The Oldest Man In The Sea
Last year I met one of the most remarkable men. His name is Pat Murphy and he claims to be "the oldest fisherman in Ireland".
Finding him was no easy tasks. Here's the story...
We set out to Ireland in the summer of 2012 with one thing in mind: Find an interesting person and film their story. Half was through our 2 week trip, we hadn't found a single person worthy of this video. But one day we made our way down to the southernmost portion of Ireland to a small town called Castletownbere. We stopped in three different pubs to hang out with the local fishermen and on three separate occasions fishermen told us stories of this man named Pat Murphy. This was our guy and we had to find him.
A fellow fisherman on Pat told us the general area that his home is. We literally went door to door asking "does Pat Murphy live here". If I remember correctly, we went to about 4 houses and on the fourth house, a kind woman with short, wavy, brown hair answered the door and said "yes, Pat Murphy lives here!" As you might have guessed, he was out at sea alone and wasn't going to be back for a couple more days. She said that she was sure he would love to be a part of the video and told us to come back on Sunday. When we got there on Sunday we were greater with tea and scones and a huge smile from Pat. He was so excited for "the Americans" to tell his story to the rest of the world.
We sat down with him, listened to him tell us story of growing up in his small town, fishing with his father, starting a company with his children, and so on. We could have stayed there for weeks and the stories would not have ended. And from these conversations, our film was made.
The story doesn't end there. He gave us his email address to send him the video once it was created, but when we tried to send him the video a couple months later, his email address didn't work at all. We had spent all of this time excited to capture his story and give it to his family so that they could have this as a small piece to remember him by. But there was no way for us to actually give them the video. For over half a year we weren't able to contact him. We went on a search for Pat Murphy, emailing newspapers, websites, and blogs in Ireland asking one question: "Where is Pat Murphy"? Finally, I received one email from Pat's daughter! She told me how much she and her family loved the Pat Murphy video and that a local journalist had sent them the video.
And the best part... Pat loves it. His favorite thing is to have his friends and family over to watch it on his "big screen". This brought such a smile to my face.
It brings such joy to me knowing that the story we captured for him will live on for many more years through his family. I hope that the video brings them as much joy as the day I met Pat Murphy.