Roddy McCorley | In Memoriam
Roderick McCorley, Roddy to his friends and family, survived the McGurk's Bar Massacre but had to live with horrible physical and mental trauma. He died in the winter of 1988. He is pictured below right and beneath this poignant photograph are touching tributes in the Andersonstown News in December 1988 from those who loved him.
His life, his memory and his suffering moved local poet, Seamus Robinson, to pen the following verse:
Smithfield Square, Belfast
“Give us a fag” – the ragged dexter twitches to life
At the sound of my feet on the city street;
The scarecrow-tattered bag of bones
Hangs from a crutch and slumps on a leg
At a corner of Smithfield Square.
Whilst his pendulous trouser swings, unused,
In the Belfast evening air.
But I mind’s-eye his other days
When, curly-haired and bright-eyed buck,
He kicked a ball mid debris where
Those other bombs from other wars
Had amputated terraced streets
To fashion us a playing-pitch.
I knew him – laughing, larking, lusting life,
Still whole, before his dream was beggared
By the bigot-bomber’s searing knife…
And now, he flotsams on life’s tide
From “Carrick” night to Morning Star,
And chloroforms away the day
In dark shebeen or gutter bar,
To keep at bay what might have been.
“Give us a fag” – the ragged dexter twitches me back;
I light one up and find his mouth,
And wedge the cork between his lips
Against a flow of slobbered thanks,
And feel his pleasured, painful sips
As lungs drink down the nicotine…
Nearby, a chapel spire intones
A bell-tune to the dying day
And stirs my heart and mind to home;
I turn my face and walk away…
But up the road as I pass Saint Paul’s,
With statued Christ on statued cross,
I see the man I left back there,
His body nailed to a metal crutch
And crucified … in Smithfield Square.
Seamus Robinson | Website
Below is a piece by Roddy's niece, Julia, compiled from treasured family memories.
Roddy was raised on Arnon Street, Carrick Hill. He was the kindest of people, a bit of a joker and always had a smile.
He was just 23 years old on that terrible night at McGurk's. It continued to haunt him for the next 17 years of his life.
He passed away in 1988 aged 40 years and is buried at Milltown cemetery.
Uncle Roddy was at the bar getting two pints for himself and his good friend, Edward Kane, when the bomb went off. He was one off the first casualties to be pulled from the wreckage which took his leg. For many years he would just wander between Carrick Hill and the Morning Star.
