A Derry woman has been reunited with her late father’s beloved scooter which once languished at the bottom of the River Foyle.
Lorraine Browne always had fond childhood memories of the 60-year-old turquoise ‘LD’ Lambretta, which she still had the original insurance certificate for.
The distinctive bike was the pride and joy of her father, Sean Coyle, a well know local singer who sadly passed away in the early 1970s when she was just 12-years-old.
Lorraine remembers standing in the foot well of the scooter when her father drove it from their home in Harvey Street up to his mother’s house in Creggan Hill.
After Mr Coyle’s death the scooter was parked in his mother’s yard, where it gradually fell into disrepair.
Lorraine never knew what happened to the scooter but she thought about it often through the years.
“In 1980 Lorraine’s granny was about to move into a home and she instructed her grandsons to sell the bike,” explained Lorraine’s husband Neil Browne.
“They were aged 17 and 15 at the time and they pushed it down to Curry’s scrap yard where they were offered £3 for it.
“They weren’t too happy with this so they decided to push it home again but it was a very hot day and the tyres weren’t what they used to be so they decided to push it in the Foyle.”
But this wasn’t the end for Mr Coyle’s Lambretta
A couple of years ago Lorraine posted a photograph taken in 1960 of her perched on the back of the scooter.
The photo was seen by seen by Searlas Anderson (aka Bofs) of the Bad Samaritans Scooter Club.
“I recognized it as an LD model, quite common back then but very rare nowadays,” he explained.
“There was something strange about it, something familiar.
“I realised that the registration number ‘UI 6312’ was the very same reg of a scooter that I had had in my attic in bits for 15 years.”
The scooter had been pulled out of the glar and sold on to Curry’s where it was discovered by Mr Anderson’s friend Nigel Burnside in 1985 after a tip-off from his driving instructor Sandy Arthur.
“Being young Mods they were always on the look-out for old scooters,” said Mr Anderson.
“Our other friend Nigel McCorkell bought it for the princely sum of £6 and took it home, stripped it down to restore it but got no further.
“About ten years later it came into my possession and ended up in my attic for another 15 years still in boxes until I no longer had room for it. “
Mr Anderson sold the scooter on just a few years ago to a friend named Gavin Gray from Newtownabbey who had lovingly resurrected it and put it back on the road.
“He had retained the old patina and original paintwork too,” said Mr Anderson.
“After all these years the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.”
“Gavin nicknamed the scooter ‘Frankie’ short for Frankenstein because he had ‘resurrected’ it from boxes,” said Mr Browne.
“He put a lot of work into it and it was very, very expensive and he was intending to keep it but as soon as he saw the picture of Lorraine on the back that was it, it was all over for him."
Mr Gray promised that if he ever decided to sell the Lambretta Lorraine would get first refusal.
In a further twist in the tale Lorraine almost missed her chance after she didn’t see a Facebook message Mr Gray sent telling her he was ready to part with the Lambretta.
But her husband stepped in and snapped up the scooter just before it was sold to an English collector and last Thursday he surprised her with a special homecoming.
The Bad Samaritan Scooter Club members were invited to ride the old Lambretta round to Sandinos for the surprise reunion.
“It’s going to stay I the family now,” added Mr Browne.
Pictured: Joe Coyle with his sisters Lorraine Browne and Jacqueline Trotter (pillion passenger) on board the The Lambretta Scooter. (Photo - Tom Heaney, nwpresspics)
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