Johnny Lyons, the long-time sports presenter and editor at 98FM, is found dead at his Dublin home on the evening of August 19, 2015. The 49‑year‑old broadcaster had been away from work for several weeks recovering from a broken ankle and was expected to return to the air the following week.
Friends become concerned when they cannot reach him, prompting a search of his apartment in Dublin city centre, where his body is discovered. The cause of death is not immediately known, but 98FM confirms he died suddenly and peacefully.
Lyons joins 98FM in 1996 and serves as the station’s Sports Editor for nearly two decades. He is best known for hosting the popular Sunday morning show Now That’s What I Call Sport (9 a.m.–10 a.m.) and also presents Premier League Live on Today FM. His distinctive voice, passion for soccer, and larger‑than‑life personality make him a familiar and beloved figure in Irish sports broadcasting.
The news of Lyons death shocks colleagues and fans across the media and sporting worlds. 98FM’s management describes him as “the backbone of our sports team” and “a great friend.” The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) praises him as “a great football man who really understood the game” and plans to pay tribute at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium during the following month’s match against Georgia. Tributes pour in from fellow broadcasters, politicians, and sports figures, with some calling him “the unmistakable voice of sport in Dublin.”
Lyons’s funeral is held at the Church of St. Therese, Mount Merrion, Dublin, followed by burial at Shanganagh Cemetery in Shankill, County Dublin. The station and FAI both announce on‑air tributes in his memory. His sudden passing leaves a significant gap in Irish sports radio, and his legacy as a passionate, knowledgeable, and charismatic sports voice will be remembered by many.
FitzGerald joins Fine Gael, attaching himself to the liberal wing of the party. and in 1969 is elected to Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. He later gives up his university lectureship to become Minister for Foreign Affairs in the coalition government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–77). When the coalition government is resoundingly defeated in the 1977 Irish general election, Cosgrave yields leadership of Fine Gael to FitzGerald. In his new role as Leader of the Opposition and party leader, he proceeds to modernize and strengthen the party at the grass roots. He briefly loses power in 1982 when political instability triggers two snap elections.
By the time of the 1981 Irish general election, Fine Gael has a party machine that can easily match Fianna Fáil. The party wins 65 seats and forms a minority coalition government with the Labour Party and the support of a number of Independent TDs. FitzGerald is elected Taoiseach on June 30, 1981. To the surprise of many, FitzGerald excludes Richie Ryan, Richard Burke and Tom O’Donnell, former Fine Gael stalwarts, from the cabinet.
On May 5, 2011, it is reported that FitzGerald is seriously ill in a Dublin hospital. Newly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny sends his regards and calls him an “institution.” On May 6 he is put on a ventilator. On May 19, after suffering from pneumonia, he dies at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin at the age of 85.
In a statement, Irish PresidentMary McAleese hails FitzGerald as “a man steeped in the history of the State who constantly strove to make Ireland a better place for all its people.” Taoiseach Enda Kenny pays homage to “a truly remarkable man who made a truly remarkable contribution to Ireland.” Henry Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, who serves as an opposite number to FitzGerald in the 1970s, recalls “an intelligent and amusing man who was dedicated to his country.”
FitzGerald’s death occurs on the third day of Queen Elizabeth II‘s state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an event designed to mark the completion of the Northern Ireland peace process that had been “built on the foundations” of FitzGerald’s Anglo-Irish Agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1985. In a personal message, the Queen offers her sympathies and says she is “saddened” to learn of FitzGerald’s death.
On his visit to Dublin, United States PresidentBarack Obama offers condolences on FitzGerald’s death. He speaks of him as “someone who believed in the power of education; someone who believed in the potential of youth; most of all, someone who believed in the potential of peace and who lived to see that peace realised.”
FitzGerald is the author of a number of books, including Planning in Ireland (1968), Towards a New Ireland (1972), Unequal Partners (1979), All in a Life: An Autobiography (1991), and Reflections on the Irish State (2003).
In 1956, Whitaker is appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance, at the age of thirty-nine. His appointment takes place at a time when Ireland’s economy is in deep depression. Economic growth is non-existent, inflation apparently insoluble, unemployment rife, living standards low and emigration at a figure not far below the birth rate. He believes that free trade, with increased competition and the end of protectionism, will become inevitable and that jobs will have to be created by a shift from agriculture to industry and services. He forms a team of officials within the department which produce a detailed study of the economy, culminating in a plan recommending policies for improvement. The plan is accepted by the government and is transformed into a white paper which becomes known as the First Programme for Economic Expansion, and quite unusually is published with his name attached in November 1958. The programme becomes known as the “Grey Book” which many argue brings the stimulus of foreign investment into the Irish economy. However, other reforms such as the Department of Industry and Commerce‘s export profits tax relief introduced in 1956, are opposed by Whitaker.
