The death has taken place of New York and Kerry's Gerry O'Shea, Irish Echo columnist and tireless advocate for the disadvantaged, no matter where in the world they might be.
The cause of death was leukemia. Gerry was eighty years old, a landmark he celebrated with his wife Aileen, family and many friends, back in September.
For some years Gerry was a regular contributor to the Echo as an opinion writer. His words were always thoughtful and well considered. His columns required virtually no editing, his being a talent for written expression which befitted a man who had a long career in teaching before his retirement.
While Echo readers in recent years could read Gerry's work, agree or disagree with his positions and points of view, readers from an earlier time could also do so as the young immigrant from County Kerry wrote for the Echo for a time in the 1970s.
Echo publisher Máirtín Ó Muilleoir said of Gerry: "His was a soft-spoken but authoritative voice which brought a discerning, often faith-based, point-of-view to our pages. An unabashed friend of the least powerful in the world, Gerry saw life through a dual American and Irish lens and never wavered in his belief that both his beloved countries would continue to move to the light.”
Photographer Nuala Purcell, whose portrait of Gerry sits at the top of this report, said: "This is a huge loss to the community. All that knowledge Gerry had and shared. Such an interesting, good man. He was at the Kerry Association meeting only two weeks ago. Gerry was a very proud Kenmare man. We're all going to miss him."
Gerry's last column for the Echo was sent on January 10. It was headlined "Theological Considerations." The message that accompanied the column, the hint really, was typically low key: "A few words about changing attitudes to theology."
Gerry O'Shea's "few words" invariably said much. The Echo will posthumously publish this final column in the near future.
Most weeks Gerry would say nothing if his opinion piece was delayed. This would happen as a result of nothing more than space considerations in the print edition.
Occasionally he would push a little harder, as was the case with a column which appeared in the Echo in early December focused on a trip that Gerry made to Honduras with members of the charity organization HOPe, of which he was an active member.
Gerry was proud of the work of HOPe and was determined to see it acknowledged.
Gerry wrote: "I recently returned from a four-day visit to San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras. I was accompanied by Vincent Collins, his wife Linda, and Patricia Alarcon Cavalie.
"We were representing the New York-based charity HOPe, which has a project in the region of Choloma, on the outskirts of the city. All of us, except Linda, are members of the organization.
"HOPe was founded in Yonkers by a group of Irish people in 1997, the 150th anniversary of the worst year of the Irish potato famine.
"The members of this group, led by Pat Buckley from Killarney, felt that bemoaning the awful laissez-faire policies of the British government, which caused the Irish disaster, was an inadequate response to the Gorta Mor tragedy.
"We looked for other ways of honoring the lives of the million or more Irish people who died from starvation or related diseases in their family huts or on the streets, or in the coffin ships during those awful years of the 1840’s – bringing to mind John Keats’ pitiful lines in his poem “Ode to a Nightingale” - “Here where men sit and hear each other groan, where but to think is to be full of sorrow.”
Gerry, who himself possessed the mind of a poet, never forgot where he came from, or Ireland's history. But much of his life's energy was, in time honored fashion, devoted to his new life in America.
That life drew on a special link between his native Kerry and New York.
And so the Kerry Association announced "With Deepest Sadness" the passing of its member and past president Gerry O'Shea.
Viewing will be Wednesday, January 29 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Hodder Farenga Funeral Home, 899 McLean Avenue in Yonkers. A Mass of Christian Burial will take place on Thursday, January 30, at St. Barnabas Church in the Bronx. There will be a private cremation.
