By Brian McDaid
I can hear the tap-tap-tapping before I can see him as I climb the old broken steps.
I follow the sound to the highest point in the graveyard. There are a few lawn mowers working away in one of the newer sections of Conwal Graveyard.
I’m meeting up with Johnny McCormack who is working on his very last job. He’s retiring after spending his life working in the hand crafted memorial family business.
His grandfather, the late John Daly, after whom Johnny was called, set up his business on the Back Road in Letterkenny in 1939.
This morning, Johnny is half way through his final job at the bottom of a family gravestone. There are no power tools involved as Johnny sits low on the gravel on a grave.
His tools are a 2lb hammer and a chisel that comes from France. A sharpening stone embedded with small pieces of diamond, lies on the kerb surrounding the grave. It’s used to sharpen the tungsten carbide lettering chisel that cuts its way into the hardest of granite headstones.
The handtools of Johnny McCormack’s trade, a 2lb hammer and a hardened chisel which have cut out many a name on gravestones over the years.
Johnny uses a scribe to mark the outline of the name and details. In the gravestone he has matched the style of type previously written on the stone.
Johnny even knows by the finish of the writing who had added the names over the years. “That’s my unclue Hugo’s work there,” he points out. “He cut the names into the stone when it was erected in 1967.
“That’s Terry Ponsonby’s work there. Terry lived out in the Oldtown. He added that name in 1977, and that last name was cut out by machine in 1990.
“I had to square that up a bit as it comes to the bottom,” Johnny explains.
I can’t really work out what he’s chatting about at first, but all these details matter to Johnny. This is the last name that Johnny will officially cut into stone before he retires that evening.
“I’m not getting any younger” Johnny jokes as he gets up to his feet and gives his body a break from the position that he was sitting in for the last hour or so.
The two of us are townsfolk and there are people buried out in Conwal that we both knew when we were growing up.
“Wait to you see this stone,” Johnny points, as he moves to another nearby plot
“I think this is one of the nicest stones in the graveyard.
“This man was the foreman at the building of the new cathedral back in the day. His name was Micheal Dawson.
“That family were stonemasons in the town. That’s where my grandfather John Daly served his apprenticeship.
“Over the years when the Dawson family finished up in the memorial business they would always give our family a call to add a name to this headstone.”
Johnny McCormack in his typical pose working on his very last commission at Conwal Graveyard before he officially retires.
Johnny takes great pride in pointing out some of the work that he did himself – a name added almost 20 years ago, and looking as good all these years later.
“My grandfather Johnny added names to this stone over the years, as did my uncles Hugo and Tommy.”
In his younger years, Johnny McCormack attended St Eunan’s College and also worked with Mickey Cullen, the local fish merchant in Letterkenny.
Mickey had an old Morris van that he drove around Letterkenny with a loud speaker selling fish.
Some might recall a young Johnny regularly dressed as a fisherman sitting on the top of the van in the parade at the International Folk Festival.
Johnny was always into art, loved drawing and sketching but didn’t really like school.
It was his grandfather Johnny that asked his mother Margaret (née Daly) if she would consider taking him out of school to work in the family business. Johnny was the first grandson in the family and became the third generation of the Daly family along with his uncles Tommy, Hugo and grandfather John to work in ‘John Daly and Sons Memorials.’
Over the years the way that lettering work is carried out on gravestones has changed. The graphics are styled on computer and the information transferred and cut into a rubber template before the engraving is sandblasted onto the stone.
Johnny though prefers the old ways.
“I never had an email and I don’t really do any of that social media craic.”
Just to back that point up, his old Nokia phone sits on the lid of his tin case used to carry his chisels.
Along with his work with Daly Memorials, Johnny has built up a lot of contacts over the years, working with families and also being commissioned by undertakers and solicitors.
He has travelled to all parts of Donegal including the islands to add names to family headstones.
