Obituary: A tribute to the late Jim Corcoran, owner of The Salvage Shop

Dad was sick for a long time. Alzheimer’s is an illness that doesn’t work quickly. A few days ago, Mum spoke to me and Sean and asked us to start thinking about Dad’s funeral. It was in the middle of what turned out to be a 12-day-marathon, because of course Dad, who also suffered with heart problems for years, somehow managed to find the heart and stamina of a lion for his final days. We should not have been surprised. 

Dad was always a very determined, some might say stubborn man. When Mum asked us to start writing a eulogy, we weren’t ready to start doing that, to write in the past tense. So, I started writing this, on behalf of Sean, myself and the family, to Dad. When we were with him, or near him, at Killure.

We know what’s coming Dad. We know that the time we have left with you here is limited. Each breath you take is precious to us, but also a breath too many, because now, what we want most for you, is peace and release.

The late Jim Corcoran and his son Sean pictured outside their business The Salvage Shop which was hugely popular in Waterford.

You’ve had a good life, a busy life. There’s so much to remember, too much to recall here, but as I start writing this, I’ve stepped out of your room Dad, and gone to the family room, while the beautiful, loving, compassionate staff at Killure are with you, bringing you more comfort with fresh bedding, a change of pyjamas, medication to ease your tremors. 

They’re simple things, but things that have maintained your dignity Dad, helping you to be comfortable and look your best. Songs are playing in the background that bring back memories. The Wild Rover, The Fields of Athenry, Mum’s song, The Blanket on the Ground. Flashes of images come to me. The parties, the family gatherings, Ballymacaw, those Christmas mornings spent between the three homes – George and Eileen’s, Buddy and Harriet’s and ours. The sing-songs, the stories of dinners getting burned, turkeys falling on the floor, joy and laughter and pure daft craic. Some of the stories will be told for the umpteenth time later, or on a different day. Some of the stories I’ll try to relate now.

You were always a handsome man Dad, but we laugh whenever we hear the story of the first time Mum laid eyes on you. The year was 1965. Location: The Emerald Ballroom in Hammersmith. Scene: A young man walks across the dance floor, approaches the beautiful Deirdre Hourihan, asks her to dance. She took one look at you Dad, taking in your long hair, what she described as your Beatnik, hippyish sense of style. It was not love at first sight. She turned you down. You were gutted, but so typically, you didn’t give up easily. 

The Emerald was a weekly haunt for Mum and her sisters. Seven nights later you were back. This time Mum’s head was turned when she saw you walk into the room – a clean-cut hunk, sashaying in with your new short back and sides, your sharp, 60s suit, the new suede shoes. The night went on, you played it cool Dad. Mum watched your every move. Eventually, you started walking across the dancefloor towards her. She recalls her heart thumping. He’s going to ask me to dance. This time I won’t say no. And that’s when you played one of the greatest moves of your life Dad. You got to Mum, you turned to the left, and asked her sister Maureen would she like to dance! History might have taken a different path if Maureen hadn’t said what she said next. I think my sister might prefer to dance with you. They married a couple of years later.

The late Jim Corcoran as a young father with his daughter Jacqui.

Mum was the great big love of your life. I know you’ve been blown away by how devoted, loving, kind and strong she has been over the course of your illness. We’ve all been blown away by her. She nursed you at home for so long, until it got to the point where, for your best interests and needs to be met, you had to come to Killure. Sean and I felt it was best for Mum too, which we know you would have agreed with. 

Dad, you may have been a challenging, independent, stubborn man at times. You were always driven and single-minded about whatever the next big project was, but always, always, you loved Mum. You may not have always been the best at saying that, but you showed it. For years, every morning, making her a two-course breakfast. The second course would be a cooked breakfast. You made the best omlettes I have ever tasted. It was the first course that is etched in my memory though. It always included some segments of mandarin orange and other fruit. The fruit would be washed and delicately sliced. But the care you took over those mandarin orange segments was, to me, the epitome of dedication and love. You would take each segment, and cut off the internal skin and pith, so that what was left, the perfect inner heart of the orange, was what would be put on the plate. It was a ritual of love, that was matched only by Mum, at your bedside in recent days, as you lost your ability to eat and swallow solids, when she would sit there holding orange segments in your mouth, which you would suck on with child-like enthusiasm.

