Where loss is a genuine tragedy
WHAT happens when a man with eight All-Ireland medals finally hangs up his boots?Ger Power had enjoyed himself since his playing days ended. He was based in Tralee, where having the lowest golf handicap out of all the Kerry Golden Years players gave him a head start when the banter started at reunions.
For dressing-room banter he helped out training the Kerry hurlers, trading one-liners with youngsters who weren’t born when he won his first All-Ireland medal, or his last.
They had their hands full trying to match Power’s putdowns after training sessions. One of the great GAA urban legends centres on one of Mick O’Dwyer’s footballers, who supposedly told journalists at a press night before an All-Ireland final 30 years ago . . . well, let Power finish the yarn.
“Yeah, I said it. It was the seventies, in Killarney, we’d finished training one night and I was running into the dressing-room and I said to the journalists who were there, look, just put me down for what I said last year.
“It was different then, you wouldn’t have had a press night as such — Paddy Downey or Sean Kilfeather or someone would call to the house for a chat. My father played hurling for Limerick so they’d be chatting to him, my mother would open the bottle and then they’d be giving out that she had a heavy hand with it, but sure they’d stay there for the day talking.
“It was great. The family enjoyed having them in the house, and I’d say the journalists used to look forward to it. Sure they’d be down in Kerry for the week.”
With that kind of material at Power’s disposal, what chance did the young Kerry hurlers have when it came to slagging?
Then came the phone call from Cork one Monday evening.
Power’s daughter Jane studied commerce and finance in UCC and joined Ernst and Young on Leeside once she graduated. A qualified tax consultant, she was living in Cork, engaged to a Mallow man, Billy Bolster, and busily planning her marriage in the Honan Chapel. She’d been feeling tired and had visited the doctor for some tests.
“She’d moved into a new house on the Saturday,” says Power. “On the Monday she was diagnosed with leukaemia. She was in hospital then more or less for a year until she died.”
Over the course of those 12 months Power and his family had to deal with all the stresses associated with terminal illness. As he says, it takes a toll.
“It has a huge effect on a family. It brings things into play that you’d never talked about before. For instance, Jane died on a Monday evening but we had a false alarm, if you like, on the Saturday night, when she was very weak. We called a priest, and when he came up I could have strangled him; I said to him, ‘where is the God here?’
“You would ask yourself questions. About everything. If someone could convince me that there’s a life hereafter and I’ll see her again, I’d be the happy for the rest of my days. Because that day won’t be long coming either.”
Power’s daughter was strong to the very end, says her father.
“Jane wasn’t wild, she was a good student who worked hard. She organised the nights out in work, and even in hospital she’d have her book of the best restaurants in Ireland by the bed — she’d still be checking where would be the best places to go.
“She was unbelievably strong. The doctors said it to me often enough in the corridor outside her room, how they were amazed at how strong she was.”
There still came a terrible day when Power was standing at his daughter’s bedside in a room in St James’ Hospital when she asked the doctors how she was going to die.
“To ask that question . . .” says Power. “I had to leave the room.”
That was April. The doctors gave her two weeks but she lasted until October. She was 26.
“If she could have taken chemotherapy the night before she died, she’d have taken it. She wanted to live so much.”
DEALING with the ups and downs of a career in elite sport was some preparation for Power in dealing with the crisis, but he’s keener to thank the friends who rallied around.
“The people who rowed in and helped us were fantastic. People are so good. Michael O’Flynn arranged a helicopter when Jane had to be brought to St James’ Hospital in Dublin, for instance, and Superintendent Denis Donegan arranged a Garda escort. I asked her afterwards if she enjoyed it, but she was in so much pain she barely noticed the trip.”
Others stayed in touch. Former Meath star Gerry McEntee was always on the end of a phone. Dr Con Murphy in Cork was “fantastic”, says Power, as was Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and the Couchman family.
Michael Wright of Offaly had been through the mill with leukaemia, and he offered advice. When Jane could get out for a break from the hospital in Dublin, Mary Kerrigan in the Burlington Hotel rolled out the red carpet for her.
