The word obsequies does not sit easily with the name of Bill Twomey; the sense of grieving disbelief coalesced in Monkstown Church at the edge of Cork harbour as his coffin was borne out into the winter sunshine to the strains of Rhinestone Cowboy. After a funeral of great dignity his favourite song reminded us of what this was all about: riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo.
Bill Twomey, banker, did ride out on a horse whenever he got the opportunity and prided himself on always keeping appropriately fit. His association with the riding and racing fraternity through his wife Jill Hitchmough made his a familiar and dependable voice at the point-to-point fixtures of Cork and Waterford from January to May of each of the last many years. His ease with the microphone was due to his acute grasp of the card, the going, the form, the expectations and the atmosphere - and to the enthusiasms and skills he inherited from his father, the late Bill Twomey, officially manager of the Cork Opera House but more famous as a sports commentator, especially on rugby.
That split vocation was characteristic of the Twomeys: like his father, Bill was both executive and sportsman. There would be great satisfaction in realising that, like his father, Bill had had a terrifically full and well-balanced life, if only it had not ended so early. He was 49 when he died in November; now the family receive the cards and letters from people they don't even know, and voices coming over the 'phone. These messages in their hundreds are all telling the same tale, all saying thanks for the time and trouble he took with clients and colleagues alike during his career with AIB, when he moved all over the county from Midleton to Clonakilty before settling in Patrick Street as Assistant Manager (External Sales Development, Cork). As his friend Denis Kennedy of AIB said at the Requiem Mass, Bill gave fully of himself in terms of advice, encouragement, support, expertise and commitment. And while his professional life absorbed him totally during the week, weekends were the time for the world he shared with his family.
This was the world of riding out with his brother-in-law Tom Busteed, who trains horses for point-to-point races. The world of gymkhanas, when the three children were young. The world he shared with Kelvin Hitchmough, trainer of the Irish Grand National winner Brittany Boy before Kelvin moved his business to Dunsfield in Midleton. The world he knew through his mother-in-law, Iris Hitchmough, herself a noted point-to-point jockey in the 1950s, and enjoyed with Molly Musgrave of Kinsale, who followed her own horse Fair's Fair from meeting to meeting.
Not too good, as Tom Busteed recalled at the funeral, when it came to a bunch of keys or a bottle of milk, Bill had a complete grasp of the chronology of racing; at different fixtures he would work on anything from 10 to 13 races in a day, his infectious enthusiasm as much a mark of his personality as the professionalism of his approach and his impeccable appearance.
He had a great sense of fun, but he also appreciated the dignity of a sport, and for National Hunt racing and its equine and human characters his love was both obvious and respectful. It is a love linked also to his children, whose continued successful association with the sport gave him immense pride. Bill's nurturing spirit, while devoted to his immediate family, also embraced his two sisters and his brother, his relatives, his many fond friends.
His home landscape of hill, glen and glinting harbour never looked more beautiful than in the amber winter light of the afternoon of his burial. A lover of a sport in which risk is inherent, danger inevitable, death itself no stranger, Bill Twomey went home, typically, to the strains of the song he loved to sing when the muddy waterproofs could be discarded, the horses were fed and watered, and the darkness had come down at last over the hedged fields. Then, in jovial companionship, he settled to the contentment which follows the doing well of a job worth doing, a race well run. M.L.