In 1977, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominates Whitaker as a member of the 14th Seanad. He serves as a Senator from 1977 to 1981, where he sits as an independent member.
In 1981, Whitaker is nominated to the 15th Seanad by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, where he serves until 1982. FitzGerald also appoints him to chair a Committee of Inquiry into the Irish penal system, and he chairs a Parole Board or Sentence Review Group for several years.
Whitaker also serves as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1976 to 1996. He was also President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and as such, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1985 to 1987. He has a very strong love for the Irish language throughout his career and the collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600–1900, edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is dedicated to Whitaker. From 1995 to 1996 he chairs the Constitution Review Group, an independent expert group established by the government, which publishes its report in July 1996.
Whitaker receives many national and international honours and tributes for his achievements during his lifetime, most notably the conferral of “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001 and Greatest Living Irish Person in 2002. In November 2014, the Institute of Banking confers an Honorary Fellowship on him and creates an annual T. K. Whitaker Scholarship in his name. In April 2015, he is presented with a lifetime achievement award by University College Dublin‘s Economics Society for his outstanding contribution to Ireland’s economic policy.
In November 2016, to mark his centenary year, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council acknowledges Whitaker’s “outstanding and progressive contribution to Irish public service and to society.” The Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Cormac Devlin, presents a special award to Whitaker which is accepted by Ken Whitaker on behalf of his father.
Whitaker marries Nora Fogarty in 1941 and they have six children. After his wife’s death in 1994, he remarries, to Mary Moore in 2005. The couple is invited to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2006 for his 90th birthday by the President of IrelandMary McAleese. Mary Moore Whitaker dies in 2008. T. K. Whitaker turns 100 in December 2016 and dies a month later on January 9, 2017, having survived both of his wives. He is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin.
O’Higgins is described at his removal as a great Christian gentleman whose secular activities were outstanding both to his country and to Europe.
The chief mourners in St. Patrick’s Church are joined by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, and many representatives of the judiciary and politics. The mourners are led by his widow Terry, his children Tom, Geraldine, Michael, Barry, Kevin, Derval and Shane, his thirty grandchildren, his brother Michael and sister Rosaleen.
The parish priest, Father Maurice O’Moore, tells many hundreds in the congregation that O’Higgins and his wife had been regular worshippers at the church.
“Tom was a man of deep faith and his demeanour at prayer was an inspiration to me personally and to parishioners. I think of him this evening as a man of faith, as a man of prayer and a great Christian gentleman. His secular activities through his legal expertise were outstanding both to his country and to Europe,” he says.
Father O’Moore adds that many tributes had been paid to O’Higgins in the media, and everybody can be proud of the contribution he made as an Irishman through his religious faith, his sincerity and love of his country.
Father Bruce Bradley SJ, a friend of the family, gives a reading from the Gospel.
Also attending is Harry Hill SC, retired master of the High Court, Feargus Flood, chairman of the Flood Tribunal, as well many Supreme Court and High Court judges and barristers. The director-general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, is also present, as are many solicitors.
The world of politics is well represented, particularly by members of the Fine Gael party, for which O’Higgins was a Teachta Dála (TD) and minister in the 1940s and 1950s.
Two former taoisigh, Garret FitzGerald and Liam Cosgrave, attend. Also present is the leader of the Fine Gael party, Enda Kenny, and Tom Hayes, chairman of the Parliamentary Party, as well as many party TDs and former deputies.
(From: “A great Christian gentleman’ whose secular activities served State, Europe,” by Christine Newman, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, February 27, 2003)
Charles Brady, American-born painter who spends most of his life in Ireland, dies in Dublin on August 1, 1997.
Brady is born on July 27, 1926, in New York City, the son of Arthur Brady, an industrial hardware merchant. He is best known for small-scale paintings of still life and landscape. At the end of World War II, while serving with the United States Navy, he suffers an accident which results in his discharge. As a result of this, he has the opportunity of pursuing further study. In 1948, he enrolls at the Art Students League of New York. Founded in 1875 and distinguished by its progressive approach to art education, it is one of the most important art schools in the United States in the early twentieth century.
