Author of 'Survive and Trive': I wasn’t going to give up
HIDING in a clump of nettles, hearing her name being called, nine-year-old Breeda Hurley was going nowhere.
It was 1959, her mother had just been hospitalised with TB and the powers-that-be were outside the family’s rural home at Caherleaheen, Tralee, ready to take six children into care.
“My dad wouldn’t have been the best dad. My five siblings younger than me were put into an orphanage. I ran away when I saw the big ambulance. They were calling me to come back. I knew something was going on but I didn’t know what.”
Breeda doesn’t recall how long she hid but she remembers eventually “creeping in the door — my Nan was there. She said ‘you’re ok Breeda, you can stay with me’”.
Now 67, Breeda never lost the spirit and fight she had at nine — the determination to not just accept whatever life happened to throw her way. And it has served her well.
She’s an entrepreneur who has run her own businesses for over 30 years — her successful contract cleaning company celebrated 21 years in business last year. She has a lifetime achievement award, has written a book and is about to reinvent herself as an inspirational speaker.
“I’d get an idea into my head and the following day I’d be doing it. Everything was spontaneous,” says Breeda of her “stepping stones” — the many businesses she started and that failed on the road to today when she “can finally sleep at night”.
A mum of eight — “I was 72 months pregnant” — she had five children in 1980 when she started her “first little business” — a country shop in her own home.
“It meant I was there for the children. What we made from it fed ourselves.”
Two years later, with things “getting slack”, she thought: I either do it right or I close it.
“So I closed it.”
Her next venture was baking brown bread, scones and apple-tarts for sale in local shops.
“I had them in three shops. I did it at night when the children were asleep. I never slept! I just had an ordinary oven and then I got the ESB bill — £700. I got such a shock. It was grand to think of doing this enterprise but I hadn’t thought of the consequences.”
Undeterred, Breeda hit on the idea of making salads.
“At the time coleslaw and potato salad were becoming popular. I thought that’ll cost me nothing in electricity. I’ll do a bit of that.”
Supplying salads to the same shops that had taken her baked goods, she got an order one day for Waldorf salad.
“I hadn’t a clue. I said to my sister, ‘pull out a cookery book there and see what’s Waldorf salad’. I bought the ingredients and had it for the following morning.”
The little business took off, with Breeda’s salads in six shops — and then winter came and there was no market for salad.
Along with husband Seán whom she married at 20 (“a local women going to Lourdes asked if she’d bring a petition for me — I wrote ‘if it’s God’s will, this is the man I want to marry’”), she began cleaning 52-seater buses.
“They were Slattery’s buses going to London. They were called turn-arounds — the minute they came in you had to clean them because they’d be going out again. There were 52 seats to be cleaned, 52 ashtrays. You could get anything — some [passengers] might have been drunk. We were paid £3 a bus.”
With the bus-cleaning a seasonal gig, Breda needed something more constant. In the late 1980s, she took on Tralee newsagent shop Healy’s Dairy.
“Everybody knew Healy’s Dairy. It was a great shop. I took on the lease for three years. We worked so hard and then the recession started. ‘Recession’ didn’t mean anything to me — life to me had been a recession. But I noticed the money wasn’t coming in.”
Unable to pay mortgage, lease or bills, Breda closed the business and hit her lowest point.
“I didn’t open bills. Aside from bringing the children to school, I barely put my head outside the door.”
On anxiety medication, she took a bus to visit her sister, Miriam, in North London.
“It was my first time travelling on my own out of Ireland and my first time leaving the children behind.”
In London, she poured out her heart, took a walk and realised: “Jesus, there’s loads of work here!”
She bought pen and paper, “took down loads of numbers” and started looking.
“I got a job straightaway in Super Drug — they were opening a shop the following week.”
In short order, Breeda brought her family to London. By the time she returned to Kerry four years later, she’d begun another little business cleaning clinics and police stations.
“Some of the children hadn’t settled at all. The lads were getting older, I didn’t want to rear them in England.”
In 1995, she started ABC Cleaning Services and Supplies, a business that “got into trouble” in 2008 with the recession — “cleaning was the first thing people pulled back in” — but the intrepid North Kerry woman got it back on its feet again.
Breeda attributes her ‘never-give-up’ attitude to her pledge at a young age to never again endure the poverty of her childhood and to make sure her children didn’t.
“We were so poor. The biggest fear was you wouldn’t have enough food. I vowed I’d never be in that situation. I thought if I work hard, I’ll never go hungry.
“If something failed, I wasn’t going to lie down. I’d think of something quickly and come back up again. I always believed in myself. I basically thought I could do anything.”
‘Survive and Thrive: The Journey of a Lifetime’ (ABC Publications), €12, will be published on May 12 and available in local book stores or online at www.breedahurleycommunications.com.
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