As I write, we’ve moved on to another stage, but still your spirit is here and your famous determination. Dad, you deserve a rest, but you have shown your grit and personality over the course of these final furlongs, hanging on in there, not ready to say the final goodbye yet. Somehow, even in the worst ravages of this illness, as the monster that is Alzheimer’s took a stronger grip, your spirit has been here. And by God it is some spirit. It has lifted your head from the pillow in these recent days, when Sean would play Pavarotti singing Una Furtiva Lacrima, your favourite Aria from Jim Nolan’s play, the Salvage Shop, which resonated with you, and mirrored you in its telling of the story of a dreamer who dreamt big. That renegade spirit was there only a short few weeks ago when you were going around Killure, thinking you were fixing things, trying to take the fire extinguishers off the walls. 

It was there a couple of years ago when you climbed over the fence at the end of the front garden and managed to sprint over to Dunmore at such a rate us eejits were running up and down the cliffs in Ballymacaw thinking the worst, and that there was no way you could have gotten any further than Ballymacaw or Rathmoylan coves. We underestimated you. At that point in the illness, you were still, in your mind, working in the Salvage Shop, and had money to collect. When Jim Griffin found you heading into a housing estate on the outskirts of the village, it took a bit of persuasion to get you into his car so he could bring you home. You were on a mission to find some fella who owed you a few quid you see. In the architectural salvage business, there was always some fella who owed you a few quid.

The Salvage Shop was your last business, Dad, but it was the one that gave you the most satisfaction, and enough success to let you have the comfortable retirement you so deserved after a lifetime of hard, hard work. Yourself and Sean ran some operation there Dad. The stories are legendary, the two of ye working together, two very different personalities with very different priorities and ideas, but work and enterprise played a big part in your life and it started at an early age.

Dad, you were still only a little kid when you started off on that entrepreneurial journey of yours. 12 years of age you were, making Christmas cribs for Woolworths. Even before that you were going around collecting bags of laundry and doing other errands for your beloved mother, Madge and your Dad, Joe. You loved living in that hexagonal house on the corner of Morrisons road and the Yellow road, where you grew up with Mavis, Joe, John, George, Emily and Rose. They had to say an early enough temporary goodbye to you though, when you headed for London at just 16, in a coat you would grow into, with just a couple of quid and a Mars Bar in your pocket.

After working as a bus conductor and then a cable-jointer for a number of years, you set up your own business C&S telecommunications… the C standing for Corcoran, and the S, for Sullivan, after your partner Matt Sullivan. That business gave you the opportunity to finally return home to Waterford, when ye got a contract to supply cable television to houses throughout the town. I was 7, Sean was 5, and coming to Waterford, we thought all our dreams had come true.

It was one of the greatest joys of your life when you and Mum bought a couple of acres in your beloved Ballymacaw, and built a house. It took a few years to build, the cashflow was hit and miss at times. We moved in before walls were plastered, floors down, or electricity installed. It must have been a challenging few years for you and Mum, but ye made me and Sean think it was all a big adventure. 

We’d have to wait until you were home from work because none of the rest of us were strong enough to turn the crankshaft on the generator that powered a string of lights and various appliances. We got to know how to work a tilly lamp and get a fire started until you got back from the work that was going to pay for the various stages of the house-build. One of the enterprises, which also kicked off when the house was as I’ve just described, was the B&B business. People would arrive up the rocky drive to this unfinished mad house. They’d somehow be persuaded to stay for a night, and end up staying for days on end it was surreal and fun…and nothing could beat the breakfasts that Mum and Dad would put in front of them!

In another example of the kind of mad, beautiful, wildly ambitious thinker you are Dad, not only did you take on the building of what turned out to eventually be a really beautiful home, when it seemed ye would never be able to afford to finish it, but you took a notion and thought it would also be a great idea to build a squash court in the back garden! It was a bit of a Field of Dreams move, you built, they came, and it eventually created lots of fantastic memories, when it became a thriving club through the 70s and eighties.

