Tributes to actress Gerry McLoughlin, a heroine on and off stage

It is little wonder that the father of broadcaster and actress Gerry McLoughlin was a war hero. Gerry, who died early yesterday morning after a long battle with cancer, played many a heroine in her time, most of it on the stage of the Everyman Palace theatre in Cork.

Her father was Commander Frank Johnston, a highly decorated officer in the Royal Navy who was based in Malta before moving to Dublin after the Second World War and finally settling his family of seven girls in Cobh, Co Cork.

Gerry had been born in Dublin but her heart and soul were firmly in Cork where she enjoyed a long career as an actress, radio broadcaster and social diarist with the Evening Echo.

Theatre folk and broadcasters remembered Gerry yesterday as a spirited, talented and joyful presence wherever she went.

“It is a terrible loss,” said actor and director Michael Twomey, who directed her in playwright Declan Hassett’s Sisters at the Everyman Palace in Cork. “She rang me recently, heard I was involved in a play next September and said she would give her eye teeth to be involved. That just shows the kind of spirit she was.”

Their friendship and theatrical collaboration went back to the 1960s. “From the very start she exhibited extraordinary versatility. She could do anything, from pantomime to the most highly dramatic roles you could imagine.”

Hassett was equally appreciative of her talents, casting her to play the dual role of warring siblings Martha and Mary in his award-winning play.

Sisters premiered at the Everyman Palace in 2005 with the late Anna Manahan in the title role before transferring to Dublin, Edinburgh and New York. Gerry reprised the part in 2011, bringing a fresh dimension to it.

“I saw her in the one-woman show The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and I immediately thought she would be perfect - and she was. She transformed the role and blew people away.”

Gerry’s broadcasting career was equally remarkable. Affectionately known as The Voice Of Cork, Gerry was the first female presenter on Radio South, now 96FM, and in 1989 joined RTÉ Radio Cork where she remained until its demise in 2001.

Radio colleague Lilian Smith remembers her fondly. “Gerry McLaughlin made me feel welcome in RTÉ Cork from the first day I met her.

"She taught me a lot about broadcasting and encouraged me to embrace what I considered a vocal flaw: a slight lisp. More than anything, she was tremendous fun and ever so slightly naughty.”

That naughtiness was witnessed by Irish Examiner sports and travel writer Barry Coughlan who recalled a trip to Lake Garda in 2008 when Gerry was among a group visiting Verona, the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet.

Gerry couldn’t resist climbing onto the famous balcony and dragged Barry along, enjoying the theatrical setting. “I was on the balcony with her and she waved to the crowds. She was great fun and will be missed.”

She will be mostly missed by her husband, Kevin, children, Stuart, Kate and Bryan, her sisters Maureen, Paddy, Sheelagh, Brenda, Hilary and Lyn and grandchildren. Her funeral Mass takes place at 1pm on Monday at St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh, followed by cremation at the Island Crematorium.

Lyn, the youngest of the seven sisters, witnessed Gerry’s long battle with cancer. “She had the heart of an ox, right up to the last,” she said, explaining how doctors at Cork University Hospital estimated she had only two hours to live but she clung on, surrounded by her family.

“The witch kept us there till five in the morning, before finally slipping away.”

After decades of playing the heroine, Gerry had become one.