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 BANNER: Tony Whelan did a little bit of everything as factory manager and later in his semi-retired role, stepping in to teach and work wherever he was needed.

TONY WHELAN, JR.
January 4, 1951 – July 19, 2025

Tony, June 2019, Sallynoggin, at the reception recognizing current & retired staff
at the launch of The Peterson Pipe: the Story of Kapp & Peterson. 

I first met Tony on our research trip to Dublin in 2013 for the Peterson book. He was intensely focused, a great listener, and eager to share his passion–making Peterson pipes. In the candid photo below, he was giving Gigi and I the beginning-to-end tour of how a Peterson pipe is made.  At that time–just 12 years ago, amazingly–no one in the US really knew the myriad steps that go into the making of the functional art that his craftsmen and women put into each pipe.  He wanted to make sure we knew every step, from taking the briar root he’s cradling to the bowl he’s holding on through to finishing and shipping.

But it didn’t end when we left the factory and came back to the States.  From 2013 until just a few weeks before we finished up in 2019, Tony answered–on average–three or four questions a week from me, patiently guiding me through the minutiae of shapes, lines, and finishes in production I wanted to share with everyone else. If you have a copy of The Peterson Pipe, you can flip back to Ch. 12 on production and follow his guided tour of the entire process, which we recorded together and then transcribed.

This morning I thought you might not only enjoy but find highly informative the memoir he recorded for me of his long tenure at Kapps (also found in the Peterson book).  He was justifiably proud that alone of all Kapps employees, he was the only one who worked at the St. Stephens Green, Sallynoggin, and Deansgrange factories, spanning seven decades from the mid-1960s through the 2020s.

As you’ll read in a minute, he possessed a unique, deep and comprehensive knowledge not only of every aspect of production but of the history and culture of Kapp & Peterson.  His focus first, last, and foremost, was always to make sure Peterson craftsmen are making the best pipe possible.  “The key to it,” as he says below, “is to make sure you don’t walk out the door [when you retire] with all those skills. You’ve got to leave them with somebody when you’re gone.”  You can rest assured he left those skills with everyone he trained, supervised, and mentored. He also infused his spirit of excellence into the heart and soul of his son Glen, who like his dad began at Kapps at an early age and is now its Managing Director.

On behalf of Peterson aficionados, collectors and companioners all over the globe, Glen, we’d like to express our thanks for your Dad’s work, offer our condolences to your family and say how amazing it is that he’s passed keys to you and the next generation.

“THE KEY TO IT”
A Memoir by Tony Whelan, Jr.

The Stephen’s Green factory was like a concert hall. It had three floors and was hollow in the center and you walked around these balconies. The machines were set up on both sides so the people were facing one another across the open space. There was a fair amount of old sing-songs that went on because it was all open. Somebody would start singing and before you knew it everybody would join in.

The old bending oven from the Stephen’s Green factory moved to Sallynoggin, and now resides in the factory at Deansgrange.  

You had the bending oven up on the top floor—the same bending oven that’s out on the factory floor now. And the guy who managed the factory, Jimmy Nicholson, used to stand up there and do the bending and at the same time watch everything that was going on in the place; he could see almost everybody from that vantage point. All the finishing was done on the top floor as well.

Frank Brady (left) and Liam Larrigan (right) in 2019 at the Sallynoggin factory.
Pete Geeks are familiar with Liam’s work as silversmith and as the brother of Paddy, but few are aware of the work of Frank Brady. Like Paddy, he worked in repairs, and like Paddy, he also made artisan pipes–that is, start-to-finish special orders for customers visiting the factory or those writing in.  I have this information from Paddy himself during our chats in 2019 and 2013.

Then on the first floor—we called it the middle floor—the rusticating would’ve been done as well as all the hand turning. Paddy Larrigan worked there and used to make pipes out of blocks and mouthpieces out of rod. And you had the repair going around the other part of the middle floor. Frank Brady was in charge of that. He worked on repairs full-time. We had a lot of repairs in those days because we were making 75 gross a week—almost 11,000 pipes.

On the far end of that middle floor the stamping operation was done and the inspection. In those days we’d put silver lacquer on the sterling bands to try and keep them from tarnishing, but we did away with it because it was causing some problems.

On the ground floor was the Bowl Turning and Assembly. To the left of that was all the sandpapering and what we called the pumicing, which we call buffing now. We used to do it on wheels with felt pads by hand, like the sandpapering operation.

