WARM tributes have been paid to well-known West Belfast businessman Tom ‘Tucker’ Straney who passed away aged 71 on Monday.
Born June 15 1947, father to five children and stepfather to two, the grandfather and great grandfather opened his popular A’town Meats in 1979.
Tom’s eldest son Gerald told the Andersonstown News how his father was a private man who put every effort into making his business a firm success.
“Dad was a hod-carrier, a labourer,” explained Gerald, “the opportunity came up and he got into the butchery trade, originally a joint-venture with a guy called Gerry Taylor. Over the years my da became sole owner of the butchers, it was always called A’town Meats,” he said.
Gerald said his father was the eldest of five children and that Tom’s three brothers and late sister all emigrated to Canada, with his father opting to stay in Ireland to raise his young family.
“At one stage he had opened up a butchers shop in Poleglass, inside a group of shops at the time and a shop in Ladybrook which my brother Vincent ran. Dad sold the business in September 2017 and stayed on because it was coming up to Christmas, up to the Christmas club and what is a very busy time. After Christmas he stayed on, right up until around March, April time when he started to feel unwell. He was told it was cancer and started radiotherapy in October last year.”
Gerald continued: “The Christmas period was very bad as he was very anxious waiting on results following the treatment. It wasn’t that he got the all clear, but he was told everything seemed ‘positive’. He knew by the end of January, early February something wasn’t right, the pain started coming back and he was told that ‘it’ was back.
“A week or so later he was told that it was terminal.”
“He was in hospital about a fortnight and we took him out to bring him home. He was only out three weeks and one day when he passed away.”
Gerald spoke poignantly of how A’town Meats was known as a “meeting place, a place for people to come and talk”.
“People would come in for a yarn, for many it was their way of getting out of the house and a chance for conversation.”
Gerald said his father was a founding member of the Donegal Celtic Football Club and loved the GAA, especially local clubs Lamh Dhéarg and Rossa.
“Last year was the best year of his life as he got closer to his kids. He was always working. His kids, his grandkids, if you wanted to go see him you went to the shop. Even if the children were being baptised, made their communions, their confirmations, you brought them to the shop. He was there six-days a week. I would have seen him on Christmas Day going into the shop and getting burgers, getting whatever was needed for restaurants who would’ve contacted him needing food. He went round, opened up and made sure they were catered for.”
As well as a prominent businessman, Gerald said his father was a “bookmaker as well”.
“He applied his trade at Celtic Park, Drumbo, Dundalk and Dunmore, it was a hobby as much as anything else. He loved to see people winning.”
He added: “One of the first times he ever done the book, a fella ended up owing him over £3,000 and he said he would have it up to the shop that Tuesday. When the guy came up to the shop, my da was still meeting and greeting the customers, they came first, they were the be all and end all.
“Dad gave the man a large meat parcel and said to him ‘take that down to the house with you’. The fella said it was the first time he had owed someone money, paid it and actually left ‘with a smile on his face’. The fella brought it down to his family and they were saying how nice the meat was and he replied: ‘Well of course it is, it cost me £3,500!’”
Gerald said his father could pick up on when his customers were going through hardship.
“He knew without them having to say anything. He would give them some food just to help them out, he never spoke of it, it was the people who would come in and tell you how he had helped.
“A wee woman came into the shop one Christmas and she couldn’t afford the turkey so she said she was just going to take a ‘wee chicken this year’ and offered a ring as a means of payment. He wouldn’t hear of it but the wee woman insisted on giving over the ring. The wee woman passed away and her daughters came into the shop months later and he said he had something belonging to them and brought out the ring.
“He was a very private man and religious in his own ways. He would’ve walked from his house in Donegall Park to Clonard, walked down for the Rosary and to St Paul’s as well. He always kept himself fit, he did Slimming World in his 60’s and went out of his way to get the accreditation to sell the Slimming World endorsed food in the shop. He had people coming from all over to buy it.
“He was always reading and went back to get his Degree in History. He loved the horses, he was always saying I would ‘scud’ his bets, that I was the worst ‘picker in the world’.
“At the end of the day he was a very hard working, very generous, honest man. All his life he would’ve said ‘I’m doing this for you, I’m doing this for you’, in terms of working so hard at the business. He loved his family.”
Gerald’s daughter and Tom’s granddaughter, Charleen Straney, described her “granda” as “a much loved man and very highly thought of by everyone who got to know him.”
Tom Straney’s Requiem Mass will take place today (Friday) in St Agnes’ Church at noon.