Death of talented Omagh native Jim Donnelly

THE death has occurred in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, England of Jim Donnelly formerly of Omagh (1933-2022).

Jim was the third son of six of Peter (GNR) and Margaret Donnelly, Glenview Terrace and Centenary Park.

He was well-known in Omagh over many years and often returned to visit.

As a young man, Jim worked in the famous Model Bakery and later edited the first free newspaper in Tyrone – ‘The Star and Northwest Advertiser’ – for a period.

Jim and his Belfast-born wife, Rosemary made Omagh their home after a sojourn of number of years in Canada.

Jim was a great singer and in his youth in 1944 he was selected to sing ‘Kelly the Boy From Killane’ on the BBC Radio in Centenary Celebration of the Irish Christian Brothers.

He was a notable table tennis player in the 1940s and ‘50s when table tennis enjoyed a great resurgence in Omagh.

Jim won the Omagh Boys’ Championship Trophy in 1950 having been a close competitor in 1949.

Jim and James McWilliams of Abbey Place founded, with others, the Sinn Féin Alice Milligan (1865 -1953) Cumann in Omagh in 1955.

Jim was fortunate to have heard of Sir Isaac Pitman’s new Universities Press publication company on Montgomery Road in Belfast.

The company was ahead of its time with a decision to employ 200 people from the unemployment register and they had a policy to take six potential employees per week, stipulating that three had to be Protestants and three Catholics.

That was a seminal experience for Jim as, over the following years, he worked as a Reader in Oxford University Press and then in Cambridge University Press, where he has worked since 1976 until his retirement.

Jim was a creative writer and has had many of his poems published in various magazines and books with one sharing the same anthology as Sir John Betjeman, the English Poet Laureate.

He wrote and self published a personal memoir with the title ‘The Donnellys of Glenview and memories of Omagh’ .

Jim contributed to history magazines and church journals most of his life.

He and Rosemary celebrated 61 years of marriage earlier this year.

Father Donal Bennett, (Columban Fathers, Navan) a neighbour and close friend of Jim’s, was the main Celebrant at their Wedding Mass in April 1961.

Jim is mourned by his wife Rosemary, sons, Martin, Colum and daughters Fiona and Emer and brothers Kevin (Paisley, Scotland) and Danny (Dublin) and by many close relations and a host of friends, Ireland, England and Canada.

Jim was pre-deceased by his brothers Gerry, Peadar and Eugene RIP.