“Generosity isn’t an act. It’s a way of life.”
Chip Ingram
FROM he started out with nothing as a young plumber on building sites, Hugh McWilliams left his mark.
When others drained every second from the tae breaks, he had no interest in sitting.
He’d come to the lunchbox, lift a sandwich and head off to fit a radiator.
The men coming to work behind him knew he’d been there when they found a half-eaten sandwich lying on the sill.
It almost became a calling card.
They’d know then that it was done right.
On Friday afternoon, Ballinascreen and Derry lost a son far more generous than they could ever realise.
Hugh and his wife Anne were on their way home from holidays. They’d driven up from the west of Ireland, and were just out by the gates of their son Carlus’s house beside the homeplace when Hugh suffered a heart attack.
He would have believed that the superior body in the sky was affording him the mercy of bringing him so close to home and keeping Anne safe.
Deeply religious, the pair attended mass together every single morning.
The routine was always the same. Up and into work for 6am, open up the gates, get the yards set up and get the men off to work.
Then he’d go into Lynch’s shop in the town and buy whatever bits were needed for the office, and the papers.
Mass, home for breakfast, and then back to work for the day.
He might have left the tools down once their plumbing business, H&A Mechanical Services, took off but the work ethic remained.
Publically, Hugh was the face of the primary sponsor of Derry GAA.
It gave him enormous pride to see the company’s name on the county’s jersey.
That pride expanded when Carlus pulled one on to go out and represent himself, his club and his family on the field.
But the reason Hugh did it was the same reason he gave so generously to so many people – he just wanted to help.
H&A have long sponsored the club leagues in Derry, as well as the county’s camogie setups.
The GAA survives on the investment of people like Hugh and Anne McWilliams.
H&A has always been a partnership, and he was always protective of that.
There is very little for any business to gain from opening its chequebook, other than the hope of goodwill somewhere down the line.
But Hugh was an absolutely ardent GAA fan who felt it an honour to be in a position to help.
From the ‘80s, he’d toured the country after Derry and Ballinascreen, whom he took similar pride in sponsoring.
When Derry won the All-Ireland the same year he formed his company, he had two huge red and white flags pinned to the back of the white Volkswagen Transporter that he and Anne built the company with.
Now, you meet the green and white logo on vans in every nook and cranny of the country. They have offices in Ballinascreen, Mallusk, down in Kildare and have recently opened up in Pennyburn in Derry city, employing over 300 people in total.
These are typical rural south Derry people. There was no silver spoon around Cloane, the townland where Hugh was reared by his late parents Peggy and Charlie, just up the road from Tony Scullion’s homeplace.
When the company began to do well, the only thing that changed about him was the level of generosity he could afford.
The handshake never softened, the chat never dried, the humility never left.
Even though he was forking out a fortune to sponsor county teams, if there was a big game on in Owenbeg or Celtic Park, he’d ring Gerry Donnelly on his way up the road and ask if there could be a couple of seats kept in the stand. He never assumed.
It was never about money. It was about people, and about helping.
When the Time Out café in Draperstown was robbed last March, he was the first man through the door offering whatever help they needed.
He was a huge supporter of local schools and community groups and charities, such as mental health awareness group STEPS, who said they and the parish were “the poorer for losing such a community champion”.
When Carlus’s former club and county minor team-mate John Francis Bradley suffered serious injuries in a car accident, Hugh gave him a job and got him up and going and out of the house.
It was all in the shadows. Few people knew just how generous he was.
Because there was a generosity of time, of spirit, of kindness too.
When news broke around home on Friday afternoon, my younger brother rang and the same thing came to our minds.
Out selling tickets one evening for the club, must be more than a decade ago, we were combing the Fivemilestraight for prey.
Up we rocked up to this house not having the first clue who Hugh McWilliams was.
The front door was opened and nothing would do but ‘come in boys’.
Anne is offering tea, the children Carlus and Maureen full of chat.
The fact that out of hundreds upon hundreds of doors knocked, you’d remember such a welcome speaks volumes.
The only thing that gave him greater pleasure in life than helping others taking his four grandchildren to the park and playing with them on the swings. Family was always the first priority.
His friends will remember him in Charlie McNally’s pub, The Hogan Stand, keeping the craic going over a pint.
They’d say in his part that he has a good earn away.
The mark Hugh McWilliams left on his community will endure forever.