Initially, Brady studies design and fashion before studying fine art under John Groth and Morris Kantor. In 1949, he becomes Groth’s assistant. In 1950, his work is included in the exhibition “American Painting 1950,” held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where he is employed as a guard at the time. Around this time, he meets artists associated with abstract expressionism such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, and exhibits with them in exhibitions such as the “9th Street Show” (1951). Four years later, his first solo exhibition is held at the Urban Gallery, New York. By this time, his father, mother, and a younger brother have all died. In 1956 he decides to leave New York and spend some time in Ireland.
On his arrival, Brady bases himself in Lismore, County Waterford, where the landscapes he begins to paint are in contrast to the abstract style he had developed in New York. In May 1956, he joins his aunt and uncle on a tour that include London and Paris. He remains in Ireland until early in 1958 and during this time becomes acquainted with such figures as Camille Souter, Frank Morris and Desmond McAvock. Though he spends the next year in the United States, he soon decides to return to Ireland. In 1959 he is living in Dublin, where, along with artists such as Noel Sheridan and Patrick Pye, he is involved in founding the Independent Artists group. His work is included in the group’s first exhibition in 1960.
Also in 1960, Brady marries Eelagh Noonan, and the couple go to live in Spain. On their return to Ireland in 1961, they settle in Dún Laoghaire, where he begins to produce still lifes of objects such as envelopes and boxes painted in muted tones. Though figurative, the painterly quality of these works and the way in which they assert the flat nature of the picture plane suggest something of his experience of postwar American abstract art. Soft, hazy light, another key characteristic of his work, can also be seen in his paintings of Sandymount Strand, which might be compared with the work of Nathaniel Hone the Younger, whose work Brady had seen on his first trip to Ireland. He also works in other media, producing lithographs and, from the mid-1980s, small bronzes of such mundane objects as discarded bus tickets.
From 1976 to 1983 Brady lectures in painting at the National College of Art and Design. In 1981 he becomes a member of Aosdána and in 1994 he is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). He exhibits regularly in Ireland at venues such as the RHA. He receives a number of awards including the P. J. Carroll award at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art as well as the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal and the landscape award at the Oireachtas exhibitions of 1973 and 1989 respectively.
(From: “Brady, Charles” by Rebecca Minch, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “Charles Brady, 1967,” oil on board by Koert Delmonte)
Reynolds is educated at Summerhill College in Sligo, County Sligo and works for a state transport company before succeeding at a variety of entrepreneurial ventures, including promoting dances and owning ballrooms, a pet-food factory, and newspapers. In 1974 he is elected to the Longford County Council as a member of Fianna Fáil. He enters Dáil Éireann, lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, in 1977 as a member representing the Longford-Westmeath parliamentary constituency and becomes Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in Haughey’s Fianna Fáil government (1979–81). He is subsequently Minister of Industry and Commerce (1987–88) and Minister for Finance (1988–91) in Haughey’s third and fourth governments. He breaks with Haughey in December 1991. On January 30, 1992, Haughey retires as leader of Fianna Fáil at a parliamentary party meeting. Reynolds easily defeats his rivals Mary O’Rourke and Michael Woods in the party leadership election and succeeds Haughey as Taoiseach on February 11, 1992.
The Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democratscoalition that Reynolds inherits breaks up in November 1992 but, after the general election later that month, he surprises many observers by forming a new coalition government with the Labour Party in January 1993. He plays a significant part in bringing about a ceasefire between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland in 1994, but he is less effective in maintaining his governing coalition. When this government founders in November 1994, he resigns as Taoiseach and as leader of Fianna Fáil, though he remains acting prime minister until a new government is formed the following month. He unsuccessfully seeks his party’s nomination as a candidate for the presidency of Ireland in 1997. He retires from public life in 2002.
From 1969 to 1973, during the 12th Seanad, Yeats serves as Cathaoirleach (chair).
While a senator, Yeats serves as a Member of the European Parliament from 1973 to 1979, being appointed to Ireland’s first, second and third delegations. He stands at the first direct elections in 1979 for the Dublin constituency but is not elected. He is Director General of the EEC Council of Ministers in Brussels in the 1980s.
Yeats marries Gráinne Ni hEigeartaigh, a singer and Irish harpist. They have four children – three daughters and a son.
