Memorial service in a mart ‘is true Paddy’

The humanist ceremony that marked the death of Irish farming giant Paddy O’Keeffe took place in a North Cork mart and, in the words of his friend, Dawn Meats chairman Dan Brown, “that he chose this unconventional setting for his service is true Paddy”.

And unconventional the centre is: Hosting Tommy Tiernan one night and a cattle sale two days later.

Yesterday’s ceremony was as the man himself had planned. “Paddy had chosen the menu and as usual left the organisation and detail to others, mainly his family,” Dan laughed.

Black and white ribbons, greenery, and white and red aromatherapy candles adorned the Corrin Events Centre’s cattle ring. A black and white image of a young Paddy resting his leg on the tyre of Massey Ferguson filled the screen above.

Up to 400 people filled the mart, with a great many forced to stand through the ceremony, which began with a rendition of Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ by tenor Ryan Morgan.

Just last October, he had given the same performance at 89-year-old Paddy’s marriage, after a whirlwind romance, to 73-year-old Jane O’Callaghan, of Longueville House.

“They had a great time in their short time together,” acknowledged Patrick, Paddy’s son, who led the ceremony with Fr Philip Tierney of Glenstal Abbey.

The first half of the ceremony was all about family. Paddy was married to his first wife, Anne, who passed away two years ago, for 60 years. They had four children and 12 grandchildren.

Paddy’s grandson James Wyse sang a beautiful ‘The Sally Gardens’, while his other grandchildren read poems.

Their grandfather died suddenly in his sleep after lunch and a glass of red wine with Jane and family — a stage exit that all agreed he would heartily have approved of.

Patrick remembered his father’s love of the Blackwater and the Blackwater Valley, of hunting and how, after a crack at sailing, he dismissed it as a “poor sport compared to the thrill of charging across the countryside”.

Paddy’s daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Josephine spoke of the ceremony as an opportunity to “celebrate an enormous life”, describing their father as a man for whom “life was an adventure, an endless round of who is next, what is next?”.

Paddy was chairman of the Agriculture Trust, publishers of the Irish Farmers Journal and The Irish Field. As editor of the IFJ, he boosted circulation from 2,000 copies in 1951, to 70,000 copies a week when he retired in 1988. He remained as CEO until 1993.

He also a founder of Farming Business Developments and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, and served on the boards of the RTÉ Authority and Bord na gCapall.

The Taoiseach and President were represented at yesterdays’s ceremony. Also gathered were former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes, IFA president John Bryan, and minister for state Sean Sherlock.

The ceremony was told how Paddy, who donated his body to medical research, had no time for slowing down in old age.

But it was Mr Brown’s story about Paddy that was talked about late into the night in North Cork.

Still hunting in his 60s, Paddy had a fall off a horse, doing serious damage to his neck.

In hospital in Dublin, he was strapped, according to Mr Brown, to a stretcher that had to be periodically rotated as this would better ensure speedier healing. Often he was lying at an angle, or even upside down.

“He was like a lamb on a rotisserie being turned upside down,” laughed Dan.

This continued for some time but, eventually, Paddy was told that his neck was healed. He was, however, to remain on the “rotisserie”.

“All successes had to be celebrated. That was one of his rules,” said Dan.

And so Dan was sent to secure a decent Bordeaux. That night, as soon as the nurse left his room, the wine was uncorked and Paddy, hanging upside down like a bat, celebrated his success with a straw.

Yesterday’s ceremony was planned by Paddy, right down to the poetry. He also ordered a decent red be put on every table afterwards.