This book is dedicated to the people who lived, worked, and raised their families in Merasheen, and whose ties with their home and their friends are still strong, both in them and in their children. lt is not being put together for commercial purposes, but hopefully will bring back some warm memories to those who are familiar with the people, the songs, and the incidents referred to, and will also serve as a memento to our reunion.

In this book are some short profiles or stories on most of the father figures of our community; some of the songs we sang down through the years, a short story on those few men who began their lives fishing in Merasheen, who were resettled and who return every year to continue their work along with a selection of pictures of various parts of the harbour or community.

After beginning work on this book, we quickly came to the realization that we were trying to do a very big job in a very short period of time. ln trying to have this book available by mid-July, in time for the reunion, we could not adequately research the songs of the older generation nor the facts and stories concerning them. Accordingly, there are certainly many good stories, songs and people who do not appear in this book and for that we apologize.

In doing profiles and stories, we decided to take the generation of our grandfathers since this would allow us to include every family in Merasheen without getting into large number as would be the case if we chose our father’s generation.

In choosing songs to be included, we did not choose them by singling out the best singers and then including one of their songs. Instead, we tried to choose songs that were popular party songs, particularly in the last ten to fifteen years that the community existed. By doing this, we hope to have included songs that are known by young and old alike. This prevented us from including many excellent songs and singers of the older generation.

Obviously, we did not have personal knowledge of most of the facts included in this book since they took place long before our time. Our basis of knowledge, therefore, was the memories and verbal relations of some very generous people. ln most instances, time did not permit us to confirm our facts from more than one source, so we ask you to bear with any small inaccuracies that may have been included.

Our pictures were not taken by professional photographers, but were gathered up from anyone who had a camera and pictures of our days in Merasheen.

We trust that this book will reawaken some memories and be a memento of our days in Merasheen and of our “REUNION 1980".

Loyola Pomroy & Bill Wilson

© William J. Wilson and Loyola Pomroy, 1980

Digital edition notes:  Thanks to Bill and Loyola for their permission to re-publish the reunion book in digital form.  We owe them tremendous thanks for the gigantic effort in collecting and publishing the 1980 Reunion Book (and founding the whole Reunion process).   Every effort was made to follow the original document format but some tweaks had to be made to accomodate presentation in a responsive format across multiple displays and OS.  Please advise on any errors or ommissions.