Heard it through the Grapevine…
“I never was an important person in the town at all.”
Jim Boal is emphatic as he tells me this.
At 91 he lives a gentle life close to the sea along the Bangor coastline. His home is full of memories, from photographs of his wife Margaret who died some years ago, to scrapbooks recording significant professional and personal moments, to objects which show his love for his career as a pharmacist in the city over many decades.
If he had spent his time working solely dispensing medicines and aides, that would have been enough for any person intent on helping fellow humans, but Jim did much more and this conversation covers just some of those achievements.
Pictures from left: Jim Boal in his first shop; an advertisement from the local paper; the interior of The Grapevine youth centre and a publicity shot taken to publicise Jim’s Bang & Olufsen merchandise in his second shop on Queen’s Parade.
As a schoolboy living in the Shrewsbury area off the Belfast Road, he started a soccer team – the Burnside Rovers – and the boys returned jam jars to save for their kit. He became a chemist. He invented a pill dispenser. He started Bangor Camera Club. He was an early-adapter of new audio technology. He worked in the evenings with young people. He facilitated the opening of the YMCA in Bangor. He wrote professional manuals on nursing home care.
Most importantly, he is the adored head of a family who – in the course of making this podcast – admitted that even they hadn’t realised how much their father and grandfather had done with his life.
As you will hear, Jim is one of our unsung heroes and inspite of his insistence, so vital to what we have now in Bangor.
It was such a privilege and pleasure to talk to him.