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1916 hero wed on eve of Easter Rising

This article is from page 5 of the 2011-04-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 5 JPG

AS KILRUSH commemorated the 95th anniversary of the Easter Rising on Sunday, a woman from the town has told a remarkable tale of how her father celebrated his wedding on the eve of the rebellion before heading off to join Padraic Pearse’s garrison in Dublin’s GPO.

Belfast-born Thomas McMullen, who lived and worked in Kilrush for many years before his death over 40 years ago, was also one of the few Catholics to work on the building of the Titanic before joining the Irish Volunteers and taking part in the independence struggle.

“My father married Annie McGill on Easter Sunday 1916 in Ss Peter & Paul’s Church in Belfast,” Teresa O’Loughlin told The Clare People . “He got word that night from Padraig Pearse that the Rising was going ahead and he made his way down to Dublin on Easter Monday and was garrisoned in the GPO for the Rising.

“My mother didn’t mind him going off to the Rising. They were both of the one mind that Ireland should be free, so he had her blessing when he went off to the the GPO to fight for Ireland.

“Many, many years later I was in Dublin for Easter Rising commemoration and we went to the National Gallery and saw photograph of my father with Countess Markievicz.

“He was captured sometime after the Rising and was put in jail. He was involved in the whole War of Independence and he went on hunger strike for six weeks and suffered with his stomach for the rest of his life after that,” the 82-year-old from Henry Street, Kilrush added.

Ms O’Loughlin was born in Mitchelstown where her father worked in the local creamery, before the family moved to Kilrush when he took up an appointment with the West Clare Creamery.

“He lived in Kilrush until he died aged 74 in 1969, but he never really spoke to us about his role in the Rising. It was only my mother who’d tell us something about it. ‘Come on now,’ he’d say when we’d press him to talk about his part in the Rising. ‘Don’t fill the children’s heads with this stuff,’ he’d say.

“‘I’ll tell ye all about the Titanic.’ He told us there were awful things written on the hull. He knew because he worked on the building of it; one of the few Catholics who worked on it, but he had a great friend who got him a job in Harland and Wolff,” added Ms O’Loughlin.

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