Globe-trotting Girvan remembered at funeral service in Offaly

Rev. McKay, aged 94, ministered in his native Scotland and Argentina before moving to Ireland.

Following his retirement he and his wife, Maire, continued to live in Tullamore, on the Clonminch road.

He took a very active part in the local community and was involved in numerous groups including the Gramophone Society and Midlands Astronomy Club, of which he was a former chairperson.

His memorial service took place on Saturday last, January 13, in Tullamore Presbyterian Church, and was conducted by the local Minister, Rev. William Hayes.

Also in attendance was Rt. Rev Dr Sam Mawhinney, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, who led the prayers of thanksgiving and intercession.

Girvan McKay [Garbhan MacAoidh] was formerly Minister in Tullamore and Mountmellick Presbyterian Churches from 1983 to 1996.

Prior to that he ministered in Waterford and Kilkenny Presbyterian Churches and in Scotland and Argentina.

In a wide-ranging sermon at his funeral service on Saturday afternoon, Rev. William Hayes said: “Girvan McKay was born in Bolivia in 1929. Just in time for the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression.

Not long after his family moved to Spain. Just in time for the start of the Spanish Civil War.

They moved to Portugal which was under the Salazar dictatorship and then home to Scotland. Just in time for the ten-year-old Girvan to hear Mr. Chamberlain announce on the radio that Britain was, once again, at war with Germany.

Eighteen months later, their house was blown up by the Luftwaffe.

Not long after the end of the war Girvan put his budding linguistic schools to good use by working as a newsreader on the radio in occupied Germany. The newsroom was a multilingual place broadcasting in German, English and Italian and it was also a place filled with jokes and humour as he and his colleagues would make up stories and see if they could trick their fellow newsreaders into reading them out on the air.

Whilst in Germany, Girvan demonstrated his frugality and maybe a little bit of his eccentricity when his mother discovered upon visiting him that, in order to save money and water, he washed his clothes, along with himself, in the bath at the same time!

In Germany he encountered the Berlitz language school and upon returning home he used some of that money that he had saved to buy himself a Berlitz language school in Manchester.

Manchester wasn’t all work and he went along to An Comunn Gaidhlig, the Scots Gaelic society where according to Maire, the young men would travel to the events wearing their trousers and change in the privacy of the hall into their kilts for the dancing.

Girvan was more of a talker than a dancer but one day he spotted a beautiful young lady call Maire dancing with her brother Tony and got chatting with them. There was initially some confusion as he thought that Tony was Maire’s boyfriend and upon Tony saying, “That’s not my girlfriend, that’s my sister!” their fates were sealed.

Maire and Girvan were soon married in 1959 and Ruairidh the first son came along in 1960.

To add to their marital joy Girvan’s parents decided that they would move to Manchester and help them run the language school. From the bustling metropolis of Manchester they moved to Fair Isle. The southernmost of the Shetland Islands whose name in Old Norse carries the double-meaning of far-away island.

We’ll stop our story there because not only was another child going to arrive on Fair Isle in the form of Conall but a change in career and calling on the part of Girvan that would change the rest of their lives.

Girvan was a lover of all languages and one of the slightly scary things about going to visit him was that whether at home or at hospital he would occasionally ask me questions about Hebrew and Greek! I didn’t have the heart to tell him how badly I had done at those at university.

We are going to hear Psalm 23. Not in its original Hebrew but in a language very close to the heart of Girvan which was Esperanto, an artificial language that was created by Ludwig Zamenhof with the goal of bringing people together in the world under a simple and easy to use international language.

We have got as far as Fair Isle in the early 1960s and everybody on the island of 45 people had a role on the island. So, what was Girvan’s role? Well Girvan had done a bit of preaching in the past and so he continued to do a bit of preaching on Fair Isle. He became so good at it that he was encouraged by the local Church of Scotland folk to make things a bit more formal.

He became something like what we might call in the Presbyterian church in the modern day an accredited preacher and then continued to study in Aberdeen for a theology degree travelling back and forth.