He recalls a family contacting him with details of a death and he was asked to let them know when he was carrying out the work.
On the day he went to do the work, three grown men arrived and sat beside each other along the grave kerb in silent tears as Johnny cut the name of their late mother on to the family gravestone.
He was also faced with a situation where a family member turned up and instructed him not to write the name of a child that was born out of wedlock who was laid to rest in a family plot.
Johnny asked the family member what the child had ever done to them. The person stormed out of the graveyard and Johnny left the grave and started on another job in the area.
Later that evening when Johnny was about to wrap up, the family member returned in a quieter manner and told Johnny that he thought about what he said and asked him if he would go ahead and put the name on the stone.
One final job
At 3.30pm on Thursday last week, July 24, 2025, Johnny officially finished up. I called out to see him and watched him standing high on the hillside looking over the graveyard into Letterkenny.
Johnny McCormack at the gravestone of the Dawson family who were stonemasons in Letterkenny, where Johnny’s grandfather served his apprenticeship. Over the years three generations of the team at Daly Memorials have worked on the headstone, adding names down through time.
Johnny originally planned to retire on his birthday in May this year but a lot of his customers wanted wee jobs done before he finished, So Johnny booked a holiday for the end of July and that would be his cut off point to wind things up.
The last job that Johnny carried out was on a gravestone high on the hillside beside the old ruins of the old church.
Charles Coyle was the name that Johnny cut into the black granite stone of a family plot. On Wednesday morning a death certificate was obtained and on Thursday afternoon Johnny had the details on the family gravestone.
Charles Coyle was buried with his parents Charles and Rose Ann Coyle. He was their youngest son. He never married and was the last of his family to live in the old family farm in Listack. It’s 38 years since he passed on.
Coincidentally he also happened to be my grand-uncle. As a child this was the grave that my mother, Mary Ellen, my auntie, Bida, and their father, my grandfather, Willie Pop Coyle would visit.
We loved climbing the steps through the hole in the wall and playing in the graveyard as the older ones went up to say their prayers at the grave. I remembered it as my granny, Bridget Coyle’s grave. She passed away in 1967.
Little did I know that from 1970 we would spend a lot of our childhood visiting my own mother Mary Ellen’s grave. She passed away just three years after her mother. Over the years as children we would run up to find granny’s grave high on the hillside and say a wee prayer for her. These days, I find myself spending hours roaming around visiting the graves of people I knew.
As a child I remember my grand-uncle Charlie (Charles Coyle) whose name is going on this stone today. He used to call into his brother’s house at the foot of the town.
Charlie was a lovely man and would sit with us to have dinner. He would wind my Antie Bida up. He wore big boots, a big long coat and a cap.
He talked awful fast and when he was leaving his brother’s house, his brother and niece Bida would stand at the door as he headed out over the Oldtown Bridge up to Listack.
Just before he would go out of sight he would turn and look back to us standing at the door and at the top of his voice he would call ‘goodbye Bida’
There are three generations of the Coyle family buried in the family plot. Charlie was 90 when he passed on in 1987. As the generation after him became older it became more difficult for them to climb the old broken steps to the top of the graveyard and they never got around to adding his details to the headstone.
Johnny McCormack busy at work at Conwal graveyard.
For nearly 40 years the youngest son of the Coyle family from Listack was unnamed in the family grave. This week Johnny McCormack sorted that.
“I fished with your uncle Johnny you know,” Johnny tells me, pointing to another name on the headstone.
“Myself and my cousin, Philip Daly – we went sea fishing off the rocks around Donegal. I was thinking about him today looking at his name on the stone there. It’s hard to believe he’s gone 35 years.”
Johnny packs up his wee boxes of chisels, a steel ruler, a small pencil and a special hammer, the head of which has changed into the shape of a dome after years of being used to carefully cut names of loved ones into stone.
The sound of Johnny McCormack’s tap-tap-tapping will be heard no more.
