Dr Bill McCourt, who died on Sunday, was a popular and highly-regarded business figure in Northern Ireland. He was managing director of the Old Bushmills Distillery Ltd from 1976 to 1992, founder of the Northern Ireland branch of the Institute of Management Services, and chairman of the local CBI. He was 90.
He was born in New York, and came to Northern Ireland with his family, aged nine. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, but following German air raids on Belfast in 1941 he was evacuated to family friends in Bessbrook in South Armagh.
He became a boarder at the Royal School Dungannon from September 1941, returning to Inst two years later, and finishing his formal education at Belfast Tech.