You got your first big picture in the Munster around that time, when you decided you weren’t going to let the petrol strike get in the way of your work. You hired a horse and cart, Mum wrote a poem, ye painted the words on to the side of the cart, and off ye went. The words of the rhyme are etched in my memory. Out of petrol, what a shame, but Cablevision is the name, undeterred we’ll carry on, until our work in town is done. Our mode of transport is simple, the idea may catch on, a bag of hay, three times a day, is all our engine burns.

You had a number of businesses. Some were a success, some a disaster. You were never ever idle, and always came up with ways to pay the bills, even when times were tough. I remember you working in a chipper in Dunmore for a spell, which you really enjoyed. Of course, you added your own touches, got quite creative with the menu, and embraced the experience. But other ideas drew you away. When you set up Junk City, at the site of what is now City Square, you gave lots of small traders the opportunity to sublet parts of the big premises and that was quite the adventure. You went into the window business next with Kingfisher PVC, in partnership with Ian O’Neill, with huge input from your sister Rose’s daughter, your niece Shirley.

You were never one to sit still, and anyone who knows you would back me up when I say that you were never, ever short of ideas. Mad ideas. Outrageous ideas. Ambitious, creative, think-outside the box and often wholly impractical ideas. Remember when you approached the council about building a ski-slope at the back of the Ardree? They didn’t quite share your vision! Remember when you thought it would be a great idea to build a rope bridge across Portafhada cove? I’d say none of us shared your vision!

Another idea you got particularly excited about, was when you got the nationwide agency for Rat-Zappers. With your typical enthusiasm and Del-boy optimism, you thought this was the one that was going to catapult you into the big time. The rat-zapper was what it sounds like. A box that would be baited to draw in poor unsuspecting rats, which would be electrocuted and die instantly. 

Sean and yourself had the Salvage Shop at the time, and Sean was less enthusiastic than you, questioning whether or not this was a truly humane killing device. Dad, you were such a rogue, then and always. When you found a dead hedgehog on the side of the road on your way into work one morning, you came up with one of your pranks. Imagine poor Sean’s horror when you encouraged him to go out into the yard to check if ye had caught anything in the zapper… only to find the body of the poor hedgehog wedged into the zapper. Sean barely spoke to you for about a week after that.

Neither of us could stay cross with you for too long though Dad. You were a great Dad and went on to become a great Grandad, utterly adored by your grandkids James, Abigail, Hugo, Matilda and Alfie. This brings to mind a few lines which I put up on Facebook on Father’s Day, in 2016. Alzheimers was already taking a grip then, as we can see in the responses you sent back to me, but it gives me a bit of comfort to know you could read it then, and understand my words. I’ll finish with them shortly, because they sum up a little of the character and free spirit you are, and showcase a little of the man who is so deeply loved… by me, by Mum, by Sean, by James, Abigail, Hugo, Alfie and Matilda and by your beloved wider family and friends and neighbours and various collaborators over the years.

First, we all want to say, on your behalf too Dad, a true and heartfelt thanks to the staff of Killure. Each and every one of you has shown Dad unimaginable kindness, compassion and professional care. Particular thanks to Mary, Stuart and Shane. Thanks to Dad’s doctors and anyone else involved in his care over the past few years. Thanks to the staff of Ardkeen, thanks to our wider family and friends for your love and support. And a special, huge, huge thank you from Sean and from me to Miranda, and to Tom, for your kindness, support and love through some challenging times.

So, finally, here’s to you Dad, We’ll be raising a toast to you at Rita’s, Dower’s Bar, and then up to White’s, where we’ll continue the celebration of your life and share some more memories. You’re all welcome to join us. It will be a toast to the man, the good man, the kind and funny man, the maverick, the legend, who created some pretty unique and special childhood memories:

To the man who tipped ducklings onto my bed in the middle of the night (you had rescued them from the rail-line where the mother duck had been killed)… to the man who held up rush hour traffic in London to pick up a pile of police-horse poo that had landed in the middle of the road, because it would be an awful shame to waste good fertiliser for the garden… to the man who answered an ad (where would you find this sort of ad?) looking for a good home for a retired elephant. I can remember Mum’s relief and your major disappointment Dad, when we learned that the elephant had already been re-homed! These are just a few of the stories. I love you Dad. We all love you.