Melvyn & Sharron Pearson |Tandragee|Co Armagh BT62

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IVON - LOCAL HERO

Ivon opened the batting for The Vale and was a spin bowler, bowling out of the back of his hand a feat that amazed me as a child.  I can also recall the late nights that followed on from away matches where the team would not come straight home but stop off at an alehouse en route. Celebration or drowning of the teams’ sorrows would predictably take place in Corkin's Public House in Lisburn and on occasions I would not be allowed into the said pub due to my tender age and had to roam the main street of Lisburn, peering into shop windows until the party emerged at closing time.  Sometimes the party would then move to a fellow player’s house where the bending of the elbow continued until the wee small hours.  But all through this I became conversant in keeping score, although some mistakes were made and led to arguments between opposing combatants.  I even got the odd match as a sub or fielding for a while if someone needed to leave the field of play for inexplicable reasons.  I was ably accompanied by a fellow youth during my early Vale years Paul Irwin from Mullavilly who accompanied his elder brother Tom who was of a like age to Ivon but not as wild if I could put it like that. He was a scholar, a civil servant, an ex PC rah rah student.

I have written at some length about Ivon but as I have said I looked up to him and put him on a pedestal.  I can recollect he bought a BSA Bantam motorcycle on which I was conveyed to school each morning, less all the protective regalia I should add, sitting proudly on the tank. The cold winds bringing tears to my eyes.  Ivon would drop me at the school gates before continuing to his vocation in Thomas Street, Portadown where he was employed as a print setter, a highly skilled job at which he had worked after leaving school.  There I am sure started my infatuation with bikes and I can still evoke memories of that dark grey Bantam, all off 125cc, single cylinder being kicked into life each morning and the wind giving me a ruddy completion and nose to match by the time I came to dismount adjacent to the milk crates stacked outside Mullavilly PS.  Ivon had several mishaps on the 125 Bantam, one of which at Beattie’s Corner, on the back road to Tandragee resulted in hospitalisation and my father threatening to hacksaw the Bantam in half if Ivon ever set his posterior on it again, thus ended my school boy racer days.  However a white Vespa scooter made an appearance at Number 24 which Ivon duly decorated with red motifs and hand painted brilliant white.  I do not recall this comedown from the BSA actually getting off the grid. It was stored in the shed and its whereabouts after that I do not know.

Ivon eventually met the love of his life Mavis Vennard from Tandragee, got married in the Methodist Church and embarked on married life by way of a house in Cornmarket Street, Tandragee.  From this two up two down abode he progressed to a caravan in Kilkeel at Silvercove, a transformed, converted ambulance gained from ‘Green Peace’ Jackie parked akin to the caravan, a small bungalow with liberal space for storage of paint and vehicles awaiting logos and insignia, 100 yards from the caravan.  Finally he moved to a Kilkeel town house on the main street where he still lives with Mavis, and two daughters Kerry, named after my great grandma’s birthplace, and Edith named after Mavis’ mum.  I owe a lot to Uncle Ivon he was my cheering and consoling strength when my dad died suddenly in 1973 and I was still of a tender and impressionable age of 16 years.

 A long breath of air by way of a country walk the day before the funeral, completing a circuit of Laurelvale by way of Coronation Street, Cabra and Beattie's Corner and deep conversation he persuaded me that a future without my dad was not all doom and obscurity and at the same time he conveyed how there was a respect that each of those two brothers had for one another and the loss that I bore was similarly borne by Ivon and a void had occurred too soon that would not and could not be filled or restored.