Early Life
The family was originally from the Marrowbone area, on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast. The family had to move when Bobby was very young due to loyalist attacks on the district, moving to Manor Street, an interface area also in north Belfast. Bobby’s father, also Bobby, along with Sam O’Hanlon, were involved in the defence of their area in the 1970s.
Bobby was one of four children, two brothers, Seamus and Brian, and Geraldine, his sister. Seamus escaped from Crumlin Road Jail in 1971. Seamus and Bobby’s father had been arrested after a raid on their home which uncovered a rifle and a pistol. His father was later released but Seamus was charged, escaping a couple of months later.
On his mother Peggy’s side of the family there was also a history of republicanism, but Bobby, according to An Phoblacht, says “the dominant influences on” him “were the events that were happening around” him. These included the McGurk's Bar bombing in the New Lodge, some of those killed being people who knew his family, and also Bloody Sunday 1972. This then lead to his attempts to join the IRA.
Bobby left school when he was fifteen and went to work with his father selling fruit. At sixteen, he became a member of the IRA.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Storey
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“I do not know that I meet, in any of my Walks, Objects which move both my Spleen and Laughter so effectually, as those Young Fellows ... who rise early for no other Purpose but to publish their Laziness.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)