Family Fortunes: Two family photographs, eight years apart, marked by a deep sorrow

Many decades have passed since these treasured family photographs were taken. The year was 1945. By 1947 two more siblings, a sister and a brother, were added to the circle. I was five years old at the time, and I came in sixth place out of a total of 12 siblings born to my parents, Jim and Loretta Carolan, who enjoyed 13 years of married life.

My dad came from a business background and expanded his business after marrying my mother, then Loretta Clarke, in 1934. He was inventive and often referred to as “a man before his time”. He built his own wind turbine, which supplied electricity to his egg and shop business at Grousehall, Co Cavan.

His resourcefulness allowed him to improvise and he even managed to keep his two-ton truck on the road during the fuel-scarce post-war years. Thanks to our dad ,we enjoyed a decent standard of living during those bleak years of the 1940s.

On November 17th, 1947, our lives changed forever when my dad died after a short illness with cancer. He was just 38. His loss engulfed our family and the entire neighbourhood in sorrow and shock. Mother was left with 10 children, aged from two weeks to 12. Sadly, two other siblings, a brother and a sister, had died during the first year of their lives.

Blessed with a family that inherited the work ethic of their beloved dad, mother was able to keep us all together and run the business. She was a woman of substance and she never gave up.

Adversity can bind a family. The 10 of us were committed to never letting our mother’s faith in us fail.

Three of my brothers have since passed away. The treasured photograph on the left hangs in my living room, a reminder of a time when the family chain was complete.

The second picture is from 1953. It depicts mother with her 10 children. I am the oldest girl in the centre of the picture.

We would love to have your family memories, anecdotes, traditions, mishaps and triumphs. Email 350 words and a relevant photograph if you have one to familyfortunes @irishtimes.com. A fee will be paid