Tributes paid to Mary Nelis on her 90th birthday

Warm tributes have been paid to Derry’s Mary Nelis as she celebrated her 90th birthday with family and friends in the Ebrington Hotel. 

Speaking to The Derry News the woman who has “led a remarkable life and inspired so many” said she loved living in Derry.

“I was born in Wellington Street, a very historic part of Derry. When I look back on Wellington Street, it was a state in its own right.

“Every other house was a shop because people were enterprising. They had to be. There was no work. It was one of those places you felt akin to everybody,” added Mary.

“My mother, Catherine Elliott (née Coyle), who was from Burt, was a waitress, primarily in the City Hotel. She was very great with Tommy O’Kane, the manager. My father’s name was Dennis. He was from the Waterside and he was a teacher. His father was a blacksmith who had a forge at the foot of Fountain Hill,” she added. 

“I went to St Eugene’s PS in Francis Street and I loved it. I left school in the very traditional way most young women my age did and went into the shirt factory - Hogg and Mitchell’s in Great James’ Street, where the King of England’s photograph looked down from the wall.

IN PICTURES: Derry's Mary Nelis celebrates 90th birthday

Mary was joined by family and friends for the celebrations in Derry's Ebrington Hotel

IN PICTURES: Mary Nelis - A woman who has ‘led a remarkable life and inspired so many’

A look back at Mary throughout the years

“I met the most wonderful group of women there and we were all as mad as hatters,” she laughed. 

Married at 21 to Billy, who she met in the queue for The Strand Picture House, Mary initially lived with her parents, as she encountered the problems with housing familiar to Derry people of her generation.

“Eventually we moved to Rathkeele Way in Creggan, a street with 50 houses and 300 wanes,” smiled Mary, who went on to establish a very active tenants’ association because there was “no decent lighting and no decent roads” in the area. 

Mary’s involvement with party politics began when her son Donncha (MacNiallais) was arrested and put into Long Kesh. 

“I think you react to everything in your life,” said Mary. “You just don’t sit down and plan it all out and that is how the Relatives’ Action Committee was formed - with Teresa Deery and Kathleen McCann  - and we stood outside Bishop Daly’s house wearing nothing but blankets. That was a reaction to the cheek of the Peace People and the Bishop about the way the Republican prisoners were being treated in Long Kesh.”

Elected to Derry City Council in 1993, Mary vividly recalled her “a nonentity” giving Mark Durkan (SDLP) “a run for his money”.

“I loved Council,” said Mary. “I fought it out with the Unionists. It was even worse when I went to Stormont [in 1998]. Me and Paisley sat opposite one another and I fought it out with him. I enjoyed it.

“When we first went into Stormont, [John] Alderdice was the Speaker. The Unionists, who brought in their guns for gun practice at dinnertime but they vetoed a creche.

“One day Bríd Rodgers got up to speak and they started laughing and coughing and spitting and I was furious. So me and Bairbre de Brún and Brí Rodgers asked to speak to Alderdice and that ended the spitting, coughing and hissing.

“In spite of that, I did get on with certain Unionists. There was a woman Unionist sacked because of me. She asked me to help her brother and I did and they found out and sacked her. That’s how vicious they were,” said Mary.

Turning to global events, Mary revealed she had not been dying on having a birthday party initially but she was so distressed by the ongoing genocide in Gaza she decided to have one and ask guests to donate to The Palestinian Medical Relief Society instead of buying her cards or presents. The amount raised has now exceeded £4,000.

“A mum to nine children, 18 grandchildren, five great grandchildren and one great, great grandchild, it is only fitting we celebrate the 90th Birthday of the woman who continues to lead us all,” Mary’s daughter Cathy said at the party.

“We her family are immensely grateful for your presence here tonight. Everyone in this room is very special to mum and in turn to us. 

“As a lasting tribute to our amazing mother, we are planning to make a living memory quilt which will comprise the embroidered signatures of everyone in this room this evening,” said Cathy.

