Roamer: ‘Beam me up’ Scotty’s mum and dad came from Bangor

After last Saturday’s account here of screen idol Clark Gable’s short visit to the town during WWII, a Bangor resident messaged: “Have you covered the Jimmy Doohan story, he was Star Trek’s Scotty?” and added, “Scotty’s parents owned a chemist shop in Bangor’s Main Street, where Easons used to be, next down from the Trinity Presbyterian Church.”

This is actually a very timely tip-off because Clark Gable, with an Air Medal and many combat hours in his logbook, was in Bangor in 1944 filming D-Day preparations.

Ulster was an important American base during WWII and Belfast Lough/Bangor Bay were strategic convoy anchorages for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Thus with the 80th anniversary of D-Day approaching, Bangor is hosting commemorative events on 1st, 2nd and 6th June.

Before he boarded Starship Enterprise bound for the Final Frontier, Lt. James Doohan boarded a powerful landing craft bound for a Normandy beach on D-Day, and was later called “the craziest pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force”.

More of his remarkable wartime escapades in a moment, after the remainder of the Bangor resident’s message: “Some years ago a couple of guys were supping their Guinness in a pub in Bangor when one of them remarked that the guy sitting at another table was the image of Scotty from Star Trek. After a few more pints they could resist it no longer and they approached him. They were right, it really was Jimmy Doohan. He’d travelled to Bangor to trace his roots!”

Since he died in 2005 aged 85 (he’d been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease) several Scottish cities have tried to claim Doohan as theirs but as we’ve just been informed, his mum and dad were from Bangor.

He may have had a fine Scottish lilt on Starship Enterprise, but his Irish roots are well confirmed; in his autobiography ‘Beam Me Up Scotty’ Doohan states that his father William ran a pharmacy in Bangor and genealogists have traced both of his grandfathers to County Mayo where one was in the RIC.

Some of the family moved to Belfast and William Doohan opened a pharmacy in Bangor. He married local lass Sarah Montgomery before emigrating with three children to Canada where James was born in 1920.

He enrolled in the Army Cadet Corps in 1938, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Artillery (RCA), became a sergeant in the 3rd Infantry Division, then a lieutenant, and was posted to the UK to train for Operation Overlord and D-Day.

Early on the morning of June 6 1944 - with HMS Belfast leading the bombardment on German defences - landing vessels deposited Lt Doohan’s section of the 22nd Battery on the ‘Mike’ sector of Juno Beach, to support the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Canadian Scottish.

Doohan led his men through mines, under constant enemy shelling, to Banville-sur-Mer where he was quite badly injured, apparently by ‘friendly fire. (His mangled right middle finger had to be amputated, which he often concealed on-screen throughout his movie career.)

After convalescence he became an air-observation pilot with 666 Squadron, RCAF, and was posted to Holland in 1945 flying ‘air taxi’ duties.

After flying low-level between two telegraph poles, “just to prove it could be done”, he was described as the “craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force!”

Recounting his movie career in Canada’s Second World War Museum he reportedly said: “I decided to give Scotty an Aberdeen accent, which was something I had learned when I was sent over to England during the war. While I was there, I met this fellow from Aberdeen and I couldn’t understand one word he said! But I did learn his accent from him and that was the one I used for Scotty.”

After the war Doohan worked in radio, made his TV debut on the ‘Martin Kane, Private Eye’ detective series, auditioned for a show called Star Trek in 1965…and the rest is movie history.

James Montgomery Doohan, aka Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, died on July 20, 2005 in Redmond, USA.