Like a lot of people out on the factory floor, I came here right out of school when I was fifteen, on May 2, 1966. [i]  I worked in Bowl Turning and Assembly, where they put all the young lads. There would’ve been probably six to eight people working there at the time. Willie Kelly was in charge then, probably in his fifties when I came here and well into his seventies when he retired, because you didn’t have to retire at sixty-five in those days.  We had people who were eighty working out there—they just worked on and on and on until they weren’t physically able to work anymore. It’s not that they had to; this was very much a family job and they wanted to work.

When I got the job, Liam Larrigan invited me—I was in a religious organization with him, the Legion of Mary—and I met Liam there and he said, “I’ll keep my eye open and if there’s any jobs, I’ll give you a shout.” He was responsible for a few of us getting in here.

Well, when I got home from my first day my father said me, “How did you get on?” and I said, “I don’t like it, I’m not going back there anymore.” My father knew all about this job and he said, “That’s a great job to be in, you’re not going anywhere,” and the rest is history.

But there was a very good atmosphere then. The older people looked out for the younger people. There was a man, John Beatty, who was part of my training on the sanding operation. And on the holidays, when my first pay rate was three pounds and fifteen shillings (about five euros today), John would hand me two shillings and say, “That’s to buy something for yourself.” And I said, “No, I have my wages,” and he said, “No, that’s your mother’s money, you’ve got to keep this for yourself. Buy some sweets for yourself.” And that’s just the way those people were. They looked out for the young people.

It’s different today. We train the younger people, but in their personal lives they look after themselves. They don’t need me to guide them in any direction when they go outside the place. We always called it a family job. I grew up on the job with people like Jimmy Reddin, who died five years ago, and we were best mates from the day we came into the job. We lost him in 2008 when he died from cancer. He was 58. And he was my best mate, and it was like losing a family member. It left a big gap in the job for me, because as well as being a personal friend, he was a work colleague and a very helpful guy. If I was trying to get stuff out, I could always depend on Jimmy to do an extra few hours for me.

7-A-Side Football [Soccer] Winners for 1976: Kapp & Peterson, Irish Transport & General Workers Union. Jimmy Reddin stands center, top row. Tony Whelan, Sr. is top right. Tony Whelan, Jr., bottom row, second from left.

 When I started in 1966, there were more women than men on the job. Most of them were single, because it was expected that they’d leave if they got married. So most of them were spinsters. A woman named Sissy Gough was there. She was over 80 when she retired, and she never married. And that was the case with all the women—they stayed on the job all their lives—so dedicated. There were a few single men, but most of them were married.

There was another thing that was very significant about the job then: there was a lot of that didn’t have any families—they were married, but didn’t have any kids. We used to joke about it. We used to say there was a disease going around called “Vulcanite Dust” that stopped you from having children. There were a few married couples who both worked here. Willy Kelly and his wife Kitty. And Tony Whelan, Sr.’s wife worked here for a while. There were lots of brothers and sisters in the place.

The first day I started in Kapps, a guy brought me up to meet Tony Whelan, Sr. and he said, “I have an interesting guy who started here today and you both have the same names. And it turned out our two wives worked on the same job as well—not here, but in a place called Brownlee Brothers—they made televisions—and I think that’s a one in a million. [ii] Tony and I became personal friends through that.

One of my earliest memories of working here is about the drawing we had every Monday morning: fifteen shillings was the first prize, and five shillings was the second prize, and anybody that was in the social club, their name entered in the hat for that drawing on Monday morning. Fifteen shillings at that time was my whole week’s pocket money from my mother after I gave her my pay envelope. If I won the fifteen shillings, the girl friend would get an extra date that week. In 1966, I could go out to the movies and get a bag of chips on the way home for that.[iii]

We also had a social club—those were really happy times. We’d go off for the day, meet at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning outside the factory and there’d be a bus and we’d go up to the north of Ireland—a place called Warden Point stands out in my mind. And we’d have a whole day, and we’d finish up with a four-course dinner and a dance and get home in the early hours of Sunday morning. Everybody went.

And we had golf outings, and the women would come along just to be part of the day. And that’s how the family thing came in, because we all got to know each so well, and we grew up together and we got married and knew how many kids each one of us had.

Remember John Beatty, the man that gave me the two shillings? Well, when we went on the social outings, I remember how he and his wife, Josie got off the bus when we’d have a stop and come back with something for everybody, whether it be an apple or a bar of chocolate or a piece of candy, and pay for it out of their own pocket.

