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For fifty years he was a prominent personality in the baking industry in his native Keady and in the Victoria bakery in Newry owned by the Mc Cann family. Throughout that same half century, he gave of himself actively to the wider cultural, sporting and commercial well-being of his community, commanded by a strong sense of history, belonging and responsibility.
Gerard Francis Murphy- Gerry- was born in Church St. Keady in 1934, one of five sons to Owen and Clare Murphy. He attended the local De La Salle primary school until he was fourteen and shortly after went to work in Keady Steam bakery as a bread-checker - for 15 shillings a week (75p). After a short time in Scotland he returned to the bakery and worked his way up, eventually becoming manager. Gerry married Margaret Crilly of Armagh city in 1955 and they lived in Crossmore Green, a new estate in Keady at that time.
He successfully applied for the position of assistant manager at Mc Canns bakery in Newry in 1962, and they moved to there from Keady, living first in Carnbane Gardens and later in their permanent home at 32 The Glen. Four years later in 1966 Gerry was appointed manager of McCanns, a post he held until his retirement in 1995.
But he came to public prominence back in the early fifties as a member of the famous Armagh senior football team that reached the All Ireland final of 1953, and played as goalkeeper in the second half of that historic game before a record 86,500 people. In a long career, he represented his club Keady Dwyers at minor and senior level, and represented Armagh county at minor, junior and senior level winning Ulster medals in all three.
In 2014 Gerry compiled a book, ‘A slice of a Life,’ recording the times in Keady in the forties and fifties. It was important to him as an historian and with his strong sense of belonging to leave a written memory of how the people lived and expressed themselves in a small town here in those decades, that it be commemorated on the shelves of posterity. This work recalled the presence of the American soldiers on their way to Europe, a meticulous account of the workings of the Keady Steam bakery - source of the famous Keady loaf, the days of the horse and cart delivery, the end of rationing and the return of the white flour including the familiar local rhyme of thanks for the years of bread and tea from across the border - ‘Bless De Valera and Sean Mc Entee/ And bless the brown bread and the half ounce of tea.’
His book remembered the custom of men on the Bru being sent to labouring jobs in England and Scotland, how hurling was brought to Keady by the De la Salle brothers from Cork and Tipperary, the central role of the GAA in the community, the award winning local dramatic society, the classical choir of Canon Pentony, the social dynamic of the Fair-days, the cultural centrality of the Market House, Keady’s exceptional song tradition, the local Oliver Plunkett pipe Band, of which he was a drummer, and the six other active marching bands in the district at that time.
The work also contained a novel piece how on the Armagh senior team of 1953 trained by John Vallely prepared for the All Ireland final of that year, the only written account of the collective training in Maghery involving all the personalities ,and the dramatic and massive All Ireland day exodus to Dublin. Armagh lost to Kerry by four points.
Typical of his rounded personality he became very involved in the commercial and historic life of Newry when moving to there. His writings, a very substantial contribution to Newry history, included ‘Short history of the Patrick Murphy Trust 1830- 1984,’ ‘Newry Chamber of Commerce 1892-1920’, ‘Abbey and Castle,’ and ‘Rambles around South Armagh’. He also wrote several book reviews for Seanchas Ardmacha, of which society he was a long time member and attender at lectures.
But his masterpiece was ‘Five Generations of Baking in Newry’ compiled in 1987 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Mc Cann family from Channonrock, Co Louth to set up their bakery in the town in 1837. This historic piece detailed the many developments of the baking industry through all those ages including such as the famine times, the effects of Partition on the delivery area, the depression of the thirties and the years of the Troubles- a story of commercial survival, trial and success.
But it is also a veritable history of baking in Ireland over that century and a half, detailing all the technicalities, developments and social history of this core industry as the literal bread - basket of the people.
The historian in him recalled the Newry of the 1830’s as thriving and self-confident, that when Matthew and Thomas Mc Cann first looked down from the Dublin Road into the town in 1837 they would have seen the fresh masonry of the new cathedral not yet ten years old, the gothic spire of St Mary’s to the right, the tower of the early Church of Ireland building on the opposite hill, and all along the docks the masts of ships filled with coal, timber, slate, iron, tar, granite, butter and grain.
The very site of the bakery on its settled place in the 1850’s was important to his sense of place - the site of 16th century Bagnal’s Castle which in turn was created on the grounds of the Cistercian monastery founded in 1245 by the French based order who were brought to Ireland by St Malachy of Armagh. Again, this monastery was created on the spot of the ‘Yew tree at the Head of the Strand’ planted by St Patrick and from where Newry gets its name, and this was probably planted on a more ancient pre-celtic place.
For over twenty years he was a prominent member of Newry Chamber of Commerce serving as president for four of those years and in 1991 he was awarded the MBE for his lifetime of singular service to the Baking industry. On the recreation front he was a long-time active member of the Warrenpoint Golf Club.
Gerry was very devoted to his Middle Killeavy parish and to the local Drumalane chapel, serving in his time as Eucharistic minister, reader and cleaner. He had a deep life-long faith that never shifted. Extremely well read and with strong opinions, he was a ready conversationalist debating his corner with considerable ability against all comers. He understood the dynamics of world and local politics and the dynamic of human behaviour. Armagh football never failed to stir him into nostalgia for his own great days with the men of ’53, and he was filled with thanks that he had lived to see the Sam Maguire come twice to the county.
But the deepest Gerry Murphy revealed himself in his wife Margaret’s long illness, that even in his own old age, he looked after her ceaselessly in their own house throughout those trying times, day after day, night after night to the very end.
He lived a long life. He would have turned ninety-one on the day of his funeral on Wednesday last, April 2. It was a life full of creativity, intellect and action in the giving of his many gifts to the enrichment of his community. It was a long life well lived.
He is predeceased by his wife Margaret (Margo), and survived by his daughters Monica and Mary, grandchildren Anna and Aiden, great grandson Rian Gerard and son- in- law Keith.
