Peter Carty: A true GAA legend

As a caring and compassionate undertaker, there are few who know his own people better.

His also a passionate GAA man who has served his club and county with discernment and distinction.

Good leaders are the glue that keeps communities together – and really good leaders do so as naturally as breathing.

The weak often use power to bully or subjugate others, but the really strong, wise and kind are always there to guide and help their own people, to be the best they can be.

 

 

It could be a look, a nod, a kind word or more importantly an act, at the right time, and the constant ability to listen before coming to any kind of consensus.

And it is also about the ability to see the constant consequences of our actions.

The GAA is probably the best example of real public service. Thousands of volunteers make it probably the most altruistic organisation in the country.

 

 

It promotes self- respect and pride in the native place.

Peter Carty (78), from Devenish/Garrison, is one of those rare individuals who can exercise authority with deep foresight, compassion and humanity.

And that is not easily done.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Impartial Reporter, Peter speaks openly and honestly of his great love for his native place, nestling on the shores of Lough Melvin under Rossinver Braes.

He has been an undertaker for 44 years and speaks of how the GAA helped him to cope with great trauma and grief, and about the tragic early death of his much-loved nephew, Terry Carty, in 2021.

Then in 2022 he got the chilling news that he had cancer of the bowel.

Peter faced it bravely, and is now in remission, and urges others to get their health checked and not to be afraid to speak about an illness that men are slow to articulate.

That same year in December he received a Lifetime Service Award from the GAA, which was a great boost at a tough time in his life.

These days, he is delighted that his club, Devenish St. Mary’s, are embarking on a major new development that will benefit the whole area for future generations.

The GAA has been in the genial Garrison undertaker’s genes for generations. His father, Terry Carty, was on a Garrison Swifts team that won a White Cup in 1927.

“My father worked for the Prudential Insurance Company for almost 40 years. He was a community man, but was a very quiet community man, and he was involved in the early 1900s.

“My uncle, Fr. Willie Carty, played for the Fermanagh Senior team that reached an Ulster final in 1935.

“We lived up in Glen, and I was born in 1946. I was not a top-class player, but was always interested in administration from an early age.

“Fr. Willie had a strong influence on me, and spoke out a lot, and was very much ‘a player’s man’.

“He always said the GAA would keep you out of harm’s way.”

And Peter does not forget his mother, Margaret Keown, who washed the jerseys of the great Devenish team in the 1960s on a wash-board.

“There were always 18 jerseys on the line every Monday morning!”

The late Seamus Heron, Jimmy Mulrone (RIP), John James Treacy (RIP), P. T. Treacy and Michael Joe O’Brien (RIP) were key figures in Peter’s early career, as he became the youngest County Board delegate when he represented Devenish, while he was only 17.

The 1960s was a golden era for Devenish as they took County Championship and League titles as regularly as tea.

That was the start of 50 years of service that saw him rise to County Board Chairman, and he also served as Fermanagh’s Central Council delegate.

In 1966, Peter went to Greenmount Agricultural College, and then he worked with the Department of Agriculture.

Peter then moved back to Garrison to take up the insurance business from his father. But the desire to run his own business was deep, and he began to make headstones for his local community in 1977.

In 1980, he went into the undertaking business that he bought from Phonsie McGovern in 1980.

 

 

“Both go hand in hand. I felt too that I wanted to help people in the community, and that is still very important to me.

“I was involved with some of the community through the GAA, but with the undertaking, I was involved with all of the community.

“If anything was rewarding, it was that I was able to respect them, be kind to them when they were wounded and vulnerable.

“And it was an honour to be asked to be there to look after them when a loved one had passed away.

“I have always felt that I have covered around Garrison, Belleek, Enniskillen and north Leitrim, and was involved in some tragic situations.

“And I hope I treat every family with the same feeling of compassion, and give them the same service.

“I would not like to think that I had treated anyone differently. There is no difference in any home when there is a death.

“The same grief is in every home, but the death of a young person can be particularly distressing.

“If I ever come to a stage in my job where I lose feelings for people, or feel that ‘it is only a job’, I would be inclined to drop out of it.

“You need to have a genuine feeling for the people you are dealing with, as they depend a lot on you in those times.

“They are vulnerable, they are upset, and so you do your best. I have been very lucky, and get great support from both sides of the community.”

All of this was a great help to Peter in his career as Secretary and Chairman of his club.

Peter came in as club Chairman in a golden year for the club, in 1985, and he stayed there until 2005, when he was made County Chairman, until 2010.

Devenish took five County Championships and four League titles in a golden 11 years, until 1997.

Peter then recounts some interesting history. “Canon Coyle was a great man in getting the GAA pitch in Garrison under way.”

More than 5,000 people turned up for the official opening of the pitch in 1948 and Peter was there too – in a pram!

Off the playing field, Peter – in tandem with his super-efficient Secretary, Sean Treacy – set about getting St. Mary’s Park into the possession of the GAA.

From 1990-2000, Devenish GAA club saw some unprecedented development.

