MARGARET Hamill was the definition of ‘a real lady’.
She was a loving mother to seven children (one of whom died soon after birth) and a key member of Portadown’s Catholic community.
Everything she did was guided by her strong faith in God and her lifelong commitment to the service of others.
Born Margaret McAreavy in July 1929, she grew up in Carn outside Portadown. Her father James was a wholesale poultry farmer and her mother Sarah ran a small shop. Neighbours said that many stories were carried into that shop but none were carried out.
Every week day, Margaret walked three miles through the fields with her brothers Dan and Jim to Aghacommon National School in Derrymacash.
As a young woman, she was keen member of Portadown Catholic Dramatic Society alongside Dan and toured across the north performing plays in parish halls.
They swept the boards at provincial drama festivals. Margaret won best actress at the Ulster Drama Festival in Belfast's Grand Opera House for her part as Kathrine Quinn in Joe Tomelty’s All Soul’s Night.
She was an avid supporter of the annual Portadown Drama Festival as well as being a member of Portadown Phoenix Players.
Around this time she committed herself to the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. She was a lifelong Pioneer, saying it was easy if you were reared in a ‘dry house’.
She lived through the Second World War and said those times were lean. She fondly recalled the day when the war ended and the owner of Caffolla’s café in Lurgan gave her and her friend a Knickerbocker Glory to celebrate.
As an adult she took a series of secretarial jobs. These led her to meet and marry Gerry Hamill and she went on to be part of the Gerald Hamill & Sons scrapyard business in Obins Street, Portadown.
Margaret and Gerry spent more than 30 years raising their family and supporting the local community.
When Gerry died in 1990, Margaret threw herself into the second act of her life: being a grandmother.
Known to them as Granny Meg, her 11 grandchildren remember Granny’s as a place where home-made jam, apple tarts and buns were served with a side of loving attention.
She grew to love watching snooker and Formula One so that she could talk to her grandsons about them and her granddaughters remember how she would dazzle them by solving the Countdown conundrum in record speed.
Margaret made the most of the opportunities life offered her, always managing to hold things together no matter how difficult the situation. She travelled, she gardened, she crafted and painted.
Although the last decade of her life was blighted by a debilitating illness she never lost her kind and loving nature.
To the end, she continued to provide a model of how to live, often quoting the saying: "For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark beside your name, he writes not that you won or lost but how you played the game."
She passed away in her sleep on May 8 and is fondly remembered by her six children, 11 grandchildren, one great-grandchild and all those who knew her.
Stephen Buggy
