From a St Bride’s Veteran
 

I was born in Craigneuk, Wishaw on 18 September, 1925 and, after living both there and in Ireland for a short time, our family moved to East Kilbride, and into St Bride’s parish, when I was just two years old. I suppose that gives me the distinction of being one of the longest serving members, if not in fact the longest serving member, of this parish community, as well as a veteran citizen of the town I lived in a room and kitchen in Maxwellton Road with my parents, older brother Hugh, and younger siblings Theresa and James (may he rest). East Kilbride, of course, was just the beginnings of what it was to become, and this was particularly apparent in the matter of Sunday Mass. By the time I came to live in East Kilbride, a wee brick church had been built in the village. It was on the site where the bigger wooden church was later built, which was in turn replaced by our current church when the population of East Kilbride grew and grew. The land for the wee brick church was donated to the Catholic population of East Kilbride by a local farmer who himself was not a Catholic. This wee brick church held, I would say, no more than eighty people. It was a lovely place, with a Lourdes Grotto at the back; we used to have May processions there. But we had no resident priest. So Father Egan, and later Father O’Sullivan, used to come up in the bus to East Kilbride from St Joseph’s in Clarkston; the bus came through the village and the priest got off at the Monty. After Mass, the priest got a cup of tea and a biscuit from a lady whose grandson, Jim Caullay, is a well-kent face in the parish today.


There was no Catholic school, just the village school for all the children in the town. A parishioner called Paddy McShane took the Catholic kids on Sunday afternoons for religious education; we learned all our catechism answers off by heart. Sunday Mass was at I0 30am and our family never missed it. When I was about ten years of age, I became an altar boy, a role that I had for about nine years, giving it up only when I was conscripted into the army during the war. I loved serving at Mass and Sunday afternoon Benediction -- it made me feel special, and that I was different from the other boys in my class. One of my friends, Lawrence Caullay, was an altar boy at the same time as I was, and this strengthened our friendship. Of course, at that time Mass was in Latin, and altar boys had to learn the Latin responses before they could make their debut. Paddy McShane did the teaching of that too -~ he was a wonderful man -- and our mothers and fathers gave a hand too.


Later priests were Fr Brendan Murphy and Fr Brannigan. Fr Murphy was a beautiful singer - he had a voice like an angel. He started a youth club in the Wilson Hall, Busby. Now that was great fun - we played football, competing in the Renfrewshire Amateur League, and had dances. Every Christmas we produced a pantomime, which was attended by all the local residents, not just the Catholic community. The club took in kids from Busby, the Mearns, Stamperland, Eaglesham, as well as East Kilbride.


My parents had great faith - in fact, my mother died in Lourdes and is buried there - and they passed the faith on to all of us. But money was tight and so my elder brother Hugh and I had to leave school at age fourteen to supplement the family income, although James and Theresa had the chance to stay on at school. Through time my family got a Development Corporation house in Threshold, just off Whitemoss Road. This was a great house and we loved it. After the war, I worked as a driver, at first for the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society and later as a long distance transport driver. In 1965 I started work in the Rolls Royce, the job I  retired from. When I was a driver for the Cooperative, I got up at 4am and walked from Maxwellton Road to the creamery in the village, near the Torrance Hotel. I was able to walk to work, but others who had to get the bus to work had no fear of being late - if they didn’t turn up at the bus stop, the bus driver would drive past their house and knock on the door. When Isabella and I got married in October 1960, we lived for a wee while in the house in Threshold, and then moved in 1962 to Drummond Hill, where we have lived for forty seven years, happy members of St Bride’s parish.



Gerry McCorry