The other early memory I have was when we were young and first starting to go with girlfriends. Money would be tight, but the older people would always be good for a “touch,” you know—on a Wednesday you could ask them whether they could lend you a pound, but if you didn’t get it back you’d never get it again. So you had to be clever and make sure you paid it back, because you might want it the following week!

I remember this young guy borrowing off this other guy every week, so the man was getting fed up with him and said, “Who owns this money, me or you?” And he says, “I’ll tell you what to do, Harry, you hold on to that and don’t give it back, but don’t ask me anymore.”

There were a lot of funny people here—old fashioned Dublin wit is what we’d call it now, a dry type of wit. Tony Whelan Sr. told me a great story about Paddy Peacock—who was the silversmith—he would’ve been David Blake’s trainer. He wouldn’t spend money on anything and he’d always try to get it for nothing if he could. And he heard that Tony Whelan, Sr.’s father was a tailor, so he thought to get all his alterations done free of charge and was annoying Tony. Every day he’d have something to get altered. And he said to Tony, “Does your father smoke, Tony?” And Tony said, “Yes he does, he smokes Sweet Afton”—a brand of cigarettes in Ireland—and Paddy says, “Tell him to give them up, they’re bad for him!” And Paddy used to borrow a newspaper off of everybody. He wouldn’t buy a newspaper, but he’d have every paper, and Tony got fed up with that and said, “I’m not giving you the paper anymore, Paddy.” And Paddy said, “Now if you’re going to get like that with me, I’ll buy me own paper.” And that’s the type of wit he had.

 Those days were happy days, and we were well looked after, and we were trained well. It was a job at the end of the day of course, and nobody’s going to like every aspect of their job. But I grew up in the job, got married in the job, and went from child to adult in the job in Kapp & Peterson.

I was here for 17 years until 1983, when there was a voluntary redundancy program and I decided I’d move on. It wasn’t one of my better decisions and I regretted it almost from the time I left. I didn’t do my research, I was just attracted to the money because we were going to get a payoff, and I was only 32 at the time. But there weren’t any jobs when I went out there. I was in one job for 17 years, and I was in 11 jobs in the 11 years I was away from Kapp & Peterson. And they were only shit jobs, so every time I got a chance to better myself I moved on. And that ranged from working in a billiard hall to serving petrol in a garage, working in bakeries all night from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning.

And then in 1994, I got a call from Tony Whelan, Sr., and he said, “There’s a job coming open; if you’re interested come on back—it’s an opening for somebody with some previous experience.” So I came back on the 30th of May of that year. I was very lucky and you can imagine I jumped at the chance to get a job working regular hours again.  I was working on the bench, and I think Tom Palmer liked my attitude and all so I moved on up to being the factory manager in July of 2000—I’m 13 years doing that job now [and did it until his retirement, when Jonathan Fields assumed the job].

I was always interested in learning. Like everyone else at the time, I went through a five-year apprenticeship. I was lucky to be trained on the job by David McCullough in papering—everybody thought he was a master of his trade. [iv] After the apprenticeship, I moved to Bowls, and in the raw materials section, I got to know all the bowl numbers. I taught myself because I thought it would be useful to know. I know the bowl number, which is the stock number, and I know the matching pipe number for that bowl number, and there’s not many here that would know all that. Like if you pick up a number 20 bowl, I know that’s a 314 System and a 221 Classic Range. [v] I also know the matching mouthpieces. When we’re ordering the bowls from the raw materials supplier, there’s a stock number for them. And when we make them into pipes they have a different number.

“A 314 System”–at the Chicago Pipe Show in May, Glen told me that when it came time for him to buy his first pipe,
his dad Tony picked out a 314 Standard for him.

In later days, we got very clever. With the B Series, the pipe and bowl number became the same. But in the older numbers, there’s only a few that are the same. The 120 is a bowl and a pipe, and so is the 268. But if you take the System shapes, a 313 is a number 8 bowl. A 314 is a number 20 bowl. A 307 pipe is a number 9 bowl. A number 11 bowl is a 312 System.  Take a number 20 bowl, for example: coming out of that you have the 312 Standard and Premier System, the 20S in a De Luxe, and you have a 221S in a Classic Range pipe—an Aran, Kildare, Shannon or whatever.[vi]

The present management team [2015] would be myself, the factory manager, Joe Kenny, the training manager, then there’s Jason Hinch, the silversmith who replaced David Blake in mid-2014, Teresa Lynam, head of finishing, who’s also quality control, because everything goes through her hands before it’s decided if it’s good enough to go out. Then there’s Jonathan Fields up in the BTA.[vii] We’re all working supervisors as well—I help out in the sanding area and they help out in other areas. My job is not only to organize the production as factory manager but also contribute to get the numbers out, and I don’t have a problem with that. The supervisors are appointed on the basis of their long service.