FitzGerald joins Fine Gael, attaching himself to the liberal wing of the party. and in 1969 is elected to Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. He later gives up his university lectureship to become Minister for Foreign Affairs in the coalition government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–1977). When the coalition government is resoundingly defeated in the 1977 Irish general election, Cosgrave yields leadership of Fine Gael to FitzGerald. In his new role as Leader of the Opposition and party leader, he proceeds to modernize and strengthen the party at the grass roots. He briefly loses power in 1982 when political instability triggers two snap elections.
By the time of the 1981 Irish general election, Fine Gael has a party machine that can easily match Fianna Fáil. The party wins 65 seats and forms a minority coalition government with the Labour Party and the support of a number of Independent TDs. FitzGerald is elected Taoiseach on June 30, 1981. To the surprise of many FitzGerald excludes Richie Ryan, Richard Burke and Tom O’Donnell, former Fine Gael stalwarts, from the cabinet.
On May 5, 2011, it is reported that FitzGerald is seriously ill in a Dublin hospital. Newly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny sends his regards and calls him an “institution.” On May 6 he is put on a ventilator. On May 19, after suffering from pneumonia, he dies at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin at the age of 85.
In a statement, Irish PresidentMary McAleese hails FitzGerald as “a man steeped in the history of the State who constantly strove to make Ireland a better place for all its people.” Taoiseach Enda Kenny pays homage to “a truly remarkable man who made a truly remarkable contribution to Ireland.” Henry Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, who serves as an opposite number to FitzGerald in the 1970s, recalls “an intelligent and amusing man who was dedicated to his country.”
FitzGerald’s death occurs on the third day of Queen Elizabeth II‘s state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an event designed to mark the completion of the Northern Ireland peace process that had been “built on the foundations” of FitzGerald’s Anglo-Irish Agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1985. In a personal message, the Queen offers her sympathies and says she is “saddened” to learn of FitzGerald’s death.
On his visit to Dublin, United States PresidentBarack Obama offers condolences on FitzGerald’s death. He speaks of him as “someone who believed in the power of education; someone who believed in the potential of youth; most of all, someone who believed in the potential of peace and who lived to see that peace realised.”
FitzGerald is the author of a number of books, including Planning in Ireland (1968), Towards a New Ireland (1972), Unequal Partners (1979), All in a Life: An Autobiography (1991), and Reflections on the Irish State (2003).
Yeats spends her first three years between Ballylee, County Galway, and Oxford before her family moves to 82 Merrion Square, Dublin in 1922. She is very sick as a child and spends three years in two different hospitals, St. Margaret’s Hall, 50 Mespil Road, and Nightingale Hall, Morehampton Road, Dublin. She then goes to the Pension Henriette, a boarding school in Villars-sur-Bex, Switzerland from 1928–30. In 1923 her Aunt Elizabeth “Lolly” gives her brush drawing lessons which aid her in winning first prize in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) National Art competition for children under eight years old in 1925 and 1926.
Yeats trains in the Royal Hibernian Academy school from 1933 to 1936 and works as a stage designer with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1936, at the age of 16, she is hired by the Abbey Theatre as assistant to Tanya Moiseiwitsch. She studies for four months at the School of Theatrical Design in Paris with Paul Colin in 1937. At 18, she begins her costume career on sets with Ria Mooney‘s company. At the Abbey, she designs the sets and costumes for revivals of W.B. Yeats’ plays The Resurrection and On Baile’s Strand (1938).
In 1938 Yeats designs the first production of W.B. Yeats’ play Purgatory. The designs for Purgatory are her most successful achievement. Purgatory is the last play that W.B Yeats sees on stage, and when it is performed it is a full house. When working on Purgatory, Hugh Hunt wants to have a moon on the back cloth of the production, but she refuses. “If she does not win, she is going to say that she doesn’t wish to have her name on the programme as a designer of the setting.” This could be the main reason why her name is not on many productions that she worked on. She also designs the first play of her uncle Jack Yeats to receive professional production, Harlequin’s Positions.
In 1939 Yeats is promoted to head of design at the Abbey until her departure in May 1941. In 1939 it is commented that her designs are “getting arty” and not in keeping with style of the Abbey. One of her last designs is her father’s last play, The Death of Cuchulain, for the Lyric Theatre on the Abbey stage in 1949. She designs and stage-manages for the Peacock Theatre, the Cork Opera House, the Olympia Theatre, the Gaiety Theatre, the Lyric Theatre, the Abbey Theatre and the Players Theatre.