Speaking of the early beginnings of his “friendship and comradeship” with Mary, Sinn Féin veteran Mitchel McLaughlin, said his parents were discussing the work she was doing in the Kildrum Gardens area of Creggan on behalf of the tenants. 

“What I discovered in terms of getting to know Mary and having the opportunity and privilege of working with her was the talent she had for writing. Invariably when you spoke to Mary she was sitting with a notebook in her hand,” he said.

“She did a number of things over the course of the years that just astounded me in terms of her vision. I am talking about the 1980s, the Struggle leading inexorably towards the Hunger Strike and Mary Nelis’ efforts in calling attention to that,” added Mitchel.

“She was writing handwritten notes to EU Commissioners, British Government Ministers, Irish Government Ministers, and Congressmen and Senators in America. 

“She wrote a letter to a very famous American journalist called Jimmy Breslin - a syndicated columnist  - and Mary had set out what was happening in the H Blocks and she did it from the point of view of a mother. Jimmy Breslin’s column that day appeared in over 300 newspapers right across the United States of America, which was the days before computers and emails and instant communication and Mary Nelis had found a way of delivering a message. She found a way of delivering a message to the European Parliament, to Westminster, and she found a way of delivering it to America.

“That was the literacy she had and the genius she had for conveying the truth and the authority she had, as the mother of prisoners in the H Blocks,” said Mitchel.

Reflecting on Mary’s time as an MLA in Stormont, Mitchel said even Bob McCartney “who thought he was the most important person there, a very experienced barrister, was no match for Mary, no match whatsoever”.

“What actually drew my attention and locked me into this friendship and comradeship with Mary Nelis was one of the most revolutionary things I have seen in my lifetime,” said Mitchel.

“She, with two other wives of H Block prisoners, stood outside Bishop Daly’s house with only blankets around them, to challenge the authority of the Catholic Church,” he added.

“This was Holy Catholic Apostolic Derry we are talking about. Mary Nelis took it on and drew attention to the H Block. 

“That relationship and friendship I had with Mary and the ideas that she had and the energy that she had and the courage that she had, totally convinced me and I am much younger than her, we are going to win this, and we are long down the road of winning this struggle and Mary Nelis is a key cornerstone of that advance,” said Mitchel to rapturous applause.

Former Sinn Féin MLA Maeve McLaughlin said she had so many memories of working with Mary. 

“Some of them revolved around traveling to Stormont in the early morning in the car when Mary would ‘decide’ if she was going to be ‘nice Mary’ or ‘rotweiller’, recalled Maeve.

“We often had what Mary described as ‘morning prayers’ during our white knuckle ride in the back of the car because Dominic Doherty was still driving Canadian style, overtaking three vehicles at the one time, egged on by Mitchel McLaughlin, who would say, ‘Dominic, you missed one’. 

“Technology was very interesting when we started involving ourselves in technology because Mary Nelis would have written all of her speeches on a Sunday night and her press releases, on paper, with a pen. There was no such thing as computers. And, when we evolved into mobile phones, let’s just say we had a few interesting experiences. 

“One of the funny things I remember is, we had a ‘jolly girls’ outing’ as Mary called it and we were all on a bus in Donegal, probably coming back from the bar and Mary said, ‘Oh my God, look at that sky tonight, isn’t it absolutely beautiful, look at it, there is a square moon’. And Isobel Anderson, in only the way that Isobel can do, said, ‘Are you having a laugh? It’s a light in an attic window and you’re actually up running the country’. 

“But, everybody in this room, Mary, is incredibly proud of everything you have done all of your life and continue to do. I always admired that ability in Council, in Stormont, you just think on your feet.

“No matter what the issue was, you could stand up and you could do it from a very informed position and a very empathetic position.

“Suffice to say, Mary, Happy Birthday and we all love you.”