Mystery over father’s 50-year disappearance solved after news article

A man whose father abandoned his Irish family almost 50 years ago and vanished without trace believes the mystery over his fate has been solved thanks to a newspaper article four months ago.

John Richards Jr (74) said he was tormented by what became of his father who abandoned his family twice – the second time in 1974 – and had no further contact with his wife and children left behind in Cork.

John, with his wife Mary ‘Nell’ Richards, has battled ill-health over recent times, but said he was determined to fulfil a decades-old ambition to discover what happened to his father… and lay to rest suspicions his father had a second family.

An article published in the Irish Independent last February sparked a search that is believed to have traced his vanished father and the second family that John always suspected he had.

Nell said the newspaper article was followed up on by an RTÉ Radio One team as part of a documentary.

A genealogist was consulted and expert research from birth and death records found evidence that John’s father died in Surrey in England in 2009.

Records indicate he not only had a wife in England but also five children. It is believed his Surrey-based widow is still alive.

“John apparently has three half-brothers and two half-sisters living in the UK,” Nell said.

“I think he always suspected his father had a second family in the UK, but knowing he has half-brothers and sisters there is unbelievable.

“It is incredible what that one article started. We thought we would never find out what happened to him [John Sr].”

What shocked the Cork family is that John’s father apparently lived until the age of 87 and lived for 35 years in the UK without attempting to make contact with his Irish children.

John Joseph Alfred Richards abandoned his Cork family not once, but twice. When he left a second time in 1974 from their Fermoy, Co Cork home he broke his wife Sheila’s heart.

“Sometime around 1952 my father went to the UK for work,” John Jr explained. “He was supposed to send money back to his family in Cork, but we never heard a word from him for almost 20 years.”

Just weeks before John’s planned wedding to Nell in October 1973, his father sent a letter to his wife, Sheila, asking if he could return home.

“My brother Donal and I were both adults in our 20s at this stage,” John said.

“We were leaving home so I had no problem with my father returning home if it made my mother happy.”

His father duly arrived at the family’s home at Connolly Street in Fermoy and attended John Jr’s wedding to Nell.

The only photographs John Jr now has of his father are those from that Fermoy wedding. He often looks at the wedding photographs and notes how delighted his mother appears to be.

“My mother was a different woman when he arrived home. She was smiling, she was happy and she was clearly delighted to have him home.”

All seemed well for about a year. John Jr’s father was a talented tradesman and was never short of work in the carpentry, plumbing and brick-laying sectors.

For his own part, John Jr got a job in Cork and was arriving back in Fermoy from work in December 1974 when he saw his father walking up the town with a suitcase.

“That was the last we ever saw or heard from him,” he said. “That is almost 50 years ago and we never even heard a word to say that he had passed away which, at this stage, I presume he must have.”

In the weeks before his father left the family for a second time, a letter arrived addressed to him from the UK.

Unbeknownst to his father, John Jr and his brother Donal opened the letter.

It was from a woman in the UK who said that if John Sr didn’t return to the UK immediately his seven-year-old daughter would be put on a ferry to travel alone to his ­Fermoy address.

“That little girl must be around 55 years old now,” said John Jr.

“I can only assume that my father may also have had other children in the UK.

“At this stage in my life, I would love to get to meet them, and find out what actually happened to my father.”

John Sr had met Sheila when he was a member of the Defence Forces stationed at Fermoy’s Fitzgerald Camp.

John discovered that his father – named John Joseph Alfred Richards – was born in Wales on April 22, 1922. The family may have had mining connections in Wales.

Relatives in the UK had a strong connection to the military and are believed to have served both in Palestine and during the Suez campaign.

However, John Alfred was raised by a Mary Byrne at Avon Cottage in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow.

Why the young boy grew up in Wicklow is a mystery, but it is believed there was some familial connection between Mary Byrne and the Wales-based Richards family.

John Sr joined the Defence Forces as a private on September 25 1946. He was compassionately discharged on March 17 1948, one month after marrying Sheila in Fermoy.​

John Jr said that after his father departed for a second time in December 1974, his mother Sheila never spoke about him again. ​She was diagnosed with cancer and died aged 59 in July 1983.

His father, to the best of his knowledge, never made contact with his mother or his Irish family after 1974.

“She never spoke about it to us, but she was heartbroken,” John Jr said of his mother.

“I can forgive my father for leaving our family for the first time. But not for a second time. I think it was the ‘not knowing’ that was the hardest.

“We never heard a word from him after December 1974.

“My brother Donal passed away last year, so, really I would just like to know what happened to my father. It would also be nice to meet up with any half-sisters and half-brothers I might have in the UK.”

Nell said direct contact between the families has not yet been made. But it is hoped a future meeting can be arranged

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