00:00Hugh was described by so many as an absolute gentleman, a proud man who loved his family.
00:11But up in the Catholic faith, he was a good ordinary man who lived common sense,
00:19a dairyman to the core who just loved Cregan.
00:24He came to Melmore in 1950 when he was just one year old.
00:30And spent his entire life here.
00:37One of ten children, he grew up in that traditional Catholic home where the family rosary was prayed every evening at six o'clock.
00:49Many a cup final in the green was interrupted by the family rosary and postponed until it was over,
00:57especially if Hugh's ball was being used for the game.
01:02And if you happened to be unfortunate enough to call at the door, around six o'clock, you were called on to join the Gallagher Rosary.
01:11When Hugh left school, like many of his era and his friends, he went to work in the BSR.
01:20Later, he trained as a sheet metal worker, going to Belfast on the train every Sunday evening and returning on a Friday evening for his mother's dinner and a run out to the brandy well.
01:36He worked many jobs as factories came and went in the town.
01:42But one job that he had was as a watchman on a rust bucket boat acquired by Paddy Bogside with the intention to use it for charity voyages.
01:56The boat went for scrap, but Hugh got a story out of it, because Hugh was a storyteller.
02:05His many short stories reflected his lived experiences growing up in Derry, and they appeared in many newspapers, magazines, and books.
02:14He also recorded and documented his time and place through thousands of photographs that he took depicting the social culture, sporting, and political life of Derry and beyond.
02:29Again, many a photo appeared in newspapers, periodicals, and books, and more recently in websites and social media about Derry.
02:44Hugh Gallagher had a very strong sense of social justice.
02:47Like his father, he was a prolific writer, letter writer, to papers and officialdom, championed multiple causes affecting his community.
03:03Hugh was a strong personality and always spoke his mind, in season or out of season.
03:10Hugh was a family man to the core, who idolized his nieces and nephews.
03:17With that paternal generosity, you were never without a comic or a magazine or a bag of sweets or a trip to the park.
03:27And I know that he will be fondly remembered by you, his nieces and nephews, by his brothers and sisters, and the wider family of Cregan.
03:36He will be always remembered as a boy from Cregan who did good in every sense of the word.
Be the first to comment