From Portland Road To The Pacific Ocean

Andy Parsons with baby Julie, Simon and Gay 1951

aving been a guest of The La Touche Legacy’s 10th Festival Of History in September last year, author and broadcaster Julie Parsons has finally put her remarkable family history down on paper.

Released this week, People Like Us actually charts the life and times of four Greystones families, the Purefoys, the Chamberlains, the Parsons and the McClenaghans.

The centre of it all being Dromore on Portland Road.

Julie explains just how these families’ live all intertwined over the decades…

Let me tell you a story, a Greystones story. Once upon a time there was a family called Parsons who lived in a house called Dromore on Portland Road in the Burnaby estate.

There was George and Grace Parsons along with their children, Des, Kay and my father, Andy. They were originally from Athlone, Co Westmeath, where the family owned five shoe shops – five very successful shoe shops. The Parsons were well known; George was a member of the local yacht club and the golf club. Grace, whose father was the rector of St Peter’s Church in Athlone, was kind and generous, presents for the children of the local orphanage at Christmas.

However, change was on the horizon; independence was coming. Athlone was a Nationalist town. There were attacks on the shops, people were encouraged not to buy their shoes in Parsons. So the family left. You might say they arrived in Greystones as refugees.

George took out a lease on Dromore and the family soon settled in to Greystones life. My father was then aged six, going to Aravon School in Bray, where he was on the cricket team. Then to Portora Royal School in Eniskillen, and to Trinity College, where he studied medicine. Life in Greystones was good. Andy and his brother, Des, were keen golfers. Hardly a day went by without a round or two. Tennis was a big favourite too.

Aravon Cricket Team 1928

Dromore had a large garden, room enough for a tennis court, which Andy tended lovingly. And, of course, there was plenty of fun. The Burnaby was filled with young people – the Stokes family, Patrick and Kathleen who lived in Raheen on Hawkins Lane, and the Hadokes, Des and Os, from Inisfail, on Kinlen Road. The summers were spent on the South Beach.

Swimming in the cold Irish Sea, then car loads of teenagers racing to Brittas Bay for picnics and everything else that went on in the sand dunes. Girls, of course, parties and dances and courting ‘up on the back road in the moonlight’, going to the flicks in Bray, climbing the Sugar Loaf, getting caught out in summer showers, an opportunity to warm up under a blanket with a young lady. Life was pretty near perfect.

The Parsons at Dromore 1930s

But this was the 1930s, and war was looming. Andy, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps of the British Army. Northern France, chaos and confusion. Wounded soldiers everywhere. But fun too. Bottles of wine donated to the soldiers by café owners fleeing the German army. Then evacuation from Dunkirk. Safe at last, but soon he was off to North Africa.

Tank battles in the desert. The horrors of the dead and dying. Rescuing the wounded under fire from the German airforce. The screech and howl of the Stukas and the constant bombardment from the enemy’s guns. Andy showed his mettle. He was awarded the Military Cross for Gallantry at the Battle of El Alamein. Then, Rommel’s army defeated, it was off to Italy, to Anzio north of Rome. And here Andy’s luck ran out. He was seriously wounded, shipped back to England for treatment.

And as luck would have it, he met up with Elizabeth Chamberlain, a clergyman’s daughter from Dun Laoghaire. They’d met before. A memorable kiss goodbye one night after a dance in the Gresham. They married in April, 1945.

Then it was back to Greystones. But life was difficult in Ireland in the aftermath of the war. Rationing coupled with the winter of 1947 proving the worst on record. So they emigrated to New Zealand, where I was born.

And then Andy decided they’d have another adventure. So off we went to the island of Samoa where Andy got a job in the hospital. Samoa was a bit like Greystones in the tropics. Beaches, swimming, parties. Lots of fun. Until Andy was asked to go to the Tokelau islands, three days away by boat, to operate on a man with a gangrenous arm. So far so good. But something went wrong. The boat, the MV Joyita on which Andy and 24 others were travelling, didn’t reach Tokelau.

It didn’t return to Samoa, and when it was found 5 weeks later all the passengers and crew, including Andy, had gone, never to be seen again.

Never an explanation as to what had happened. My mother and myself along with my two brothers and my sister stayed in New Zealand for 7 years until my father was presumed dead. Then we came to Ireland. Many, many years later I have written the story of Andy Parsons to try and make sense of it all, pulling together all four families.

You can find out more about People Like Us, and grab your copy, right about here.