London. He joined the Admiralty as a Draftsman,and this was where he met his wife, Gabrielle Doherty, who also came from Derry.

They married on 06 February 1950, and have three children, Benjamin Laurence, Yvonne and Norman.

Benny, by now known as "Stanley", retired in 1967, and lived in South East London. His hobbies included reading, art, acting and that old Irish pastime, the drink. He is pictured (left) at my wedding in 1974.

He spent his time helping the local Catholic church in Deptford, and relaxing in the traditional Irish manner.

Benny went ahead of his family, in his sleep, on 17 February 1981 (IRNI).