Clive Coady touched the hearts of all who knew him. He won’t be forgotten

A LONG time ago, I used to drive a group of adults with intellectual disabilities to the Arch Club in Blackrock, on the south side of Dublin.

Every Friday night I’d pick them up from a variety of locations on the south side and make the trek over to Willow Park School.

There, they’d enjoy an evening’s entertainment — music, dancing, rehearsing for a play. There were great volunteers in the club, and they all made friendships that have lasted to this day.

I loved that journey. As well as my daughter Mandy and her friends, two older men travelled with me — Dermot and Clive. Dermot would always sit in front, and Clive would perch on the back seat, peering out between us. Dermot believed that I could make each traffic light change with a click of my fingers (I knew their rotation by heart) and was always really excited when I did it. Clive knew it was a joke, and took endless pleasure in Dermot’s excitement.

“Very funny, Mr. Person,” he would say every time Dermot laughed. I don’t know why he called me Mr Person — he just did. And he always did it with a chuckle, and a smile that would lift your spirits for a week. For years afterwards, meeting Clive was a special pleasure, because of that “Mr Person” joke that only he understood.

Clive understood a lot of stuff. You could never be sure how much, because he couldn’t talk very well. But he had a keen emotional intelligence. He knew when you were down, or happy, and he knew just how and when to use that smile of his. Clive Coady, I’m talking about. He was born in the shadow of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, literally. His father Joe Coady was the legendary Dean’s Verger of the cathedral, and the family lived in a house owned by the church. You’ll know the house — it’s now part of Dublinia, the popular Viking Exhibition.

Joe Coady served an astonishing 60 years as Dean’s Verger. The verger does everything; he’s responsible for leading all formal processions, and also for the cleanliness of the building. He is also — and this was particularly true of Joe Coady — a guardian of the cathedral’s traditions.

Joe Coady was never slow to rebuke anyone — from the Archbishop down — who sat in the wrong seat, or approached the altar the wrong way. When President Éamon de Valera visited the cathedral it was Joe who greeted him and showed him to the correct seat. In fact he and de Valera became unlikely friends over subsequent visits. That was the world that Clive was born into. It was never clear he was going to make it. Tiny, delicate and frail, Clive was born with a number of disabilities, at a time when services for people with a disability were themselves in their infancy. In the early 1950s, people with an intellectual disability, especially compounded by physical challenges, were frequently institutionalised, and sometimes abandoned, for the rest of their lives.

Not Clive. He lived with his family in and around the Cathedral and, as services improved, attended St Michael’s House day centre. When his father died, he lived for some years with his sister Patricia. He then joined the residential services offered by St John of God Carmona Services in Glenageary. He subsequently lived semi-independently in Shankill, and was surrounded not only by a loving family, but by caring staff and by a host of friends.

You’d meet him there often, in the common room or sitting outside his apartment. And you’d never cease to wonder at him. He was tiny, stooped, and frail. His face seemed creased with the worries of the ages. He spoke very little. He had survived the privations of a young life devoid of therapeutic services, and he had grown to be able to live with minimal support.

But he was happy. You know there’s a politically incorrect saying — “just because I have an intellectual disability doesn’t mean I’m stupid” — and Clive was the personification of that. His eyes twinkled when you talked to him, and you knew full well he was taking everything in.

I don’t know whether it came from his upbringing in the cathedral, but he loved music. And he could play, sometimes like an angel. He had his own keyboard, but he loved nothing more than to be invited to play the church organ in the local church. You’d want to see the looks of astonishment on strangers’ faces when Clive — tiny, wizened Clive — who hadn’t spoken all evening nor seemed to join in the fun, suddenly started to play.

When there were outings — dances especially — Clive would always arrive looking like the ultimate cool dude. An immaculate suit and a dicky bow made him look like a tiny prince. And he would hold his own on the dance floor with the best of them. Latterly, he would sometimes play in a nearby residential centre for its patients, all of whom had Alzheimers. And he would charm them too. I know a lot of people with an intellectual disability, but in many ways Clive was unique among them. He grew up in a time when the world was especially harsh and unforgiving towards people like him. He never had a job nor got an education, apart from a number of years in St Catherine’s Special School in Donore Avenue. As I said, had it not been for the love of his family he could well have been institutionalised.

HE CAME through all that, and grew into an immensely charming man, with a strange charisma all of his own. That is an extraordinary comment on human resilience in general, and his in particular. He lived a long and blameless life, demanding little, and making, in full, the contribution that his twinkling good humour and his talent for music allowed.

A little while ago, Clive was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, the sort of condition that would fell a far stronger man. There was talk of surgery, but it was too far advanced. For the past couple of weeks, his pain was managed in St Vincent’s Hospital, and he spent his days surrounded by his three sisters, who took it in turns to ensure that he was never alone.

I went to see him on Friday. His niece, Linda, had flown home from Toronto that day — in the teeth of the gathering American storm — because she knew she had to say goodbye. Many other members of the family, and his friends to whom he meant so much, had done the same.

As we talked quietly in the hospital room, Clive opened his eyes from the sleep that morphine had induced, and gazed around the room. “Hello, Mr Person,” he said, and tried to smile before drifting off to sleep again.

Clive died that night, and I’ll never forget that last half-smile as long as I live. Today he’ll be buried after a service in Christ Church Cathedral. At the end of a long and noble life, his family are bringing him home. And a tiny light has gone out in the hearts of all of us who loved him.