‘What bravery. What an heroic deed. And what a sacrifice. The ultimate act of love – laying down one’s life for another.’

FULL of joy and love and smiling right up to the moment he became a hero.

Those were the words of a heart-broken fiancée yesterday as she recalled her final moments with the man she loved just seconds before he drowned in a tragic sea rescue last weekend.

Anne Riordan’s tribute to her husband-to-be, Peter O’Keeffe, 36, from Model Farm Road in Cork, reduced to tears the hundreds of mourners who packed into St Mary and St John’s Church in Ballincollig, Co Cork, for his funeral Mass.

Anne watched in horror last Sunday as the man she was due to marry next February was swept out to sea after rescuing two people in the water off Owenahincha beach in West Cork.

Peter’s body was recovered from the sea on Tuesday night. The search continued off the West Cork yesterday for the body of student Jonathan Herlihy, 22, who helped in the rescue.

During the funeral Mass, Anne told mourners of her love for Peter in an emotional note. Standing close to his father, Reg, Anne bowed her head, was hugged by Peter’s brother-in-law, Paul Walsh, and then listened as one of Peter’s four sisters, Yvonne, fought back tears to read it.

“There was so much joy and love and he was smiling right up to the time he went out to be a hero,” it read.

Anne described him as “so professional at work, conscientious, dedicated, meticulous and committed to his business”.

“Then Peter could come home and just switch off,” she wrote. “He could have, and create, so much fun for those he loved, like his nieces and nephews.”

He would do anything for his family, she said. She described Peter as “superficially quiet and unassuming”. “But just below the surface was one of the funniest, joyful, caring people you could have known. I know in the past year that he was so happy. He explained his expanding waistline as contentment and we had it all.

“I know he is with his mother; rest in peace, beautiful man.”

During his homily, a friend of the O’Keeffe family, Fr Jim Donovan, said the sea had shown Peter and Jonathan no admiration and no mercy despite their bravery. “Both died as comrades,” he said. “What bravery. What an heroic deed. And what a sacrifice. The ultimate act of love — laying down one’s life for another.

“This deed has brought tears to many eyes, not alone to those who knew them, but throughout the land.”

Later, Mr Walsh read one of countless messages of support the O’Keeffe family received during the week.

“The true test of what we are can happen in a fleeting second,” wrote a stranger who met Peter once in Baltimore, two summers ago.

“To think of Peter charging into a dangerous sea to save someone’s life is a beautiful thing to remember. No one ever wishes something like that would ever happen but what a world it would be if more people had that courage. He is a hero of the truest kind.”

Parishioners were asked to remember the Herlihy family, who are maintaining a lonely vigil as the search for Jonathan’s body enters its sixth day.