Few live as long and accomplish as much as has Dr TK Whitaker. Fewer still live long enough to sit listening to the unqualified praise of their peers.
But such was bestowed yesterday inside the Convention Centre Dublin at a lunch in his honour hosted by the North's Social Democratic and Labour Party.
The only other person who might have competed for the title Greatest Living Irish Person, former party leader John Hume, sent a recorded message.
“As an Ulsterman born in 1916 before Partition,” Mr Hume said, “you have made an enormous contribution to a greater understanding between North and South and we thank you for that.”
Dr Whitaker’s large extended family were present. “Oh gosh,” said one when asked how many grandchildren there were, “Is it 26, 27 or eight?”
“And five great grandchildren plus one on the way,” said another.
Family photo
They crowded against a wall before lunch for the family photo as the great and good of Irish business, public service and political life crowded into the centre to pay homage to a man they agree stands head and shoulders above them all.
“Ken and Nora [Dr Whitaker’s late first wife] used to take a lot of us in after school,” said grandchild Nicola Ryan (35).
“We’d spend afternoons with them and Ken would take time out from his work . . . to come and help us practise the piano. He’s a perfectionist so you had to get it right and there was always a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits.”
“Bourbon biscuits,” chipped in Deirdre, another of the third generation.
“And loads of sugar in the tea from Nora,” continued Nicola.
Love of Irish
Anna (19) spoke of his love of Irish. “Whenever I speak to him – and we speak at least once a week – we converse in Irish. He loves that. He doesn’t even notice the switch, he just goes straight to it.”
Nicola added: “Every Christmas Day, he has the entire family in. We have homemade brown bread and Ken-caught smoked salmon, which has been tagged and smoked in his smoke house in Mayo.”
In the dining area where tables numbering up to 63, each with settings for 10 or 12, were laid out, a carousel of photographs was rolling, to the background accompaniment of Elgar's Nimrod, which seemed appropriately epic in its musical grandeur.
Several of the photos showed Dr Whitaker with Garret FitzGerald, in both political and academic settings, suggesting they had much in common.
There was also himself and Bertie Ahern; another with Pope Paul VI (with, in the centre, Charles Haughey, head bent forward, looking up from under his eyebrows), and plenty of him with his family, playing the fiddle and piano or in a bush hat or holding a glass of blond beer.
The most important photographs, though, showed Dr Whitaker with Jack Lynch and Seán Lemass and Frank Aiken and Terence O’Neill, underscoring his role in fashioning modern Irish economic policy.
And historian Ronan Fanning reminded us yesterday of his central role in developing an approach to Northern Ireland that respected difference and promoted understanding.
“Gift to Ireland”
The keynote speech was delivered by former president Mary McAleese, who said his birth in Rostrevor, Co Down, in 1916 amounted to a "gift to Ireland".
“It was undoubtedly the beginning of a life of extraordinary influence, extraordinary impact, through unequalled public service to this country. It was a service freely given with huge personal integrity. There was no pursuit of personal ambition, much less any expectation of thanks.
"We who have benefited in so many ways from the lived life of Ken Whitaker, we gather here today because of what we know we owe this man, this Renaissance man, this great lover of everything Irish, this wonderful scholar of the Irish language, this Irish man par excellence, this European par excellence."
All this for a man who, as Mrs McAleese put it, never stood for public office, was never taoiseach or president “but whose wise counsel and formidable intellect was so crucial to successive Irish governments that long, long after he had retired from public life, the Irish people, in popular polls, acknowledged him above all others as the greatest living Irish man”.
The star of the show smiled benignly at it all – and then tucked into his lunch.
