Death of leading Nenagh auctioneer and publican

The death took place on Tuesday, October 1, of former Nenagh auctioneer and publican Billy Talbot, a highly popular and hard-working businessman who made his mark in the town and surrounds in a varied career spanning eight decades.

Billy, who was 93, was born in New York on September 2 1931, the second in a family of five children of Frank and Winifred Talbot.

When he was four-years-old, Billy’s parents returned to Ireland, first purchasing a pub in Limerick which they operated for a number of years, before moving to Nenagh after buying a similar premises in Ormond Street, the pub known today as The Half Door.

Subsequently, the family moved to Kenyon Street after Frank, a native of Piltown, Co Kilkenny, and Winifred bought another pub where Billy’s father founded an auctioneering business in 1946, selling furniture and other property from sales rooms situated at the rear of the licensed premises.

Billy was educated in Saint Mary’s Boys National School and the old CBS in John’s Lane. But he wasn’t really cut out for formal schooling or the strict rules imposed by the brothers, and left before sitting his Leaving Certificate at the age of 16.

His mother, a native of Capparoe, got him a job as an apprentice barman in a pub run by a Tipperary family in Dublin, O’ Dwyer’s in Kilmainham. After six years spent there learning the trade, a combination of homesickness and the early death of his father, who was in his 50s, brought him back to Nenagh where he took up the reins of the family’s pub and auctioneering business in his early 20s.

WEDDING

At 27, he married Breeda née Cleary from Limerick Road, and the couple soon moved to live in Cork after Billy secured a job with Cork Marts, selling livestock at marts in Fermoy, Midleton and Bandon.

Working in Cork and having an auctioneering business and pub to run back home in Nenagh proved quite a challenging balancing act, so Billy and Breeda ultimately decided to move back home to their native town.

While this move allowed them to concentrate more on growing their local businesses, Billy continued to work for Cork Marts, serving a total of 20 years with the company before leaving in 1978. In that same year he and Breeda undertook a major renovation of their Kenyon Street pub - and managed to book The Wolfe Tones to play in concert on the premises on opening night.

Public transport was rudimentary in the 1960s and 1970s, and with Billy travelling up and down to Cork at least three times a week, there was a path beaten to his door by local people seeking lifts to the southern capital, and he was always happy to oblige.

WORKAHOLIC

In truth, Billy was a workaholic for most of his life, but Breeda, who was the same age as him, worked just as hard, filling in at the pub and doing all the catering and raising their family of five children single-handedly when he was working in Cork. Down through the years, the couple also received huge support from a loyal and dedicated staff who made sure local operations always ran smoothly.

By the time Billy reached his 60s, Talbot’s was the largest auctioneering firm in North Tipperary. Clients were drawn to the firm by Billy’s approachability and trustworthiness.

The motto by which he lived and worked was, in his own words, that “honesty is the best policy, and if you are straight with people you will always get on well”.

Another saying in which he put great store and lived his life by was, “look after people and they will look after you”.

On these pieces of sound philosophy, the company’s portfolio in house and land sales boomed.

NEVER RETIRED

In the early 1990s Billy, hinting about retiring, asked his son, William, to join the business. Just a few years earlier, Billy and Breeda also decided to cut ties with their pub, deciding to lease it out to Seamus Ryan.

That step back alone had an incredible impact. For the first time in their married lives, the couple found themselves sitting down together for dinner in the evenings.

After an incredibly hard-working life, Billy started to enjoy the taste of freedom. He looked forward to playing golf in Beechwood with a close circle of friends every Wednesday, and though always a keen angler, started to spend more time out in his boat on Lough Derg.

His close friend Tom Meagher introduced him to the joys of fly fishing, which he took to with gusto. They bought a small white caravan and parked it on commonage at Inishmacatreer on the eastern shores of Lough Corrib, escaping there on weekends and spending days on end there throughout all the peak trout fishing months of the summer, especially at Mayfly time.

But as a man whose work formed such a core of his life, Billy never really let go of the business. “Work was embedded in him,” his son William recalled. “He wasn’t the kind of man who would sit back and put the feet up. He always wanted to be involved and to be doing something.”

FACING UP TO CHANGE

A shrewd and visionary businessman, he was quick to see the changing trends in auctioneering and the mounting challenges faced by family-owned companies like his own when the boom times began to dawn in the late 1990s.

Talbot’s joined the Sherry Fitzgerald auctioneer franchise in 1999, a move driven by Billy, who was then in semi-retirement. He viewed this new alliance as the only option if the firm was to continue to grow and thrive in the decades ahead.

Operating ever since then under the name Sherry Fitzgerald Talbot’s, the firm, still prospering, is celebrating 25 years as part of the franchise this year.

Right into his late 80s, Billy continued to work part-time, doing valuations for the firm, before eventually bowing out fully at the age of 89.

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

Outside of work Billy had a keen social conscience. He was one of the founding members of Nenagh Lions Club, serving for almost 40 years, including as president for two terms.

Much of what he did for those in hard times was done discreetly, as many people, including those who benefited from his kind acts, related to his family at his funeral.

“A very good man,” was one person’s summation of Billy, who was lucky to inherit the long-living genes from his mother, who was 94 when she died.

Billy, who got a year less, enjoyed a long fruitful and busy life. He died surrounded by his family at Nenagh Manor Nursing Home on October 1. He was predeceased by his beloved wife Breeda, daughter Marie, sister Tutsie and brother Tom.

He is sadly missed by his family Oonagh, Frank, Jean and William, as well as cherished grandchildren Billy, Rory, Adam, Sophie, Lauren, Paul, Charlie and Jenny, brothers Matt and John; son-in-law Adam, daughters-in-law Svjetlana and Lorraine; sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, cousins, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May he Rest in Peace.