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About Gerry |
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Gerry Whelan 1918 - 2001 Gerry was born in 1918, a few miles outside Mohill, County Leitrim. He was from a family of 14, four girls and ten boys; he was the youngest of the boys. His father, who died in 1927, played the fiddle and people making music, ceiling in their house at night, was part of his introduction to Irish music. He grew up with a great love of music, a love that he carried throughout his life. Gerry started lilting and singing at the age of three. By the age of six he could lilt at least 60 reels and jigs and sing quite a few songs. When he was seven years old he played his first tune on the mouth organ. Later he progressed to playing the melodeon and at the age of 17 acquired his first Hohner button accordion. His idol growing up was the Rev Fr Peter Conefrey of Cloone, who encouraged and helped to keep the music alive in the 1920s and early 1930s. Gerry’s life took many different turns, in Ireland and England. Yet throughout the good and bad times he maintained his love of music. During his brief time in England he joined up with a ceili band in Weybridge, Surrey and played every week at dances and events. When he moved back to Ireland and set up business in Cootehill in 1939, he sought out people who shared his love for music. He organised a “Sessiun“ in Rice’s front room, where he and four or five local people from the town played music every week, at a time when there were no Fleadhanna or session’s in pubs.
With the founding of Comhaltas in 1951, Gerry said the music he knew and loved was injected with new life. Gerry got actively involved with Comhaltas at the organisation’s inception and was President of the Ulster Council for a period of 30 years. It was perhaps fitting that he still held the position of Honorary President at the time of his death, on 28th February, 2001, and which occurred on the 50th anniversary of Comhaltas. Gerry was at the first all-Ireland fleadh in Mullingar in 1951 and attended them for the next 50 years (all except one, due to a death in the family). In addition to his annual pilgrimage to the all-Ireland fleadh, Gerry’s musical calendar included county fleadh’s, provincial fleadh’s, session’s at home and away and the Tionol Ceol held in Gormanstown for many years. In 1967 Gerry was chairman of the committee that brought the first fleadh uladh to Cootehill. This very successful event turned the tide of bad publicity surrounding an Fleadhanna, helping to give them a positive image and restoring Comhaltas to its proper pride of place in Irish society. In 2000, Gerry saw the tenth successful fleadh uladh hosted in Cootehill.
While playing and celebrating traditional music was a major part of his life, Gerry was passionate about the music being passed on to future generations. One way he believed of achieving this was to teach music to young people. He was involved in setting up music classes in Cootehill throughout the years and was instrumental in setting up St Michael’s Marching Band in Cootehill in 1967. The band won a lot of major competitions and his proudest moment was when they won the All-Ireland Marching Band competition in 1972. But his interest in marching bands didn’t stop there. In the 1980s he was part of a committee set up to rationalise and re-organise the band competitions. This committee had a difficult task, but it succeeded in promoting the competitions and attracting large attendances at county, provincial and all-Ireland fleadh cheoils. In 1985, Gerry’s company (The Whelan Boot Manufacturing Company) undertook sponsorship of the All-Ireland Marching Band Competitions and presented a set of perpetual cups and plaques. At the All-Ireland Marching Band Competitions in Letterkenny at the end of August, one of his former colleagues told me that the last time Gerry attended the competition, in 2000, the year before his death, he remarked that the trophies would be still around when he was not. His legacy now lives on through the new set of memorial trophies (sponsored by the family business) bearing his name that were first presented at the All Ireland Fleadh in Letterkenny in 2006. Gerry gave unstintingly of his energy, vision, drive and commitment to the revival of traditional music and the development of the Comhaltas organisation and network in many different ways. Despite the fact that he was a very successful businessman, in music circles he was always the unassuming ‘Gerry Whelan’ who loved to play the bodhran and melodeon and meet people from all walks of life. I attended sessions with him from early childhood, and the end of the night he always needed “one tune for the road”. Two days before Gerry died, his great friend Vincent Tighe visited and played a few tunes (including ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’ one of Gerry’s favourites) on the button accordion for him. After this set of tunes I asked if he would like some more music. Barely audible, Gerry whispered “one for the road”. Vincent played ‘The Bucks of Oranmore’, which will stay in my memory forever as, “one for the road”.
From my own perspective, my feelings about my father are summed up in the some of the words from the song written for Ted Furey by his family: He was more than just my Father, My teacher, my best friend. And he’ll still be heard in the tunes we play, When we play them on our own May he now be enjoying the eternal music in Heaven. Slan leat, a dhuine uasal. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam Geraldine Whelan-O’Meara |