Then in the warehouse, Willy Burke’s the manager, assisted by Scott Whelan. Robert Radowski works under him as head of the tobacco labeling section, assisted by Ross O’Brien. And then Doris Barrett is also attached to production, as she’s responsible for boxing the pipes. She’s been here since 1973 or so. She’s got an assistant now, Craig Whelan, and they’re responsible for getting it out the door. [viii]

It’s a very busy and demanding job. You don’t get time to relax, you’re on the go all the time. Tony Whelan, Sr., had 50-years’ service, too, but he came back and gave us some help. He only finished last year when he was 72, so he did an extra seven years after 65. Not full-time, but just to be doing a couple of days a week. Paddy was 80 years old and still here giving us a hand, training people or passing on his knowledge. That’s the key to it, to make sure you don’t walk out the door with all those skills. You’ve got to leave them with somebody when you’re gone.

The unique thing about Peterson is the long service. When you go back 150 years, there’s only a few people involved in passing along the skills. People were here for so long, with most working an average of 40 years or so, that there’s only a link of about four or five people back to the beginning. Look at the factory managers: I’m the factory manager since 2000; Joe Kenny had it for eight years, from 1992 to 2000. The guy before that was also the company owner, Jimmy Nicholson, and he would’ve been appointed sometime around 1960, and the one before that back into the 1940s. It wouldn’t be a big ledger of names. And the same can be said for the managing directors. Myself, Teresa, and Doris would be the only links now to the old Stephen’s Green.

From the Catena Legionis of the Legion of Mary:  Confer, O Lord, on us, who serve beneath the standard of Mary, that fullness of faith in You and trust in her, to which it is given to conquer the world. Grant us a lively faith, animated by charity, which will enable us to perform all our actions from the motive of pure love of You, and ever to see You and serve You in our neighbour; a faith, firm and immovable as a rock, through which we shall rest tranquil and steadfast amid the crosses, toils and disappointments of life; a courageous faith which will inspire us to undertake and carry out without hesitation great things for your glory and for the salvation of souls; a faith which will be our Legion’s Pillar of Fire – to lead us forth united – to kindle everywhere the fires of divine love – to enlighten those who are in darkness and in the shadow of death – to inflame those who are lukewarm – to bring back life to those who are dead in sin; and which will guide our own feet in the way of peace; so that – the battle of life over – our Legion may reassemble, without the loss of any one, in the kingdom of Your love and glory. Amen.

May the soul of our departed legionary Tony Whelan and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Notes

[i] Anthony “Tony” Whelan, aka “Tony Whelan Jr.,” b. January 4, 1951.

Tony’s name in the K&P Register

[ii] Brownlee Brothers on Molesworth Street in Dublin manufactured Pilot and Ferguson radios and televisions.

[iii] The staff lottery goes back to the earliest days of Kapp & Peterson, as documented in “Christmas Treat for the Poor,” Freemans Journal, December 5, 1906, p. 7.

[iv] David McCullough, b. January 31,1943, began work in the factory January 19, 1959.

 [v] See the Shape Numbers Cross-Reference Chart, chapter 12, The Peterson Pipe: the Story of Kapp & Peterson.

[vi] The bowl numbers all go back to the originals found in the 1896 and 1906 catalog as those who own the reprints now know.  De Luxe Systems from those catalogs (called First Quality Space-Fitting back then) still in production have the same numbers today they did then.

[vii] Jonathan Fields entered service in 1997, according to the Peterson Staff Listing at 2017.

 [viii] Burke entered service in 2007, Scott Whelan in 2009, Ross O’Brien in 2013, Doris Barrett in 1972, according to the Peterson Staff Listing at 2017.

Tony’s memoir is reproduced from The Peterson Pipe: the Story of Kapp & Peterson, with a few additional photographs and observations. Banner photo by Marie Irwin. Many thanks to K&P for use of archival photos and materials.

See Josh Burgess’s eloquent obituary at
The Daily Reader

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