“The park was a Parochial park, and the late Fr. Slowey was very keen that the GAA would own its own pitch.

“There were Trustees to be dealt with. We needed the pitch in our own name, to avail of GAA grants.

“We had a small dressing room, which came from the original home of the late John P. McCann. But we were also one of the first clubs to have showers, in that dressing room.

“We then bought the practice field from Norman Walmsley from Kesh.

“And I admire Norman Walmsley, because he knew what we were buying it for. He said it did not matter to him, as long as it was doing good in the community.

“We also bought land from the Casey family for the entrance.”

Peter then paid a major tribute to the entire club officers. “We had a very good team, and we bought that ground.

“In 1994, we opened the dressing rooms, and then the pitch was upgraded, and the practice pitch was laid.

“We added a stand in the mid-1990s, and that caters for around 400 people.”

Peter added that the club spent more than £500,000, and all of that was “paid for the day we turned the key”.

The club got National Lottery grants and Sean Treacy played a very active role in all of this. “He was, and is, very efficient.”

In addition, Devenish ran a series of major draws to pay for the project. This was Peter’s proudest achievement, but he puts it all down to good fortune.

“I was fortunate to be put forward for County Chairman after being Vice-Chairman for 14 years.”

But Joe McGurn gave his deputy plenty of scope, and one of Peter’s more pleasant tasks was acting as liaison officer with county teams and the development of grounds.

“That gave me a lot of scope and experience of dealing with teams and their problems.”

As County Chairman, Peter said the 2008 Ulster final was definitely one that got away on Fermanagh.

But the greatest excitement came when Barry Owens scored the fisted goal against Derry on a rainy night in Omagh in the Ulster semi-final.

“To me, that was something else, and I could not hold back tears that evening, and I was caught on TV shedding tears.

“I remember GAA President Nicky Brennan saying to me it showed him how much this meant to Fermanagh, and I thought that was one year that we should have won the Ulster title.”

Four years previously, Peter played a key role in Fermanagh’s epic run to the All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo, when they should have won the drawn encounter.

But Peter recalls interviewing Charlie Mulgrew for the job in the somewhat private setting of the Lough Erne Hotel in Kesh.

Mulgrew took a team that had lost seven first team players to unprecedented heights.

“He did not want anyone to know that he was looking for this job, and did not want to be seen, so he came up from Letterkenny.

“We were glad to be getting a man at that stage.

“One thing that impressed me about him was that he was a go-and-do-it type of person, and I felt he was prepared to put his head on the block and do the work.

“He also had a good football brain, and his coaching and preparations for games was very good.

“He maybe changed the whole style of football in Fermanagh, for the better.

“We got some lucky breaks in 2004, but there was a lot of quality football, and we were very unlucky not to end up in an All-Ireland final.

“John Maughan was in charge of Mayo, and he said that he thought Mayo had lost the game on the first day.”

Peter has also served on a number of committees in Croke Park.

He served with Pauric Duffy on the National Scor Committee in 1998 and he was also Chairman of the Ulster Scor Committee.

“I must say, that of all the people I ever worked with, I thought that Pauric Duffy was one of the most capable individuals, and he has since proved it.

“Every Monday or Tuesday mornings you headed to Dublin to review the weekend matches, and it was an exciting time, from 2012 to 2016.”

In recent years, Peter was the Fermanagh Central Council delegate, and was very committed to the development of the Centre of Excellence at Lissan.

2017 was the Centenary of the Devenish GAA club, and they celebrated it in style by winning the Fermanagh SFL final and reaching the SFC final.

“It was a great year, and we were celebrating 100 years of effort.

“I was Chairman, and I thought of the amount of effort that must have been put to keep the club afloat in hard times.

“We had a number of well-organised functions throughout the year, and I can still see Barry Mulrone’s great point with the outside of the boot to win the SFL in our victory over Ederney, and it capped a wonderful year.

“Of course, we had the centenary book, which was a great achievement for Sean Treacy and Sean O’Loughlin.

“A book like that is great for keeping the history of the club alive.

“The club is still surviving, and we won the Intermediate championship a few years ago.”

Peter is still Chairman of the club, after serving on the GAA’s Central Council for five years when he stepped down in 2015.

“It was good to be at the heart of the GAA where the decisions were being made, but I felt we did not have any real input into the decisions.

“It was an eye-opener, and while I am not criticising the GAA, what we were doing in Central Council was rubberstamping decisions that were already taken at a higher level from the Management Committee.

“My highlight was serving for three years on the Central Competitions Control Committee, and we dealt with some complex but interesting situations.

“It was a great honour, and I learned a lot from it, including the complexity of the rule book.

“But I always believed that the spirit of the rule, and common sense, were way more important than the literal interpretation.

“If you can solve a problem – even if it means doing a bit of extra talking – it serves a good purpose.

“It should never be a case of a rule book in one hand, and running the GAA with another.”

Peter adds that his experience in the GAA in dealing with people and various situations helped him a lot in his undertaking business.

“It was very important, and if you don’t respect the people that are around you, you will never have success in getting decisions.

