A lifetime in photography

McCormack's photography and retail business was one of Athlone's flagship shops from the late 1940s to the early years of this decade. Behind the business was Lillie McCormack, and her late brother, Jimmy, who built up the firm from their family home in St Kieran's Terrace to their landmark Northgate Street premises. Living in St. Kieran's Terrace in that era meant that the river was a big part of a child's life. It was the last housing estate in the town on the way to the Coosan community, which was surrounded by the countryside of hills and fields. She remembers three shops in St. Kieran's Terrace all working at the same time, Mrs. Gaffey, Mrs. Costello and Granny Barry's. "Growing up in St Kieran's Terrace was good. In summer we had the river at our back doors and in winter we would slide on the pond in Fair's field, which is now Assumption Road, after a heavy frost," she said. "The traffic was not as heavy as it is now, so it was safe to play on the street - skipping, flogging tops and rolling hoops, which was a bicycle wheel with no spokes." Lillie walked to school with her brothers from when she was four years old, and when they stopped at the Marist school on St. Mary's Place, she headed to the Bower school at the corner of Retreat on her own. She remembers the Fair Day in Athlone, and said that in those days there were few restaurants. "However to compensate there was houses in town that gave dinners and tea, and were known as eating houses, and the owners always looked forward to the fair day because business was good," said Lillie. Lillie began her life in the retail trade in Martin Murray's bar and grocery in Connaught Street, where she served her apprenticeship. "It was mostly country trade we had and Murrays were seed merchants, and farmers bought oats and wheat there, and it was weighed on big scales," she said. "We sold eggs and butter given in by farmers and their wives, and I used to write out the dockets with carbon paper, and put one docket on an egg box, give one to the farmer, and keep one for the shop." After four or five years, Lillie moved a few doors down in Connaught Street to Broderick's bakery, where she worked at the counter, with Mrs. Broderick-Flynn, the mother of Athlone writer, John Broderick. "I knew John well, and he was around the same age as me, and he was a nice man," said Lillie. She left Broderick's for a while, and went working in the Crescent shop, and also in the ballroom, which was owned by the Shine family. She returned to Broderick's when requested by John Broderick, while continuing to work two nights controlling tickets and money in the Crescent ballroom. The work ethic that Lillie learned from her parents continued throughout the years, and she was never out of employment. In 1948, Lillie's brother Jimmy started running a photography business from the family home in St. Kieran's Terrace. At night, when Lillie got home from Broderick's or the Crescent, she would write up the financial books for Jimmy, and do the orders, all whilst he was working on developing and printing the photographs. Interestingly the family had a telephone in the house for Jimmy's business which was very rare in family homes in Athlone then. "We worked the business bit by bit, and nobody gave us a shilling and there was no talk of grants or anything like that back then," she said. "We took nothing out of it in those early years, because there was nothing to make. We crawled a long time before we could walk." However as the 1950's continued, the McCormack photography business grew, but Lillie had also continued on with her two jobs with the Shine and Broderick family, and gained enough money to buy the St. Kieran's Terrace home for her mother, Lizzie. "My mother died in 1962, and she had a tough life, but things were beginning to look up for her before she died, and she saw the business happen for us," said Lillie. The McCormack's began renting the premises that became their landmark, in Northgate Street. It belonged to Hubert Heaton, who was a brother of Bert Heaton, who owned the Athlone store which had their family name. When it came up for sale in 1955, they bought the premises, and continued to develop the business. Jimmy McCormack was a renowned photographer of weddings, communions, confirmation, and other special occasions, and virtually every photograph of those occasions in Athlone from the 1950s to the end of the last century would have been a McCormack photograph. In the shop they sold cameras also, and drawing equipment, and frames. It was quite a proud achievement for Athlone families to see the photographs of weddings and other occasions in the window of McCormack's throughout those years. "Jim converted the kitchen there to a printroom, and put the stairs in, and we had our own darkroom and tankroom, and he and my other brother, Dan, did many courses on Agfa and Kodak," said Lillie. McCormack's also had a sweet shop, which also sold bread, milk, minerals and cigarettes and which was situated beside the photography business. They developed people's films from their small cameras, and also did a film developing trade with chemists in and out of Athlone. "We had a great business doing developing, and we could supply other stuff there, like the viewfinders, projectors and engineering supplies, and developing kits for amateur photographers," said Lillie. Lillie worked between the photography business and the sweet shop throughout her working day. In 2002, when the McCormack's had finished their business in Northgate Street, after 54 years, they decided to donate items from the studios, dark rooms, finishing rooms, cameras, enlargers and processors to the Derryglad Museum in Curraghboy. The McCormack room is a popular feature of the South Roscommon museum. "I was sad at the beginning to leave the shop, but I was nearly 78 years old then, and the street had changed, and the Athlone Apparel had gone, as had the Ritz cinema," said Lillie. "In our time though, we had seven girls employed in the shop along with ourselves." Lillie took up the next phase of her life, after retiring from the shop, when she started working more at her main hobby, painting! She had completed an arts and painting course with artist, Lorraine Francis, who came from Court Devenish, Athlone. Lorraine went on to become a highly acclaimed children's book author. When the arts course ended, Lillie and the other women who attended, continued to meet regularly. This was the foundation of the Athlone Arts Group, and Lillie became president of the group on a few occasions. Lillie had already been a member of the Irish Countrywomen's Association (ICA) since 1958, and used her spare time productively by going to art workshops run in An Grianan, which is the ICA college in Termonfeckin. Today the Arts group meet in the Knights of St. Columbanus Hall and Lillie paints beautiful watercolour paintings either at home or at the Knights hall venue. "It's wonderful therapy to paint, and I love scenery, but my brother Jimmy was great for encouragement with everything, and he said one time, that not to be too annoyed if the painting is not coming off the way I expected," she said. "He said, nature has no lines, and no rules, and you'll get clouds of all shapes." It's the sort of philosophy that Lillie has taken to heart throughout her busy and productive lifetime.