A NEW LIFE - Gerry Nultydecided to follow his heart and make music the focus of his life after recovering from cancer.
GROWING UP, the Nulty household was steeped in music and dancing. While times may have been economically challenging, there was always money left on the table for music lessons, regardless of how difficult it was to come by.
It was this dogged commitment to the traditional arts that stood Gerry Nulty in good steadin later life, when things didn't work out as planned.
"My mother had been a nun in Paris for 14 years before she married my father. She had a very hard upbringing, but the music came from her side. My father put the money on the table. I started off with accordion lessons with the well-known musician Sean Kearney, and played in a band on Parnell St for years."
The Nulty home was what might be called an open house, with all visitors welcome and expected to sing a song or play a tune.
"I learned the piano also growing up, and there was always music in the family. I remember coming home and seeing the postman sitting by the fire playing a fiddle and having a bit of breakfast. My grandmother lived with us and she was a well-known fiddle player and played with many ceilí bands."
When he left secondary school, Nulty had intended to pursue music full time. This was the late 1970s, when the folk scene in Dublin was thriving, and there was anything up to 10 paid gigs a week in the city.
"At the time there were very few jobs. I got on well in school, and had some very good teachers who were very understanding about the music side of things. If I missed a day or two here and there, there wasn't a problem. I might be off doing an accordion exam or dancing in a competition or something.
"At that stage, my mother sent me out to work from the age of 16 onwards. I was up to grade eight in the piano and had a good foundation in the accordion so was playing in a few different bands."
The lure of the day job was pressing though, and in the early 1980s Nulty sat an entrance exam for the civil service. He was successful, and entered the Department of Social Welfare as a clerical officer, where he stayed for 15 years.
By night, he became a musician for hire, playing weddings or corporate functions and also completed his teaching diplomas. In 1987, his father was diagnosed with cancer, and Nulty, being the eldest in the family, took a sabbatical from the civil service to lend a hand at home.
When his father died in 1998, Nulty and his brother decided to capitalise on the dot com boom which was beginning to emerge, and decided to set up an online hamper business.
"The advantage of it was that we could work from home, so I could still help my mother. My brother was the computer expert, and I was to do the administration side of things. The idea was to sell Irish gifts to the American market, such as dancing shoes or Aran jumpers. It sounded a great idea at the time, but looking back I don't know what we were thinking!"
Putting their own savings into the business, alongside a £10,000 overdraft, Nulty and his brother soon found themselves working long hours to get the business off the ground.
"There was little knowledge about that type of business at the time and little funding. I would go out the door to work at 7.30am and not arrive back until 8pm at night, and this continued at the weekends also. We had about three staff and ended up partnering with another company.
"But the issue of funding was ever present and we were chasing our tails a lot."
In 2005 Nulty felt ill and went to his local GP. The business had been going through a stressful period, and there were times when the brothers couldn't afford to give themselves a salary. He felt tired.
"I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I couldn't believe it, to be honest, and didn't know at the time whether or not it was in one or two kidneys. If it was in two, I was finished. So I had to wait for results.
"A priest friend of the family took me aside and said he felt it wasn't my time, given that I had looked after my parents when they needed minding. That gave me reassurance. The MRI scan showed that it was confined to one kidney and that it could be treated.
"I realised at that point that the business involvement would have to end - there was no point trying to serve a bank manager any longer. If I got through it, I was determined to get up in the morning and enjoy what I was doing."
Throughout the years, if there were bills to pay or if Nulty needed some extra cash, he continued to play music at night.
Now, having come through a life-threatening illness, he decided to return to his first love and allow for some purpose back into his life.
"When I started to get better, I put a piano in the front room and began to advertise teaching lessons. I was really just crawling back up the ladder, and a good friend in the Abbey School of Music at the time helped me out with the logistics.
"Bit by bit the lessons began to take off, and I knew myself that I had come full circle. I was now on the road I should have been on all those years before. I looked forward to getting up in the mornings again, and had a peace of mind I hadn't had for years."
Working out of his home in Swords, which he bought with his brother many years earlier, Nulty now has more than 60 students coming to him for lessons. In the coming months he plans to take on an apprentice teacher.
"I don't gig at all these days. I still get very tired and all my energy is put into teaching. I think I appreciate life more now and there is great satisfaction in passing on whatever talent I have to children in my lessons. I'm hoping to buy my brother's share of the house in the next while, and keep the school moving forward. Teaching music is basically my job and my hobby at the same time which is a great privilege."
If there's one thing Nulty has learned, he says, is to follow your ambitions and not get distracted by what life throws in your way.
"I learned that following your heart is one of the most important things in life. When illness knocked on my door, I also learned about the importance of having family around you.
"You also realise that when you get up in the morning there is no guarantee you are going to get through the day. I was 41 years old, running around trying to keep a business going, and bang, it hit me. Cancer.
"All my financial worries at the time paled into significance and my concern was to survive.
"It taught me some very valuable life lessons."
