extracts from Mrs O'Gorman's obituary in the Newmarket
Journal, 30th January 2020
Marie O’Gorman
A Requiem Mass was held at Newmarket Roman Catholic Church of
Our Lady Immaculate and St Etheldreda on January 20, to
celebrate the life of Marie Eaton O’Gorman, latterly of the
Montana Nursing Home run by nuns of the Benedictine Order in
Great Barton. Mrs O’Gorman died in West Suffolk Hospital on
December 20 in her hundredth year.
Born in Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles,
Mrs O’Gorman was educated there before going on to graduate
with a mathematics degree from the University of Aberdeen.
While she was later teaching in Dumfries, she met her
husband-to-be, Paddy O’Gorman, who was working for the wartime
Ministry of Agriculture Committee in the area. The couple
married towards the end of the war and moved to Cambridge and
subsequently to Exning where Mr O’Gorman renewed the equine
interests which had started in his native County Cork.
While he set up and ran a successful yard where he broke in
yearlings belonging to a number of the leading Newmarket
trainers of the time and ran Scaltback Stud, Mrs O’Gorman
taught Maths at Soham Grammar School, now the Village
College.
Her husband gained a trainers’ licence in 1953, training a
handful of of winners before horses belonging to the South
African millionaire J S Gerber came to him in the late 1950s.
Mr and Mrs O’Gorman and their family moved to Shalfleet
Stables, in Bury Road, in 1960 and subsequently to Graham
House Stables on Birdcage Walk where he trained the winners of
a number of big races.
Throughout his career, Mrs O’Gorman supported her husband, as
well as bringing up their five children. After his sudden
death in 1969, their eldest son Bill took over the Graham
Place yard and Mrs O’Gorman went back to teaching at St Louis
Primary School, in Newmarket, and worked privately with
children who needed extra help with reading.
A devout Roman Catholic, Mrs O’Gorman was involved with groups
at the Church in Exeter Road and also enjoyed her membership
of the local University of the Third Age until she reached 90.
Mrs O’Gorman leaves her sons Bill, Dick and Michael, daughters
Sarah and Christine, grandchildren PJ, Emma, Joey, Sophie,
Nicholas, Anthea, Lydia, William, Marie, Charles, Philip and
Lydia, and 14 great-grandchildren.
Family mourners at the funeral service, which was conducted by
Father Anthony Foreman and Father Christopher Smith and was
followed by private interment at Newmarket Cemetery, were Bill
and Elaine O’Gorman, Dick and Jackie O’Gorman, Sarah Esler,
Christine Alexander, Michael and Anna O’Gorman together with
grandchildren and great grandchildren.
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