A fighter returns to boyhood roots
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| Billy with his sisters Ethna Lewis, Ballymore; and Anna May Lincoln Schwer, Luton; and his wife Wendy. |
When Billy Schwer came over from Luton, England, to the recent Picnic on the Green organised by the Old Kilcullen Area Community Association, it was special because the event was being held just beside where he had been born 80 years ago, writes Brian Byrne. At that time his father and mother ran a pub on Old Kilcullen green, which had been in the family since at least his grandmother Ellen Byrne's time. Though his parents sold the pub when Billy was seven or eight and moved to another one in nearby Milemill, Billy does have some recollection of his first home. "I remember going out on the green and watching the swallows diving about, and my Mum in the kitchen with the churn, making butter," he says. "And I remember a maypole dance thing on the green one year, maybe 1947 or 1948."
As he grew towards his teens in Milemill, the young Billy became interested in boxing. "Paddy Aspell lived down the road from me, and he took me to the loft in The Hideout where the Kilcullen Boxing Club trained. When we'd arrive we'd have to sweep the shavings off the floor, because they used make coffins there. Then we'd put up the bags and the ring." He loved the game from the start, and others in the club became good friends, including Hugh Peacocke, Bernard Berney, Mick McCartan, and Seamus Aspell. He has memories of road training — "they'd take us out running and we'd follow behind an old van" — and also of the chief trainer, Capt Cyril Russel, a member of the Irish Army. "He taught me everything, how to throw a straight left hand and all that."
Trained well, Billy progressed to winning Irish Juvenile Champion three years in a row from 1954. He had potential for great things, but, at the young age when it was then normal to leave school, he was pushed into a different direction. "A big local horse trainer, Paddy Prendergast, used to follow my boxing. I was small, only four stone seven, and he suggested to my Dad that I'd make a good lightweight jockey and he sent me to England when I was 14. I was on my own, an apprentice jockey in Epsom, but two years later my Dad sold the pub in Milemill and they moved to Luton. I got homesick when they all moved over, so I gave up being a jockey and moved to Luton to be with them."
Whatever the promise of potential success as a jockey in England, Billy had never felt comfortable from the time he boarded the boat to cross the Irish Sea. "I remember that train for years afterwards, going bop-boom, bop-boom, bop-boom. I was staying in digs at Ashstead owned by French woman. You can imagine what I felt like, no friends, no mates, no nothing, completely on my own. After my parents moved to Luton I used to take a Green Line bus every weekend to see them, and finally I moved up there to be with them, to be part of a family again."
His Dad had got a job with the SKF ball bearing company, and settled quickly into establishing the new home for that family — Billy figures it must have been difficult for him to be working in a factory after always have worked in his own business. Meantime, while he was training to be a jockey, Billy had maintained his interest in boxing. And it was his success with the gloves that resulted in him getting a job for himself in Luton. "I had been boxing in Leatherhead for the Southern Counties Championship. When I moved to Luton, Vauxhall Motors wanted me to box for their factory club, and gave me a job and I boxed there as a Senior. It was quite the thing then in big companies to have their own boxing clubs, with regular tournaments bringing in fighters from other companies."
During his time with Vauxhall Kilcullen called him again, in the form of Paddy Aspell wanting him to box for his original club at national level. He brought Billy back for training on weekends, and in 1961, over three successive weeks, Billy fought his way through to the finals of the Senior Irish Featherweight Championship, taking the title. He subsequently fought for Ireland and for England on the amateur circuit on the two islands, and continued boxing competitively until he was 25. By then he was married, with his own family started, having met Wendy, his wife to be, many years before, through boxing. "Her brother was also boxing for Vauxhall, and she came along to see him one night. She was 15, I was 17 or eighteen — and now we've been married for 59 years."
Tiring of working in a factory, Billy set up his own business as a welder, repairing rusting cars. "I set up in a garage at the end of my house, dug a pit, and went around all the car dealerships offering to repair cars that had failed their MOT because of rust — all cars rusted in those days. I built up a light engineering business, later rented a big yard and had a couple of lads working for me. It has been quite successful."
Boxing has always being a predominant part of Billy's life, so when he retired from competitive fighting he still continued his interest. He was asked to train the local Luton Irish club, and when his own son Billy was ten, he also joined that club. It was probably inevitable that young Billy would be a boxer, his Dad agrees. "He went on and boxed for England, and got to the ABA finals, where he was beaten. But Mickey Duff, the famous professional manager, had noticed him." The upshot was that young Billy turned professional when he was 19. He has had a very successful pro career, beginning with winning the coveted Lonsdale Belt in 1994 and twice winning Lightweight in the British & Commonwealth Championships in the mid-1990s. He also became European Champion. "He fought three times for the World Championships, losing twice but never giving up and finally winning it too," his Dad notes with obvious pride. He is very positive about the benefits of boxing to young people. "It gives them discipline, they're told what to do and they do it, and they learn how to defend themselves. More than anything, it gives them respect for other people — they know what they can do, but they do it in the ring."
Like so many Irish before him and since, Billy Schwer adopted England as his home, got work, built a business, and raised his family. But there's always the pull of that original home. In this case, Kilcullen and the local area. "It always has been home, especially Milemill and Old Kilcullen. I remember when I won the Irish Senior Title, with the help of Paddy Aspell and Pat Lynch, they paraded me through Kilcullen on the back of a lorry, and I was quite famous, I suppose." He has very fond memories for Paddy Aspell, from both his Juvenile and Senior winning days — "Paddy was in my corner all the time."
Inevitably, the place he left as a still-young boy isn't what he grew up in. "Because of my age, perhaps, there's not too many people in Kilcullen who know me any more. But Porky Lambe is a good old friend of mine, we went to school together." Billy also has three sisters, in Luton, Ballymore Eustace, and Ballyhaunis Co Mayo, and on this recent trip they were all together. He took the opportunity too to also drive around the old haunts. "I went around Milemill, and around the Green Avenue, and places like that, from my childhood."
Even if they're not quite the same, the places from our childhood are still there. Still the same in our memories.
NOTE: This article was first published in The Kildare Nationalist.
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