The Youghal Gowens: Cornelius 'Con' Joseph Gowen (1915 - 2008)

Cornelius 'Con' Joseph Gowen (sometimes known as 'CJ') - my father - was a son of John 'Gully' Gowen, the 'patriarch' of the Youghal Gowen Clan and Maud Doe.

Con's life has several parallels with that of his father, Gully. His life was spent between Ireland and England. Con also spent some time in the military - in his case the Irish Army. Less attractively, he also abandoned his family in Ireland (subsequently fathering another in England). Like Gully he like to embroider the truth a little in his favour and was - in my experience - a difficult man to live with.

Con was born in England on 10th October 1915 - his birth is registered in Stoke: his father Gully was working in a paper factory as an electrical engineer.

Con joined the Irish Army around the beginning of the Second World War and was based at Kilkenny when he met his first wife Teresa Hogan. They were married in 1941 and they lived for a while in Cork. Around 1945 he was moved to the Curragh army camp (where internees were kept during the war) and they lived in Kilcullen, about 9 miles away.

A team of Irish recruits at the Curragh Camp, just outside Dublin
Source

In 1946 he was released from the Army with a gratuity, having reached the rank of Captain.

As an aside, Con liked to talk about his military career. But his major activity during the war seems to have been to built telegraph lines. He once showed me a line of them - by that time they had tilted out of line, looking like a row of crooked teeth.

The marriage produced three children (all born in Kilcullen):

• Marie (b. 1942), who spent most of her working life at the UN in Geneva
• John (b. 1944), who worked in the Smethwicks brewery in Kilkenny all his working life. He married Gertrude Doherty around 1970 producing twins Frank and Peter (1972) and Aoife (1979)
• Elaine (b. 1946), a music teacher, married Hugh Campbell in 1981, son Michael (b.1982)

Con left his first family behind and headed f'or England in March 1946, embarking on a career in accountancy in London.

His first relationship there, with Hilla Aarnio (from Finland), resulted in me (Hilary Gowen, born in 1953) - a bit of a problem, as they weren't married: no doubt because he was not yet divorced from Teresa (this happened in 1955).

This temporary problem was resolved in 1958 when he married (in Lambeth, London) another foreign lady, Helga Ursula Woelfel (from Germany). This marriage resulted in three more children (all born in Birmingham):

• Maurice (b. 1959), an electrical engineer (like his grandfather) and sadly killed in a diving accident in 2010
• Henry (b. 1961)
• Ann (b. 1964)

Ultimately this second marriage failed and ended in divorce around 1980.

He passed away on September 23, 2008 aged 92 after several years in a nursing home. Paradoxically, his funeral just a few weeks short of his 93rd Birthday brought together members of the two families he fathered.

Thanks to Elaine Campbell (nee Gowen) for many of the details included above.

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