And the old adversaries, opponents who would have cut Jane Power’s father in two when he was a lethal wing-forward determined to break their hearts, stood up and were counted also.
The night of Jane’s wake in Mallow Billy Morgan, Colman Corrigan, and Dinny Allen arrived up from Cork. Nickey English, Ross Carr, Robbie O’Malley and Bernard Flynn are bringing teams down to the golf classic, as is John O’Gara of Roscommon.
“It’s not a year since it happened,” says Power, “but you’d still get mass cards and phone calls and letters, people asking how you’re doing.
“It’s good to talk about it, too. That helps a lot, even though it can be upsetting. Unfortunately, it knocks on everybody’s door in some way or other, though as someone said to me, the master shouldn’t be burying the pupil.”
Power is keen to share the hard lessons of those 12 months with families facing a similar situation. “Spend as much time with the person as you can, when they’re in isolation wards it’s hard going,’’ he advises.
“Myself, my wife Patsy, her fiance Billy and my son Gary had a roster going so one of us would always be there to keep her company.”
Power took more out of the ordeal. Jane was left out of hospital for the day at one stage and told her father he’d have to do something for the Friends of Ward 2D in CUH and the Bone Marrow for Leukaemia Trust of St James’ Hospital.
“They do fantastic work,” says Power. “I met a chap recently from the Department of Social Welfare who had leukaemia, went through it all for years, the chemotherapy and all the treatment, and he’s cured now. Fantastic work.
“We brought Jane out of hospital one time for a break, and when she came back the nurses had a teddy bear on her bed. A small thing, but it gives people a great lift.”
With that in mind he organised the Jane Power Golf Classic to raise funds for those two charities and Brú Columbanus, which provides accommodation near Cork University Hospital for the families of terminally ill patients.
The organising committee reads like a team sheet from an All-Ireland football final around 1978 — Charlie Nelligan, Sean Walsh, Ger O’Keeffe, John O’Keeffe, Mikey Sheehy, Eoin Liston, Ogie Moran, complete with manager Mick O’Dwyer’s signature on the bottom and Dick Spring as a potential substitute.
Power is keen to thank others as well — committee members Frank Stephenson and Teddy Reynolds as well as the captain and lady captain of Tralee GC, who gave over the charitable day to the tournament; others who’ve worked to ensure the classic is fully subscribed — the likes of Michael O’Flynn, Oliver O’Mahony, Jim Buckley and Dr Con Murphy — have ensured there’ll be as many Cork teams as Kerry teams in action today.
HE still talks football with passion. He’s sympathetic towards Paul Galvin’s predicament, for instance, pointing out that a lot of people around the country, not just in the southwest, sympathise with the suspended captain.
“If Paul had hit the referee I’d have come down on him like a ton of bricks, but you’d often see instances where a player gets a fist across the jaw. That’s far more serious.”
He feels Kerry will have their hands full replacing Galvin and Declan O’Sullivan and expects tomorrow’s Munster final to be far tighter than last year’s All-Ireland final.
He also acknowledges that football has changed since he lined out for the Kingdom: “If you look at some of those old games on TG4, Kerry and Dublin, or Kerry and Roscommon, the way we played, there’d be nobody left on the pitch if they played that way now.
“But the lads have fantastic facilities now, free gym, free gear — those things have all changed for the better. Take diet, for instance — in our day it was steak, steak, and more steak.”
But Jane’s passing still casts a shadow. He acknowledges the difference in his life since.
“When something like this happens to you it changes you totally, absolutely totally,” says Power. “You don’t realise that until it happens to you. When it does, you have a different outlook after it, you view people totally differently.”
Throwing himself into fundraising has helped, and as he says himself, the thoughtfulness of people is another unexpected dividend. But nothing fills the void.
“You’d be up and down,” he says. “You’d have terrible days, at night you’d be thinking about her. I read an interview somewhere with George Best’s father recently and he said he’d give anything just to see his son walking through the door. We’d be exactly the same.
“You’d question everything. People worry about things, but the only thing they should worry about is their health. If you have that you have everything.”
* Further contributions can be paid to Bank of Ireland Tralee a/c no. 87369993, sort code 90-58-38.
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