“I don’t think we listen enough in the GAA, because there are a lot of people with good ideas, if we could only tease them out and give them the space to speak.”

Peter was also very prominent in the development of Lissan Fermanagh’s GAA Centre for county teams.

“It got a lot of criticism, but at the time that was the only land that became available to the GAA to buy, and it cost between £150,000 to £200,000 at the time.

“It is a valuable asset, and we have two pitches, and we have leased part of it to a wind farm and there is money coming in from that.

“We wanted to put up our own wind farm, and would have made a lot of money.

“But we needed around £750,000; it was not possible to get that funding from the GAA.

“At the moment there is talk about further development, and I think the development committee are looking at other avenues.”

Peter’s club, Devenish, have lost four great stalwarts in recent years, in the passing of John James Treacy, Canon Patrick Lonergan, Michael Joe O’Brien and Jimmy Mulrone.

All were former Presidents of the club, and their passing has left a deep void.

“The Canon was a great leader, and a wonderful supporter, and it is important if the GAA and the priest in the community are working together.

“This is the same in all religions, and he also had a great commercial sense, and if you were doing a development, he was always with you.

“John James was a total legend in the game, and as an administrator, and he always insisted on proper, detailed minutes of meetings being taken.

“He was a past Secretary, and a brilliant coach.

“Michael Joe O’Brien served the club for more than 60 years, and even when he was President, he went out selling tickets at a relatively advanced age, and he always gave encouragement when you were out selling tickets, which can be a really tough job.

“Jimmy Mulrone and my brother, Jim Carty, who is still alive, laid the foundations in youth football for our outstanding Senior success from 1985-1997.

“Jimmy was an absolute gentleman, and he gave and got great respect from so many of the young footballers in the club, and he could relate to all.”

Looking across the room, there is a big picture of Peter’s nephew, Terry Carty, who sadly passed away in a road traffic accident near Florencecourt in June, 2021.

This was a devastating blow for Peter, who had to identify the body and prepare his Funeral Mass.

“To me – and while you do not like singling out relations – but, to me, he was a wonderful nephew, and a great man to help you out.

“If you rang that man at 3am, it was the same as 3pm in the day, as he was on the doorstep seeing what he could do to help.

“He drove a lorry, and I unfortunately had to go and identify him.

“It was a freak accident; it was a fallen tree, and he came over the brow of a hill and he went straight into it.

“I got a phone call from Belleek parish priest Fr. Tiernan Beggan, who told me in the middle of the night that a young man called Terence Carty was killed on the road, and it was like you had fired a bullet through my heart.

“Fr. Beggan said he did not know the young man, and he said he wanted to go up to the scene, and he asked me if I knew who it was.

“I said I knew who he was; ‘he is a nephew of mine’.

“He came up here, and I have to say that Fr. Beggan was very good in the way that he stayed with me on the road, prayed on the road, and I would always be grateful to him for what he did for me that night.

“For as strong as you might feel, when it is your own family, it is extra hard.

“And then I had to tell Heather, his wife, and their two children, but I am glad to have his memory forever in my heart, and I will take that with me to my grave.”

But Peter got some chilling news himself when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer in early 2022.

“I want to talk about this, to help others, and I want to stress that if you have any concerns, go to your doctor immediately.

“The first signs were that I was breathless, and thought it was the heart, so I went privately to get that checked out.

“The consultant in the South West Acute Hospital told me it had nothing to do with my heart, and I was losing blood. I went for a scope, and it was found that I had a tumour in the bowel.

“It was a terrible shock. I was told the tumour had to be operated on as soon as possible, and that was in April, 2022.

“I had surgery in July, 2022, but I had to lose weight first, and I was concerned about the delay.

“I had chemo in tablet form, and finished that treatment in February, 2023. At the moment, I have scans every six months, and they have been clear so far.

“I lost four stone in weight during the treatment, which was no harm.”

He added: “I must say, the support I got from GAA was just overwhelming.

“And when I got through the cancer, I felt I had renewed energy, and wanted to stay on as club Chairman, which I still am today – but I intend to stand down in the not too distant future.

“This great new club development has given me a new lease of life.

“But we have some great new leaders in the club, and we have set up a company to develop the premises in the village.

“The club bought the building and the land, and it will be a great facility for the whole community and region when it gets up and running shortly.

“We have got some funding already, and are applying for more, and we have a great team out selling tickets to help raise £250,000 to help pay for the facility.

“The whole thing is bringing new life into the club and the whole area. Part of the scheme has to be completed by August 31.

“The GAA means everything to me – it has been my whole life, and I have met so many wonderful people from all over Ireland in my various roles.

“It crosses a lot of boundaries, and is the cement that holds parishes together, and it has always encouraged you to have pride in your native place, and to never forget where you are from – and around Devenish, we never will.

“I am feeling great again, but I could not have got through the cancer but for the loving support of my wife, Maeve.

“She is my rock, and my right hand.”

And Peter has also been the rock and the right hand of his beloved Devenish on ‘Lough Melvin’s Rocky Shores’ for around 60 years.