Among the work Yeats is credited with in the Abbey Theatre, she also works on five productions in the Peacock Theatre with the Theatre Company: Alarm Among the Clerks (1937), The Phoenix (1937), Harlequin’s Positions (1939), The Wild Cat (1940), and Cavaliero (The Life of a Hawk) (1948).
Yeats chooses to move towards painting full-time beginning a brief study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1941. She experiments with watercolour and wax. She has a touching naive expressionist style and is interested in representing domestic humanity. She designs many of the covers for the books of Irish language publisher Sáirséal agus Dill over a twenty-year period from 1958. She does illustrations for books by Denis Devlin, Thomas Kinsella and Louis MacNeice, and works with many young designers, such as Louis le Brocquy.
Yeats dies at the age of 82 on July 4, 2001, and is buried in Shanganagh Cemetery, south Dublin.
The Royal Hibernian Academy holds a retrospective of her work in 1995, as does the National Gallery of Ireland in 2002. She donates her collection of Jack B. Yeats’ sketch books to the National Gallery of Ireland, leading to the creation of the Yeats Museum within the Gallery. Her brother, Michael, in turn, donates her sketchbooks to the Museum.
(Pictured: “Coole Park,” oil on board by Anne Butler Yeats, Duke Street Gallery, Dublin)
Yeats is very sick as a child, spending three years in two different hospitals. She then goes to the Pension Henriette, a boarding school in Villars-sur-Bex, Switzerland from 1928–1930. In 1923 her Aunt Elizabeth “Lolly” gives her brush drawing lessons which aids her in winning first prize in the RDS National Art competition for children under eight years old in 1925 and 1926.
Yeats trains in the Royal Hibernian Academy school from 1933 to 1936 and works as a stage designer with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1936, at the age of 16, she is hired by the Abbey Theatre as assistant to Tanya Moiseiwitsch. She studies for four months at the School of Theatrical Design in Paris with Paul Colin in 1937. At 18, she begins her costume career on sets with Ria Mooney‘s company. At the Abbey, she designs the sets and costumes for revivals of W.B. Yeats’ plays The Resurrection and On Baile’s Strand (1938).
In 1938 Yeats designs the first production of W.B. Yeats’ play Purgatory, which is her most successful achievement. Purgatory is the last play that W.B Yeats sees on stage, and when it is performed it is a full house. When working on Purgatory, Hugh Hunt wants to have a moon on the back cloth of the production but Yeats refuses. “If she does not win, she is going to say that she doesn’t wish to have her name on the programme as a designer of the setting.” This could be the main reason why her name is not on many productions that she works on. She also designs the first play of her uncle Jack Yeats to receive professional production, Harlequin’s Positions.
In 1939 Yeats is promoted to head of design at the Abbey until her departure in May 1941. In 1939 it is commented that her designs are “getting arty” and not in keeping with the style of the Abbey. One of her last designs is her father’s last play, The Death of Cuchulain, for the Lyric Theatre on the Abbey stage, in 1949. She designs and stage-manages for the Peacock Theatre, the Cork Opera House, the Olympia Theatre, the Gaiety Theatre, the Austin Clarke Lyric Theatre, the Abbey Theatre and Players’ Theatre.
Among the work Yeats is credited with in the Abbey Theatre, she is also recorded as having worked on five productions in the Peacock Theatre with the Theatre Company: Alarm Among the Clerks (1937), The Phoenix (1937), Harlequin’s Positions (1939), The Wild Cat (1940), and Cavaliero (The Life of a Hawk) (1948).
Yeats chooses to move towards painting full-time beginning a brief study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1941. She experiments with watercolour and wax. She has a touching naive expressionist style and is interested in representing domestic humanity. She designs many of the covers for the books of Irish-language publisher Sáirséal agus Dill over a twenty-year period from 1958. She does illustrations for books by Denis Devlin, Thomas Kinsella and Louis MacNeice, and works with many young designers, such as Louis le Brocquy.
The Royal Hibernian Academy holds a retrospective of her work in 1995, as does the National Gallery of Ireland in 2002. She donates her collection of Jack B. Yeats’ sketch books to the National Gallery of Ireland, leading to the creation of the Yeats Museum within the Gallery. Her brother, Michael, in turn, donates her sketchbooks to the Museum.
(Pictured: “Gossip & Scandal,” 1943 oil on canvas, by Anne Butler Yeats)
seamus dubhghaill 