TC/1418

District manger recalls 41 years 'on the buses'

THERE is a whimsical sign in Paddy McGowan's office. It reads, 'Thank you for not going over my head'.
For the many thousands who know the man, it is a sign misplaced. Why would anyone want to go to a higher authority when it is possible to deal with the most genial of Omagh's adopted sons, and be guaranteed a fair hearing?
Or why anyone would want this Fermanagh native taken down a peg or two by some demigod would be a mystery, for, since coming to the town more than 40 years ago, Paddy has endeared himself to all sections of a vast community.
Then the penny drops - there was never any chance of going over his head, for Mr. McGowan wore as many hats on that head as it was possible for one man to cram into a lifetime. The buck just had to stop with him.
But, from December 1, one particular buck will be passed on to someone else. Omagh's own star turn from 'on the buses' is to retire on Tuesday week, after 41 years dedicated service to Ulsterbus, and its forerunner, the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA).
Paddy's other hats have included a fireman's, and, metaphorically speaking, those of a church official, taking up the Sunday morning collection at Omagh's Sacred Heart Church for more years than he cares to remember, politician, husband, father, grandfather, ballroom dancer, non-executive director of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Trust, and Justice of the Peace.
The trust appointment was in the gift of the Secretary of State, and, while he serves the local populace as a JP, Paddy's eyes light up as he tells of his pride at a less well-known nomination by Rotary International. He picked up its Paul Harris award for services to the community.
"I do not belong to the organisation, yet I was chosen for this prestigious award when there are those who do belong to it who would give their eye teeth for it," he beamed. "I was very pleased and honoured to accept it."
Now 63, he has decided to step down from his high-tech first floor office at Omagh Bus Station, and leave his role as an Ulsterbus district manager a couple of years early. He will, he says, spend more time with his family, and take life a bit easier.
But he realises he might join the ranks of those who, on quitting full-time employment, often wonder how they ever found time to work in the first place. For, although Paddy retired from the Northern Ireland Fire Service after 25 years duty, in 1991, he will continue his many other pursuits, notably on the political front.
'Smile'
"There is no greater satisfaction than seeing the smile on the face of a contented constituent, when you have won their battle," says the independent community member of Omagh District Council, which he twice spearheaded as chairman. He has twice been vice-chairman, too, in a career stretching back to 1985.
Such was the quality attached to his name, that his personal vote enabled him win his first local government seat, not as a town councillor, but as the SDLP member for Mid-Tyrone. He went on to stand successfully for the now defunct Forum, representing West Tyrone, but narrowly lost out when bidding for election to the current Assembly.
"I stood as an independent, and my vote held up well, but I was not elected, and that was frustrating for I believed I had a contribution to make. But I have great faith in those elected to make the Assembly work. I trust it is soon up and running," said Paddy.
He disclosed he had had no political ambitions, until neighbours in the Derry Road area had prevailed upon him to succeed Mr. Gerry McEnhill, the first chairman of the district council, as their local councillor.
Yet, he successfully defended his seat in 1989, putting himself forward this time in the town wards that he has now represented for the past 10 years. He is currently chairman of Omagh's environmental health sub-committee.
'Independent'
"The independent tag probably fits me best. Sticking strictly to party lines was never my strongest suit. I was always something of a political maverick," he added. "But I respect the work of all my colleagues on the council. They do some excellent work for their own communities.
"On the whole Omagh District Council has worked very well, and I believe it has done much good in its district."
Born at Derrygonnelly, Paddy is one of the six children of the late Patrick and Catherine McGowan, three of whom two sisters and a brother survive along with him. He was educated at the former Coranerk Primary School, overlooking Lough Navar scenic drive, and which is now a Western Education and Library Board hostel.
Leaving school at 14, he opted to serve his time with the well known Main Street hardware and grocery concern, Parke & Sons, in his home town. However, at 19, Paddy became a trainee forester with the then Ministry of Agriculture at Blackslee, again adjacent to the picturesque Lough Navar.
