Joe Liddane

A life fully lived
Joe Liddane died on June 17 2016 at the age of 99. A native of Galway, he lived happily in retirement near Westport for 35 years with his wife Evelyn (nee Browne).
He was born not long after the Easter Rising and before the First World War ended, so was older than the Republic. His youth was lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s and his early manhood under World War II bombs in Belfast and London.
Joe experienced all these early difficult times and much more. They enriched and made him what he was but they never fazed him. He was energetic and impatient so these events only served to supercharge his mental and physical batteries that ran at high performance right up to his final days.
Everyone who knew him has a story that sums up some part of his personality. He himself was a great story-teller. He had a deep reservoir of tales and a phenomenal memory for recalling them. He never tired of telling them and family and friends never tired of hearing them. His eyes sparkled and his unfailing memory retrieved amazing details of all stages of his life. From a tough upbringing in Galway City in the 1920s, to work in the Harland and Woolf shipyards. From hurling and boxing prowess in County Down to visits to loyalist dance halls to hear traditional music and song. From war time work in London to constructing houses and motorways across Northern England. From years of fun and mischief in the Middle East with another recently deceased son of Westport, John Gannon, to reluctant retirement from the task of building an aluminum processing plant near Shanagolden in Limerick in 1982. You didn’t meet him without an entertaining story cropping up. He loved to tell these tales and friends and relatives were all captivated by them.
Three things filled his life—work, family and fun.
Work started early for him, even by the standards of the time. Tough home circumstances meant he needed to support his mother and brother from the age of 14 and the generosity of an aunt found him an apprenticeship as a carpenter with McDonough’s of Galway. The thorough training he got, his boundless energy and a quick brain for solutions made him a highly respected worker and team leader wherever he went. He easily developed a reputation for high productivity and he became the man to go to for the tough jobs that others couldn’t handle. Although he learnt intricate carpentry, he was always happiest with a sledge hammer and a six inch nail. In many ways he was almost as busy in retirement, fixing and making things.
In work, as in life, he was always lucky. Despite all the risks he took (and he took many) he always came out on top. He worked in severe cold, boiling heat, strong winds, on high buildings and down deep holes and yet he always came through unscathed. Even from a period of working with asbestos, which most of his mates did not survive. He was truly indestructible. A combination of impatience, determination and luck got him the results that he wanted. In work as in much of his life.

Family
Family mattered to him. He had the sense and good fortune to find a strong, supporting partner and they had over 70 years together. Evelyn Browne of Farnaught was the platform on which was built the solid family that sustained them both. He loved to fill his car with grandchildren, fill the grandchildren with sweets and their pockets with money and head for the beach. He himself had come from a small family, having only one brother, but ended up as the patriarch of an extended family numbering several hundred across several generations across three continents. Just after the war he had answered an advertisement for carpenters needed in Newcastle upon Tyne and that was a major turning point. Members of the extensive Browne family followed regularly and founded their own families. Of the 200 people who attended their sixtieth wedding anniversary in Newcastle, nearly 90 percent were relatives and many others couldn’t make it.
Joe was a very determined man and never more so than when wanting to enjoy himself. He needed no excuse to have a party and did so wherever he went. At home with family, at work in Ireland, England, Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, he would have the whiskey bottle out in a flash and in no time at all the music would be playing and the songs being belted out. He loved traditional music and song, especially so when in company where drink was flowing and everyone was having a good time. In many ways this was when he was at his happiest. And even into advanced years, he was one of the very last to go to bed and yet still be up for work at 5am or 6am, however much he had consumed the previous night. In retirement in Westport he was a regular fixture in Hoban’s at the Octagon and was the only person who could ever reserve a table there. Right next to the serving hatch, obviously. He loved to talk to everybody and anybody, locals and foreign visitors alike.
He was a gentleman with great charm and will be much missed by family and friends. But the sadness of his passing is more than outweighed by the memories of good times and of someone who took all the opportunities that came along and made the most of them.
His was indeed a life fully lived.