Gerard O' Callaghan was born in the townland of Tullymore where he grew up, close to the border of County Armagh and County Tyrone. He was the youngest in a family of eleven children. His first five years at school were spent in the old Tullymore Primary School until the new school was built in 1967 and it was in Primary 1 that he first met Paul Corrigan. From those early days in Primary 1, Paul and Gerard remained very close friends. Gerard was about twelve years old when his mother died and in later years, he would have talked a lot about how he wished he could have remembered more about her. At the age of thirteen, Gerard, along with his friend Paul, started in the newly built St. Bridget's School in Armagh. It was also around this time that the two boys began to work together after school at a local mushroom farm. A few years later, Gerard, now sixteen, had bought his first car, a green Morris Minor. One Sunday evening, he put Paul in the drivers seat and taught him how to drive.