'Be kind to people': Well-known faces share words of wisdom from their fathers

Whether through words of wisdom or by setting a good example, high-profile people share what they learned from their fathers.

Sarah Bowie: “With Dad and me, the thing was always to get in the car and go off to the sea or up a hill, somewhere nearby in nature. I can still see us sitting side by side on the ground — my father had a very calm and relaxed way of being." Patrick Browne.

Father's Day is next Sunday, so we asked five well-known people about the good advice they got from their dads.

Author Sarah Bowie

“My dad, Ken Bowie, has always been a great sounding board. He has never been someone who’d sit up, enunciating ‘This is the best way to do it’, or ‘I would do it like this’.

“He’s someone I could come to with an issue, something I’m trying to figure out, and I’d ask him questions and he’d give me responses to the questions. That’s the nature of our relationship — we’d have a conversation.

“I remember a time in my late teens or early 20s, being in a lot of turmoil about a big crush I had on a boy — someone who wasn’t reciprocating and it was causing me a lot of pain. Normally, I’d have gone to my mother with that sort of thing, but she’d had enough by then and I was told, ‘Go off, talk to your father’.

Sarah Bowie: “With Dad and me, the thing was always to get in the car and go off to the sea or up a hill, somewhere nearby in nature. I can still see us sitting side by side on the ground — my father had a very calm and relaxed way of being." Patrick Browne.

“With Dad and me, the thing was always to get in the car and go off to the sea or up a hill, somewhere nearby in nature. I can still see us sitting side by side on the ground — my father had a very calm and relaxed way of being. He let me talk, let me say what I needed to say. And he was the right person, because, rather than get in to the nitty-gritty of ‘what did he say? How did he look at you?’, he was very zoomed out, he was very high level about it.

“I can’t remember his exact words, but it was around how this was really natural, and not to feel bad about it. He just gave me a sense that the feeling would pass; he reassured me not to get obsessed about it — there would be other fellas to fancy.

“Dad wasn’t really an advice-giver. The big thing I learned from a young age was that he doesn’t interfere or try to impose himself on you, but he is there if you come to him.”

*The third book in Sarah Bowie’s Nina Peanut series, Nina Peanut Epic World Tour Era, is out on June 19.

Soprano Claudia Boyle

Claudia Boyle: “Now, I find myself passing it on to my own children. Blossom’s six, in junior infants, she’s a friendly, affable little girl, but she’s finding her feet. George is three and a half and he might come home from Montessori and say, ‘such-and-such was mean to me’."

“My dad was TJ Boyle. If I ever had a fight with friends, a run-in, he’d say, ‘Not everyone is going to like you, but you have to like yourself’.

“Just be comfortable in yourself. You get a little sense of that as you get older anyway, but that bit of wisdom passed on from an older person was wonderful. Throughout the years, in different ways, he’d say it, as young as primary school when you’d come in saying, ‘Oh, somebody said…’ As a teenager, I remember him instilling it in me: Just to be comfortable in my own skin.

“Now, I find myself passing it on to my own children. Blossom’s six, in junior infants, she’s a friendly, affable little girl, but she’s finding her feet. George is three and a half and he might come home from Montessori and say, ‘such-and-such was mean to me’.

“And I want to instil in them what my dad did for me — ‘You’re good enough for people to like you, to be friends with you, you don’t have to act a certain way, and it’s not about giving your friends anything. It’s about them liking you for who you are’.

“From my dad it was constant over the years: Just be secure in yourself, and, as a person, you deserve respect from people. He did really instil that in me.”

*’Weekend Classics’ with Claudia Boyle is on Lyric FM weekends, Saturday and Sunday, from 4pm.

Laureate na nÓg Patricia Forde

Patricia Forde: “I think I could have taken more from my dad, around not overthinking decisions. I loved that about Dad: He made a decision and, once he’d made it, that was it." Picture: Julien Behal Photography

“My dad, Tommy Forde, died 10 years ago. He wasn’t a man to give advice and I suspect he wasn’t great at taking it, either. But he gave me a great example of how to live life.

“He had his own business in Galway, a small shop selling paint and wallpaper. He’d worked from when he was 15, in various shops. He was a great believer in working hard and in resting well.

“He talked a lot about quality of life — I think he was ahead of his time in that, because when he was 58, he decided to quit suddenly, close the shop, and within days he was having golf lessons. He and mom worked in the business together, six days a week. He never took a holiday, he worked flat out, and I kind of picked that up from him, that intensity of work. When I’m working, I’m working. And when I’m not, I try to compartmentalise, put it out of my head. I think he did that.

“He had six young daughters at the height of the shop, as well as his mother-in-law living with him, so he had eight women in the house. He and mom would go for a walk every evening without fail and on their own — no children were invited. They went dancing together most Sundays in the Warwick Hotel, Salthill. They knew how to mind themselves.

“And when he closed the shop, he never looked back, he was on to a new chapter. My parents did a very smart thing — they both took golf lessons and they’d play together during the week. 

"That idea of balancing your life, not to be all one thing, I definitely took from him. He believed in never ‘leaving anything on the field’. When I’m doing the laureate job, I don’t want to leave anything on the field, either, but do my absolute best and then, when it’s over, it’s over.

“I think I could have taken more from my dad, around not overthinking decisions. I loved that about Dad: He made a decision and, once he’d made it, that was it.”

• Patricia Forde’s ‘Letters to a Monster’, illustrated by Sarah Warburton and published by Bloomsbury, is out now.

Immunologist Luke O’Neill

Prof. Luke O'Neill: “My father was Kevin O’Neill. The key piece of advice he gave me was to be kind to people." Picture: Moya Nolan

“My father was Kevin O’Neill. The key piece of advice he gave me was to be kind to people. That you should always be as kind as you can, even when someone is criticising you and coming at you, because you don’t know the road they might be walking.

“He was a real role model in that message of kindness. I remember something that happened when his brother died. His brother had never married, but he had a partner, a woman who was Protestant. We were Catholic. His partner came to his funeral and she sat at the back, because I suppose she was nervous about being in a Catholic church.

“My father went down and he took her by the hand and brought her up to the front. That would have been in the early 1980s — in those days, the Catholic and Protestant thing was still a bit live. 

"To be kind was wonderful advice to give to a young person, because when you’re young you’re inclined to be less kind — you can be competitive, pushy. And if we were all a bit kinder to each other, the world would be a much better place.”

Musician Alex Petcu-Colan:

Alex Petcu-Colan: "“I could see his [my dad's] dedication to the craft, to doing a good job, to being prepared. I could see behind the scenes that individual, solitary preparation."

“My dad, Adrian Petcu, led by example. When I was a child, he used to conduct the Cork School of Music Symphony Orchestra, as part of his teaching duties; he was head of department.

“I’d see him a lot, sitting at the kitchen table, practising the scores, practising his conducting, whistling the tunes. He’d be writing in markings, taking care of all the parts.

“I could see his dedication to the craft, to doing a good job, to being prepared. I could see behind the scenes that individual, solitary preparation. And he was always very respectful to people, a great diplomat and gentleman. Consideration for others was a big thing for him: It still is. It’s something to aspire to.

“And that example of doing the best you can... what it means to do things well.”