Kathleen 'Tattens' Toomey:Kathleen Toomey, better known to innumerable customers of Bewleys as "Tattens", died in the Mater hospital, Dublin, last weekend, aged 74. For generations of people going to Bewleys in Dublin city centre, she was the very personification of the famous cafes.
Born in 1932 in Dunlavin, Co Wicklow, where her father was a farmer, Tattens and her twin sister, Bridie, both came to Dublin to join Bewleys on the same day in 1948 and began work as waitresses. Both spent their entire working lives there; Bridie died in December, 2001 and Tattens worked in Bewleys on Grafton Street until it closed, at the end of the Campbell Catering regime, on Christmas Eve, 2004.
For successive generations of customers, Tattens was the public face of Bewleys. Many other waitresses clad in their traditional black dresses and white aprons were held in much affection by patrons over the years, but none achieved such high standing as Tattens, who became an iconic byword for Bewleys far beyond Ireland.
At the end of 2004, she presided over the book of "condolences" signed by an endless stream of customers, old timers and newer ones alike. By this time, she had become almost the "queen" of the Grafton Street cafe.
Rachel Bewley-Bateman remembers that in earlier times in Bewleys, they gave Tattens the childish nickname of "large coffee", because they often saw her going up to the serving counter to order large coffees for customers in her rather grand voice.
As for her nickname, by which she was universally known, she had a typically elliptical reply when a customer once asked her about its origins. She said merely that she came from a most unusual family.
However, when she was a child growing up on the family farm in Dunlavin, she was nicknamed "Tat" and somehow this got elongated in later life into Tattens.
Working well past standard retirement age, Tattens remained a role model for younger members of staff and had a remarkable empathy with younger women working on the cafe floor alongside her. After Bewleys had come close to collapse in the mid-1980s and Campbell Catering took over the firm in 1986, Patrick and Veronica Campbell took an immediate shine to Tattens and became devoted to her.
She always held a special place in the hearts of the Campbell family and Patrick Campbell painted her portrait, which was on display during the funeral service this week at Our Lady of Victories church in Ballymun.
After Campbell Catering had taken over the firm, management consultants were helping to draw up a survival plan for Bewleys. They asked who on the staff would be a role model for the perfect employee, totally adept at working with the other staff and equally skilled in looking after customers. Tattens was immediately proposed as that ideal choice.
In her latter years in Grafton Street, when advancing years were slowing her down, the Campbells, while telling Tattens it was up to her to decide when she wanted to retire, ensured that she had lighter duties. In her final years in Grafton Street, she became the maitre d' of the establishment, meeting and greeting customers, many of long acquaintance, some newer.
Often, after people who had been living abroad for years returned home to Ireland, their first question when they returned to Bewleys was "how is Tattens?"
She was renowned for her sense of humour, often based on sharp and sometimes slightly wicked, but never malicious, observations on the procession of customers through the cafe.
She was also renowned for her caring nature. Close to 20 years ago, when the late Jonathan Philbin Bowman was a regular in the Grafton Street cafe, if he had to rush out on a sudden assignment, he left his then infant son in the capable caring hands of Tattens.
Outside work, she was a very private, self-effacing person who never talked about her personal life and characteristically, when she was diagnosed with cancer some years ago, she was reluctant to acknowledge that she was even sick. She was also a woman of strong faith and every morning, before she started work in Bewleys, she went to the nearby Clarendon Street church to pay her religious respects. She also retained a great sense of interest in what her extended family was doing.
One of her great hobbies was going abroad on holidays, especially to warm and sunny destinations. Quite often, some of the younger waitresses went on holiday with her. In the evenings, while they would be dressed in casual attire for dinner, Tattens would take great delight in dressing up, complete with her costume jewellery. She was renowned for her sense of style.
Sometimes, those very same work colleagues got the benefit of her rather lopsided sense of fun. One waitress whose maiden name was Helen Privett, was always described on dockets that Tattens wrote as "Miss Hedge".
At home in Glasnevin, her favourite television programme was Coronation Street. She also much enjoyed walking with her sister, Bridie.
Tattens was a person of great physical stamina, an essential ingredient for cafe work.
When the end came for the ancien regime in Bewleys at the end of 2004, Tattens was a dignified bastion of strength for the rest of the staff, as her beloved Bewleys closed, fortunately only temporarily.
At her funeral last Wednesday, followed by burial in St Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, so many former colleagues of hers from Bewleys attended that it was like one final farewell for the old-style Bewleys.
She is survived by her brother Jim (Dunlavin) , sister Ann (Dublin), nephews, nieces, grandnephews and grandnieces.
Kathleen "Tattens" Toomey, born July 20th, 1932; died February 18th, 2007