http://www.newsletter.co.uk/story/26391 Titanic Society President John Dies At Age 99 By Lesley Walsh Thursday 2nd March 2006 JOHN Parkinson, president of the Belfast Titanic Society has died, aged 99. 99. The former Harland and Wolff shipyard worker vividly remembered waving the doomed ocean liner farewell as it left the east Belfast yard on April 12, 1912. Mr Parkinson, who taught woodwork in many Belfast schools and colleges, was a regular contributor of junior soccer, bowling and cricket reports to the News Letter and Belfast Telegraph. He is survived by three sons, Ivan, David and Alan. Mr Parkinson’s association with the Titanic emerged when he followed his father Frank into the shipyard as an apprentice joiner. In a recent interview, Mr Parkinson recalled his first days of work at Harland and Wolff at the age of 15, where he had to settle for being an office boy, before union regulations would allow him taking up his trade a year later. So that brings back many memories for me going back to the days when I worked as a wee boy in Harland and Wolff. You were in from 9 o’clock in the morning until 5 at night. The tradesmen, the actual workers in the firm, the bulk of the workers they started an hour earlier, they started at 8 o’clock in the morning. “The office staff didn’t start until 9 but I worked.. I remember putting it on, you had a wee time board, you put it on the time of your hours. It’s remarkable how things stick in your memory and I used to put 8 and two thirds that you worked each day, 8 and two thirds and then Saturday 3 and two thirds. “So if you multiply that up it’s 47 hours a week. Now people work for 20, 30 hours and they complain.” Recalling his father’s association with the yard’s most famous ship, he said: “He worked on the Titanic, putting on doors and all that, the frames. Yes he worked on the Titanic. And he took me down when I was a wee boy. I was just about five years of age or so and he took me down to the Titanic before it was launched in the slipway. “That’s when I first saw the Titanic, before it was launched. I saw it the day it went away, when it went up Belfast Lough, I saw the tugs pulling it up the Belfast Lough.” Working at the shipyard for ten years, Mr Parkinson left to become a technical teacher but always maintained a special fondness for the yard, saying of it later “there was great activity, there was great pride”. Historian and vicepresident of the Titanic Trust, Dr Ian Adamson said Mr Parkinson was a “marvellous old gentleman”. The Belfast councillor last night paid tribute to his old friend. “He was at the forefront of the Titanic movement and I first met him as Lord Mayor at the time of the Titanic Convention on April 15, 1997. “He was just a rare individual with great humour and charisma and will be remembered throughout Belfast and indeed the entire world among Titanic enthusiasts.” Describing him as a romantic Dr Adamson said he held a “romanticism for the sea” and would be “sorely missed”._________________Gabs Burr Point, Ballyhalbert – The most easterly point in the whole of Ireland
