Final round of applause for 'beautiful, witty, chatty' Terry
More photos:Thursday June 05 2008
TERRY Keane's "serious error of judgment turned a social columnist into a pariah", mourners at the funeral of the late journalist and socialite were told yesterday.
The storm of controversy that had erupted over the infamous revelations on the 'Late Late Show' by the flamboyant former 'Sunday Independent' gossip columnist of her 27-year-long affair with the late Taoiseach Charlie Haughey was not specifically mentioned -- but nor was it glossed over during the service at St Joseph's Church in Glasthule, south Co Dublin.
The journalist died, aged 68, in St Vincent's Hospital on Saturday after battling cancer for many years.
Eulogy
In a his eulogy, Fr Noel Barber, a Jesuit from Gonzaga College and family friend, reminded the congregation that "we all make errors, we all make wrong calls".
Fr Barber added: "It is when such errors and wrong calls are in the public sphere that great damage can be done to one and all."
In living with her own error of judgement, Terry retained the "admirable and steadfast support of family and friends," Fr Barber said.
But behind the "formidable, colourful and controversial persona" so familiar to the Irish public, was another, private, Terry, not so well known, as her deeply moving and emotional funeral yesterday revealed.
The "lovely kind Granny" missed by her grandchildren, the deeply beloved mother and "ally" of her three daughters, the "beautiful, chatty, witty" friend always chasing the best parties and the warm-hearted woman who opened her home to all and sundry -- even going so far as to buy prawn sandwiches for a homeless person camping out in her shed.
The hundreds of mourners, who came from all walks of Irish society, including the legal, business and journalism professions, were led by Ms Keane's daughters -- Jane, Madeleine, Justine -- and Ms Keane's ex-husband, the former Chief Justice Ronan Keane.
They included Supreme Court judge Adrian Hardiman; Mary Finan, chairwoman of the RTE Authority; Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning; Professor Ronan Fanning; businessman Greg McCambridge; solicitor Jim Cawley, property developer Joe McGowan and fashion guru Ian Galvin.
Ms Keane's former editor at the Sunday Press, Vincent Jennings, was joined by many of her former colleagues from the Sunday Independent including deputy editor Willie Kealy and screenplay writer Michael Sheridan.
All joined warmly in "a final round of applause for Terry Keane", as prompted by her son-in-law, celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin, who is married to Justine Keane.
Speaking on behalf of the family, Mr Gavin told how over the past few days, he had heard many stories of this "extraordinary lady" but that with Terry, "only the really embellished stories are the true ones".
He couldn't tell them in church, he said, before adding: "But I'm sure we're all going to see the movie."
He reminded mourners how another recently departed Irish journalist, Nuala O'Faolain, had described Terry as "a beautiful, exotic dangerous flower arriving in a very dour, grey Dublin," when she had came from Surrey, England, to study medicine at Trinity College, which she left to take up journalism.
She had been deeply loved by men -- who found her charming, beautiful and witty -- and by women, because she was so feminine he said, adding that she had had an extraordinary effect on ordinary Irish women who loved her "style and her danger".
"Most people only live once but in Terry's 68 years, she lived a hundred lives," Mr Gavin said.
She was a voracious reader of newspapers who always liked to be the first, whether it was the first person to relate the latest news or the first with the new shade of lipstick, he reminisced.
But over the last few years, with her illness, a different Terry had emerged -- a woman who had accepted her sickness with "fortitude, dignity and resilience".
"She suffered probably more than anyone I've ever known but she never complained," her son-in-law said.
The Edna St Vincent Millay poem 'Dirge Without Music' was read aloud by Ms Keane's daughter Madeleine, bleakly honest in its final verse: "Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave. Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."
Clannad singer Moya Brennan then took to the pulpit, her haunting voice filling the church with a lament before mourners followed Terry on her last journey through the summer rain to the crematorium at Mount Jerome in Harold's Cross.
- Nicola Anderson