It must be said that this was not the only travelling back and forth that was done. Maire at this time was about to have Conall and so had to leave the island for a couple of months to safely have her baby.

So, after leaving the double figure population of Fair Isle for a brief stint in rural Aberdeenshire at the heart of Lewis Grassic Gibbon territory where would you go next?

Amazingly the next call was to that other Big Apple, not New York but Buenos Aires. They moved to the Belgrano and then Temperley parishes where Girvan took on the task of re-orienting the church from being a small, inward looking, English speaking ex-pat community of Scottish and Scottish descended people to being an outward looking, Spanish speaking church at the heart of their community.

I was in contact with the church in Buenos Aires to tell them about Girvan’s death and the congregation there is thriving, Spanish speaking and at the heart of a network of similar churches in Argentina. They sent over a photo of a very young looking Girvan and gave this message to the family. “Our warmest hug to those who will miss him; may the very same God who received Rev. McKay in His presence, give them comfort and peace in their hearts.”

Changing the culture of a church is tough, heart-breaking work and Maire and Girvan faced a great deal of opposition in trying to make the community live up to their calling as a church to go into all the world. The results of that work as seen in Buenos Aires, Kilkenny and here in Tullamore is clear as seen from the perspective of forty, fifty and sixty years later.

At the time it must have felt brutally disappointing, but the work of ministry is the work of decades, it is the work sometimes of clearing fields to plough and sow. What can look more lifeless than a freshly cleared and ploughed field? And yet God honours that work with the slow and incremental growth that one day yields a great harvest and builds his kingdom.

Before coming to Ireland however there was brief sojourn on the Isle of Skye where, just in time to be a native-born Scot, Somhairle came into the world in Inverness Hospital.

Despite going back to his Gaelic speaking heartlands it turned out that the people of Skye were not really a good fit for the McKay family and vice versa. Girvan caused controversy by taking part in the Western Isles equivalent of the Fleadh Cheoil called the Mod, after the church service he would go off for a relaxing walk – something very controversial in the strictly Sabbatarian Hebrides and, to top it all off, he was once caught cutting the grass on a Sunday!

The blue skies of the Irish Republic proved a better fit than the grey clouds of the Hebrides and he finished the latter half of his ministry in Kilkenny and Waterford and later Tullamore and Mountmellick.

One person said that especially in the last weeks and months of his ministry that there seemed to be a renewed vigour and freedom to his preaching, along with a renewed emphasis on trusting in Jesus.

I want to close this section in paying tribute to the faithfulness of Girvan and Maire who ministered in this congregation and in Mountmellick through difficult years of decline and hardship. It is one thing being faithful in the easy times of growth and development – it is quite another to have the strong faith that carries a congregation through hard times in their community and times of decline. Maire and Girvan chose to settle in Tullamore after Girvan’s retirement and they are people who have taken the concept of active retirement very seriously. We could start talking about the Astronomy club, the political activities, the walking group, the Gramophone Society, the French lessons with Jim but if I were to continue to list these we would be here all afternoon and I would certainly end up leaving organisations out.

Girvan remained very active, writing and publishing, walking and learning almost right up to the end of his life. He was someone that those words of the 23rd Psalm fitted well – “Nur bono kaj favoro sekvos min en la daŭro de mia tuta vivo” “Your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.”

In an online tribute to the deceased, Midlands Astronomy Club posted: “ It is with deep sadness and regret that Midlands Astronomy Club wishes to advise of the passing of Girvan McKay, former Chairperson and long-standing member of our club.

There are many friends here that will remember meeting Girvan at a club meeting, or at the Irish Astrofest and Cosmos Star Parties over the years. His club lectures on our yearly calendar were never normal.

Indeed, when his name popped up on the roster you could almost be sure it was something to do with communication, alien languages, and even the potential diversity of life away from Earth. “

Deepest sympathies are extended to Rev. McKay's wife Máire, sons Ruairidh, Conall and Somhairle, his daughters-in-law and grandchildren, his wider family and his wide circle of friends.

May he rest in peace.