Three years down the road, somehow an aptly coined term of phrase for him, another career move set in motion a train of events which was to lead him to all corners of Ireland, the UK mainland, and the odd continental tourist haunt.
Aged 22, Paddy joined the UTA in 1959 as a trainee bus conductor at its school in Belfast. After passing out with flying colours, he quickly realised he could do with some wings.
"My first posting was the 3.10pm from Lisburn to Belfast, via Dunmurry, and all stops in between, and there seemed to be hundreds of them. Passengers were getting on and off like flies. It was nearly impossible to make sure everyone was ticketed," he smiled.
'Customer care'
"Ticketing was just one of the many facets we were taught at the school. We also learned all about, what now has the fancy name of 'customer care' looking after passengers, their property, their safety."
Three months later Paddy was moved to Larne, and six months after that he was transferred back to the Western Region, to Strabane, and subsequently to Gortin and to Drumquin.
"It was standard UTA practice to return staff to their own area following training immediately a vacancy arose, and, although I was still some way from Derrygonnelly, it was nice to be back home," he said.
"We had to pay our own lodgings, and I had tried to keep a car on the road, to get back to Fermanagh at weekends, and the top dollar for a conductor was just £8.1.6 (£8.08) a week."
It was now 1961 and romance was in the air. Paddy wed Jean Wilson, a native of Mullanatoomog, a few miles from Omagh, off the Drumquin line he served. The newlyweds became tenants of a flat above the plumbing concern of the late Jim Charleton at Abbey Street in Omagh, which has since moved to the town's suburbs.
Mr. and Mrs. McGowan went on to raise three sons, Patrick, Thomas and Bosco, and two daughters, Fidelma and Jacinta. All have married save Bosco, who has followed his father's footsteps into Ulsterbus, and the married children have given their parents six grandchildren.
New home
Two years after his marriage Paddy and his wife moved to their first new home, at Gortmore Park, and he went back to school to 'study' - to become a bus driver and in the process, to discover first-hand just how hairy the 'skid pan' really was.
"It doesn't exist any longer, but take it from me, it was an experience and a half. The 'pan' was covered in oil to simulate frosty conditions, and houses surrounded it. Every time I turned the wheel and looked up I seemed to be heading straight for someone's house, but I survived," he grinned.
His first driving base was Enniskillen, but Paddy then reeled off a geographic check of his native Fermanagh it seemed. He had been based at Belleek, Newtownbutler, Belcoo, Roscreenagh, which he described as a stone depot on the roadside at Castlecaldwell, Pettigo, and Derrylin.
"I was living in Omagh, and I had to be up and on the road very early to report in at my starting time. But, in the late 1960s, I was decamped to Gortin, which took in Plumbridge and Greencastle, and I was to stay there for about 20 years," he recollected.
There's a twinkle in his eye as he recalled how he gained a reputation of getting his bus up the Glens, like the stagecoach drivers of the Wild West bringing their vehicles through against all the odds of outlaws and marauding Indians. The skid pan training had obviously paid off then?
"I don't know how safe the passengers were," beamed Paddy, "but it is a fact I was often told I could get the bus to Gortin when others had failed."
Settled at last then, he joined Omagh Retained Fire Service and renewed acquaintances with the late Charlie Reynolds, its section leader, who was also an inspector at the local bus depot. Paddy was one of 16 firemen in a 21-strong complement that had four leading firemen.
The town brigade in 1966 was a two-pump station at Mountjoy Road, and Paddy remembers that discipline was both paramount and strict.
'On a charge'
"Mind you, it was not unlike the buses, and both were like the army," he explained. "You were 'on a charge' if you were caught not wearing your hat, driving or conducting, and you were sent to the 'Green Table' clutching your hat under your arm, like a dog with its tail between its legs. A dressing-down from the area manager followed."
Paddy obviously always had his head well covered. In the fullness of time, with the fire service, he became leading fireman, and then sub-officer, the equivalent of section leader, while, on the buses, he progressed to road inspector in the mid-1980s, and became depot manager at Omagh in 1990, a title subsequently updated to district manager.
