Professor William Barnett Harold Corkey
1st June 1908 -14th February 1990
Son of the manse, William Barnett Harold Corkey was born at the Dreen, Cullybackey on the 1st June 1908, middle child of the Rev. Dr. William Corkey, the then minister of the Cuningham Memorial Presbyterian Church from 1904 until 1909.
After graduating from Queen’s University, he went on to Assemblies Theological College, Belfast. After his ordination as a Presbyterian minister, he went to Manchuria in China as a missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Church, insisting in staying at his work when the Japanese entered the war in December 1941. Harold, as he was called, who had been under house arrest at Changli in 1941 was interned with his wife and two children in the Japanese concentration camp at Weihsien in North China, two years later, along with 1,700 other civilians who had been caught in China during World War Two. The first sign of freedom came when American planes were sited over the camp and when food and medical comforts were parachuted into nearby fields, but because of Communist underground troops in the district the internees could not get away by train, and it was some weeks before they could get a plane for Peking.
After going to Peking, Harold went to Tentsin and succeeded in getting on a train for Manchuria, where he visited Chinchien, his former mission station. When he visited his home, which had been occupied by Japanese Officers, his little Scottie dog came out wagging his tail in welcome, but everything in the house had been stolen.
Harold met his wife, Dr Elizabeth M. Conard, a medical missionary, who was a member of the Society of Friends at a Chinese language school and they were married on the 24th August 1935 in the Union Church, Peking, China.
In 1960 he joined the staff of the University of North Carolina Charlotte or UNCC, when it was still known as Charlotte College, where he was the first full-time staff member teaching religion, philosophy and psychology, retiring in 1973.
Professor Corkey, passed away on Wednesday the 14th February 1990 and is laid to rest at Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He is survived by his wife, son David, daughter Caroline and two grandchildren. In his obituary he is described as a dedicated Christian, a courtly gentleman, whose gentle bearing would never have betrayed the nerve-racking years he spent in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.