TOM WILLIAMS:THE DEFINITION of multitalented has lost potency from overuse. Yet there is no other adequate word to define Tom Williams, business entrepreneur to his fingertips, musician, composer, scriptwriter, published historian, genealogist, sport lover, initiative driver, raconteur and wit.
He was a founder member of the Taghmon Historical Society and its journal. He was promoted early to the position of a bank manager in the then Provincial Bank of Ireland (later to become AIB) in Templeogue, Dublin.
Taghmon is no ordinary rural Wexford village. Six ancient roads converging on it suggest that. It returned two members of parliament until the Act of Union in 1800.
It was an early Christian power house, a monastic school with prehistoric sacred sites. It is still the site of several ancient churchyards. Its rector was the composer of Abide with Me. It was from the 17th century a centre of Quaker worship and burial. One could not ask for a more imaginative community into which a creator like Williams could be born and reared.
From a widely spread republican and musical family, Tom was advancing in his profession in Dublin until a national bank strike. His family owned a small bakery serving Taghmon, a place of stories, expression and jest.
Tom quickly left his position and, with his wife Marie, returned to man the ship. To an exile who returned remembering his home-place on its shabby knees, the new prospect was exotic.
In the 1980s, to the surprise of many, he invested £1 million in the business.
A new premises of 17,000sq ft was built and designed by Tom and his brother Brian. It was expanded in size and became the most extensive and prosperous bakery in the Republic, employing 150 people. The name used for the sliced loaves became a household one: “Tommy Tucker”.
When the business was bought out by Irish Pride in 1989, Williams became a major shareholder in that company.
He retired from the bakery business in 1990, to Park House, Wexford, former home of Philip Pierce. In doing so, he became the owner of a fully equipped underground air-raid shelter and grounds. His involvement in the arts increased.
His heroic and most moving composition, Cuchulainn’s Son, lyrics and words on the human heroism of Nickey Rackard, was sung for the first time at the Tomás Mac Anna-directed Purple and Gold stage production in 1984. It will live, a masterpiece, forever.
He was chairman of Wexford Enterprise Centre for 14 years.
Williams was an active member of a literary/historical group in Wexford. He carried his illness with a light heart, deceiving the lot of us with his grin. He suffered and went to hospital, but always returned. It would be like that always, we thought.
He is survived by his wife Marie, née Hunt, son David and daughters Joanne and Annette, six grandchildren, his sister Ann and brothers Dominic, Kevin and Brian.
Tom Williams: born March 12th, 1941; died August 18th, 2012