He served the fire authority through the height of the Troubles, seeing terrorist carnage at its worst at Knocknamoe Castle and at the Royal Arms Hotel, in the aftermath of the Ballygawley bus bomb, and the night 'Omagh burned'.
"Myself and four other firemen were the 'first line of attack' at the bus-bomb incident," revealed Paddy, who, ironically, was one of the first on the scene of last year's town centre bombing atrocity, even though retired from the fire service.
"I had just driven into town from my home on the Old Mountfield Road, and was parking the car when the bomb went off. I rushed over to the scene, spotted a bus driver and sent him for a bus. He rounded up two other drivers and we had three buses on the scene, one or two of them before the emergency services arrived," he said.
"We drew 80 or 90 injured and badly injured people to Tyrone County Hospital that Saturday afternoon."
In 1990 Paddy was awarded the MBE for services to the fire service, and was presented with his award by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He won, too, the authority's long service and good conduct medals, and bowed out after celebrating his Silver Jubilee at the Mountjoy Road station the following year.
That was in the wake of his taking over the top local job with Ulsterbus, created in 1967 from the remnant of UTA.
In his position as road inspector Paddy had caught a bus wherever the fancy took him, and generally bus hopped his way around the Province on a daily basis, checking tickets, taking complaints from passengers, and observing drivers and conductors.
Earlier, while a driver, he had built up an enviable reputation as the man to be head hunted if a party wanted to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Knock.
'Lourdes'
"I have probably been in Lourdes, in Northern France, 90 times in the past 30 years, and I have also taken parties to the Holy Land and to Rome. I suppose I have become a household name now when it comes to making bookings for these affairs,"" admitted Paddy.
But with his final elevation came office-orientation, his first task to mastermind the provision of Omagh's new modern depot, which opened in 1991.
When he retires from it he will leave behind a 55-strong staff, a fleet of 44 buses, which ferry 2,500 children to school daily, and memories of the morning 10.10 to Athlone, the International Interlink Express, which connects with services to Galway, Cork, Kerry and Waterford.
He will recall, too, the many summer excursions throughout the four home countries, the educational trips, the days of climbing up the ladder on the back of the bus to the roof rack to stow hay rakes and the like bought on fair days, and the changing attitudes of the young.
"When I first became a driver it would have been unheard of to have a problem, but times have changed. Youngsters today have a different attitude to property," he claimed.
"On the other hand I have been blessed with great staff, who have always been co-operative. They know I can be reasonably rigid, but they don't know they're living compared to the regime I came through. We live in a different age, but I do have a tremendous relationship with them.
"I have had a great relationship, too, with the community at large. Omagh is my adopted town. It is a smashing place to come home to, the best town in the country. I have loved every minute of living here. People have welcomed me with open arms."
Showband
His own arms have embraced his wife, Jean, on dance floors up and down the land, as he explained: "We grew up in the showband era, and we still seek out ballroom dancing on a virtual weekly basis.
"We will go to Donegal town, Ballybofey, venues in Fermanagh, and, occasionally, to events as far away as Killarney. It is a tremendous way of relaxing."
Reflecting on his life on the buses and in politics, memories come flooding back, of the motorists who 'flashed' bus drivers to warn them an inspector was hiding around the corner, and of the comparisons with Reg Varney's television show, 'On the buses'.
"Oh yes, we had our Blakeys. They were everywhere. There was hardly a thing the TV inspector did or said, that I could not relate to a couple of inspectors I knew well. At times Ulsterbus was not all that far removed from the show," agreed Paddy.
And, in politics, he told the Constitution on Friday, the day after the annual Armistice Day celebration, how he broke with recent custom, when, as a nationalist council chairman, he laid the authority's Remembrance Day wreath.
He said: "I always had a good relationship with the community at large and I worked for all sections of it. I felt it was right that I should stick to my principles and represent all sections that Sunday morning, too. It was my duty to do it, and I did."
It's the end of an era.