Elizabeth McEniff:Elizabeth McEniff, who has died aged 97, was widely acknowledged as the matriarch of the tourism industry in the northwest.
The four-bedroom B&B she started a few years after arriving in the seaside resort of Bundoran, Co Donegal, as a 22-year-old barmaid, grew into a multimillion euro family enterprise with 11 hotels and other business interests throughout Ireland.
Elizabeth's family's greatest inheritance is her strong work ethic. All members worked at some time or other alongside her as she developed her B&B into a small hotel. Several of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue in the business of running the many other hotels built or purchased by her sons, as the McEniff empire expanded.
Elizabeth Begley left Carrickmore, Co Tyrone, to help a recently-widowed uncle in his bar in Main Street, Bundoran, in 1932. She met her husband, John, a native of Newbliss, Co Monaghan, when he stopped off to say farewell to a sister before emigrating to America.
He changed his mind and instead stayed in Bundoran and married Elizabeth. They took over a small confectionery shop and also started taking in holiday lodgers at their home.
Members of her family remember being packed off to relatives for the summer season so their parents could take in more paying guests.
It was the beginning of a catering and entertainment business that has been developed by the family to include the 11 hotels as well as an amusements arcade and other property interests.
Two of her sons, Seán and Brian, spearhead the businesses. Seán, a Donegal county and Bundoran town council chairman for several years, was also chairman of the board of North West Tourism for 25 years until its recent replacement by Fáilte Ireland North West. Brian was manager of Donegal's 1992 All-Ireland football champions, the only team from the county ever to capture the Sam Maguire.
Although they were the sons with the highest public profile, Elizabeth McEniff never missed an opportunity to proclaim her pride in her other children and their achievements - Liam, a doctor in Dublin, Pat, a dentist in Ballyshannon, and daughter Mary McGlynn, a former commerce teacher who is involved in management of the Great Northern Hotel, Bundoran.
So dedicated was Elizabeth to her family and the business that she lived in her own apartment in the family-owned Holyrood hotel, across the street from the site of her first B&B. She took fewer than six holidays in the last 75 years, preferring regular short trips to two sisters in Co Sligo and to other relatives in Carrickmore.
When she was widowed in her 60s she learned to drive for the first time and earned a fearsome reputation behind the wheel. Son Brian recalled: "Just as with everything else she fearlessly encountered throughout her life, she feared nothing on the roads. That was the problem."
She was famous for her brown bread, baking cakes so large that her sons struggled to lift them from the oven.
In his early days as Ireland soccer manager when fishing on the nearby Drowes River, Jack Charlton often called in for a slice. They became firm friends, each appreciating the other's outspoken manner.
She was a daily Mass-goer who, even when no longer allowed to drive, chugged her way to church on a specially adapted motorised cycle.
Her many showbusiness friends were nurtured over several decades and included Ruby Murray and Bridie Gallagher, both of whom lodged with her when performing during the season in Bundoran before gaining international fame.
Elizabeth McEniff: born September 16th, 1909; died August 9th, 2007