Weeshie Fogarty: Spirited from one Kingdom to the other

When Aloysius ‘Weeshie’ Fogarty walked out the front gate of his home at O’Sullivan’s Place, off St Anne’s Road in Killarney, his first step of the day was left or right into sporting conversation.

How are you my friend, he’d enquire.

If it wasn’t the fly-fishing champion, Vince Johnson, on the receiving end of an extended neighbour’s hand, it was basketball star Paudie O’Connor or football legends Johnny Culloty and Paddy ‘Bomber’ O’Shea, or Tadghie Fleming.

Fodder for walking down the Demesne.

Had he stood outside St Mary’s Cathedral in the town yesterday morning, news of the exclusions from, and freshmen in, to the new Kerry football panel for next season would have drifted towards Weeshie.

That was the effortless gift of the delightfully entertaining 77-year-old who passed away last Sunday morning. He never had to seek out the news. He conversed himself into its way.

For all the well-intentioned tributes from those who learned of Weeshie Fogarty via the airwaves, it was 38 years of chatting to patients as a psychiatric nurse in St Finan’s Mental Hospital overlooking Fitzgerald Stadium that turned him into an overnight radio star. A life of quiet chat prior to any recorded conversations.

Yesterday, Dan Dwyer from Kilcummin, an old work colleague of Weeshie’s in St Finan’s for the guts of four decades, recalled the teamwork, the camaraderie and the chats they enjoyed, not just with each other but with those who weren’t permitted to return home from hospital after work.

The patient who was a one-time master barber and groomed the nurses’ hair, or those who were brought out to the bog to stook turf as part of their therapy.

Different ways and different days.

“There was a fierce amount of footballers working there at one stage,” he said. “You’d happily fill in for Weeshie when he was away at matches.

"He played in the League with Kerry in Longford one time I remember and arrived down around 1.30am to continue his shift through to daylight. The patients had the game chapter and verse before the paper arrived the next morning.”

It was the chief concelebrant at his funeral mass yesterday in the Cathedral, Fr Niall Howard, who explained Weeshie Fogarty’s love of words and chat.

“He learned well from Micheál Ó Hehir. Watching poetry in motion on the football field was one thing but turning the motion back into poetry quite another.

"With time being precious (on the radio), every word was vital. Weeshie did it with ease and passion. What a gift he was on the radio but also as a conversationalist, whether it was on air, on the street or down the Demesne.

He brought a respect of people to bear in so many different ways, but especially in his 38 years as a psychiatric nurse where he realised that respect for people, interest in them and a good chat can, and does, lift anyone.

The cross-section of community which paid its respects over the past few days pointed to the breadth of his interests from basketball to the GAA, from cycling to the media.

He unearthed enriching stories via the old route of conversation – not interview – and the public might never have learned of the exploits of the Iron Man Mick Murphy from Caherciveen or the Casey brothers from Sneem, or the hill runner John Lenihan from Ballymacelligott but for Fogarty’s interest in hearing their stories.

But as his daughter Carolanne reminded the congregation yesterday, the two pillars of his life were family and football – “though we often wondered in what order”.

“Thirteen years ago,” she explained, “there was great excitement in the family when his first grandchild, Lucy, was born.

"Her christening was booked for the Cathedral in February 2006 and I went over to the house to tell Mam and himself. ‘I won’t be able to go to that at all,’ Weeshie indicated, ‘Kerry are playing Mayo that night in Tralee, and it’s the first game under lights in the league’.

"I went back downstairs to Mam who told me, ‘Don’t worry about that, he’ll be there alright’. I think she might have had a word in his ear.”

There’s a nice contradiction in the fact that for such a loquacious man, Weeshie Fogarty was a very good listener.

He connected with the ordinary lives of people in street chat or from the press area in Croke Park in an uncomplicated yet insightful manner.

From his time as a wing-back and later an inter-county keeper and onto a referee, he had a robust understanding of football debate, its nuances and its intricacies.

That he never started in goals for Kerry at Croke Park was down to the simple fact that his co-worker at St Finan’s, Johnny Culloty, stood ahead of him.

Bart Moriarty and Pat Moynihan

That he never refereed an All-Ireland final was due to Kerry’s frequent involvement when he was one of the top officials in the country, through the seventies and into the mid-80’s.

It was a source of some disappointment to him that he was overlooked for the 1983 decider between Dublin and Galway, which went the way of notoriety afterwards for the four sendings-off on the day.

If his love of words was kindled by writing the Legion club notes for the local papers, he had already shown an aptitude for radio before he joined the commentary team on Radio Kerry 15 years ago.

In the early uncertainty of how local radio worked, Weeshie set off on a path of descriptive discourse and convivial conversation. He never had to deviate from it.

“Anyone who knew Dad knew he was not a materialistic man, and placed little value on money,” Carolanne explained yesterday, before family and a legion of friends took him to Aghadoe Cemetery.

“He had two bank cards he never used and was quite happy to leave (his beloved) Joan in charge of the purse strings.

Kerry legend Mick O’Connell was among the mourners.

"Once he had a few euros in the bedside locker for the daily paper and a couple of pints, he was quite happy.”

His two daughters Carolanne and Denise were joined by son Kieran and his wife of 49 years, Joan.

“An amazing woman as Dad constantly reminded us,” Carolanne said. With them were Weeshie’s two grandchildren Lucy and Eva, sister Sheila, and extended family.

Fr Howard was joined for the funeral mass by Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy, Monsignor Dan Riordan, Fr Tom Looney, Fr Paddy O’Donoghue, Fr Seamus Linnane and Fr Micheal O’Doherty.

In a recording replayed yesterday in the Cathedral, Weeshie Fogarty ventured the hope he might be spirited from one Kingdom to the other.

Stopping for a chat probably about the Legion, about Killarney, about Kerry football in 2019, and likely an ice-cream cone with a chocolate flake on the way.

The journey will hardly be complicated and will doubtless conclude with the same extended hand.

How are you my friend?