Liz Cooke sadly passed away on Friday 12th July, 2013 at her home, Tigoni, in the presence of her family.

I first met Liz in 1970. Tom Stokes, who is now very ill, was Captain of UCDBC that year and the Senior VIII coached by Tom Sullivan had been unbeaten. At Trinity regatta that year UCDBC won all VIII’s events, Senior, Junior and Maiden. Many will not remember Ireland at the time but money was very short and much had not changed much since the 19th century. A bar of chocolate still cost 6d., and the weekly wage allowed no extravagance. The previous year a member of the senior VIII had collapsed from malnutrition and a life threatening low blood count. Tom sent Frank McKenna and the late Dave Gannon on an exploratory expedition to Henley to find accommodation for the crew. They set off on the cattle boat and returned safely with exciting news of our accommodation.

The four of the crew that travelled with me were so heavy that I had to sit in the back of my Ford Anglia, to prevent the car sitting down on the shock absorbers with grinding thuds at every bump. We sailed overnight and arrived at Sonning Common in the mid afternoon. The house was empty and nobody around until a small boy and girl around seven years of age ran from the back garden excitedly shouting at us to find their rabbit which had escaped. Liz arrived shortly afterwards (with essential shopping) to find a strange empty car in the driveway and when she went around the back she saw oarsmen on their hands and knees, heads in the bushes and backside sticking up in the air, looking for a white rabbit.

The ten days to two weeks (I cannot recall the exact time) that we stayed with Liz were idyllic. John & Diana were sent to a tent in the back garden to make space for the crew. Liz was unbelievably generous and fed us like kings. We consumed huge amounts of food. One memory is of a gallon tin of ice cream being polished off. Nobody on the crew had experienced such food in such quantities. As we only had one car she ferried the rest of the crew into and home from Henley. She told me some years later that it was her first time putting up crews and she was apprehensive. There was no sign of it. Over all the years she has never wavered in her generosity which was her spirit and nature. It was not just a home from home she was a fairy godmother to all from UCD who stayed with her.

I stayed with her the following year the first year of the” Animals” and some three years later she looked after the UCD crew that won the Ladies Plate a small reward for all her generosity to UCDBC and its alumni that she continued for the rest of her life.

It was in later years that I got to know Liz better through long tete a tetes in her beautiful garden in Tigoni. She did not have an easy life but never showed it. Any sadness that floated into her memories would be fully dissipated within minutes. She had a very broad vision and experience of life and a great love of her parents, grandparents and of course her children and grandchildren. She had a love for Ireland and felt a loss at leaving it. She also had a love for Russia and in 1970 provided an interpreter for the Russian crew. She was a very cultured person with a great eye for artistic beauty, an aesthete to the core.

She delighted in her granddaughter, Beth’s performances at the Gate and travelled especially to see them. She was deeply proud that Beth forsook the fame and fortune that the name Cusack would have brought her and retained Cooke, although Liz would not have been critical of her if she had done so. Liz could communicate with all persons from the most surly teenage oarsman to the “so with it” oarswoman and she did have to put up with an extraordinary cross section of oarsmen and women.

Liz had prepared so that John and Diana coped wonderfully with the invasion of their home and integrated with us as if we were family. One abiding memory is sitting on the floor of her sitting room with some of the crew, Liz, John and Diana while she played and explained wonderful classical music which entranced us. Another was a walk on a lovely summer afternoon when she brought us through the bridle paths near Sonning Common including a track through a wheat field bending with the ripening corn. She had been deeply hurt by life in particular by the tragic and untimely death of Diana, yet she was one of the most spiritual and loving people I have met. She had the ability to see life, and make you see life as a wonderful tapestry full of life, colour, culture, sport, endeavours but at the same time see but not despair of its shocks, unfairness, and adversities. I can still hear her chuckle of delight at my expression of surprise at my first sip of a superb Rioja she furnished on our return from Henley after our defeat in a race. That moment and the wonderful aftertaste will linger for ever.

Liz was ever thoughtful and fiercely loyal. She was always planning on how to make the trips of UCDBC and OC more enjoyable. After an early morning defeat she would have a full breakfast ready for us on our return despite having been up at the crack of dawn to breakfast us before we left for the race. She was also mischievous and delightful.

I shall leave it to others more capable to seek to explain Liz’ life and all she has done for UCDBC, rather than these scattered thoughts and memories which are precious to me.

Liz will be sorely missed by generations of UCDBC, OCBC and all who knew her. Her memory will live on, both in the sadness of her loss and the strength of her nature that we take life as it comes and live it to the full with generosity and love, exploiting ones gifts and nature to the full to that end. A wonderful loving person that I and generations of UCDBC through her 44 years of association were most privileged to meet.

James Heney

Dermot Farrelly – deceased 9/9/2011 – RIP

Tom Sullivan writes: I came to the Boat Club at Longmeadows in 1956. UCD rowing was at its lowest ebb since its foundation. I heard regular references to Old Collegians, and before very long, to us ‘Maidens’, the face of O.C. came to be Dermot Farrelly, Joe Hanly and Jim Meenan. Without their presence and support I often wonder what would have become of the place. If ever a group provided continuity they did. They introduced Peter Spillane to coach the ‘Maidens’ in 1957-58 and some success was achieved. Peter was in full control of coaching in 1958-59, and he brought along Barry McDonnell and between them they put a very good Senior Eight on the water. By 1960 the Pot had been won again by the College, and the rest is on record.

We raced at Cappoquin in ’59 and Dermot travelled to support the crew. I remember that one because it was early days for that crew and Cappoquin was almost ultramontane at the time. And it was that level of interest and involvement that I always admired in Dermot. He was there to watch the rowing; he was there at every post regatta get-together to congratulate us, or commiserate with us. I believe Dermot’s presence through those years stirred renewed interest in many other members of Old Collegians. Michael Hayes, Roughan Banim, Frank McKenna and others became regular faces around the place.

He joined the Boat Club in 1943, having rowed at Dublin Rowing Club before he came to College. He was Captain of the Club in 1945. When College won the Senior Eights Championship of Ireland at Waterford in 1947, he rowed 7 in that crew. He was also the first President of the UCD Ladies Boat Club, when it was founded by Mary Stuart and others in 1974.

Dermot was a family man. He was an architect by profession. But the Dermot I knew was a rowing man. He was the driving force behind the move of the Dublin Metropolitan Regatta to Blessington Lake. He was the force behind the decision of University College Dublin to purchase the Salmon Weir site from St. Patrick’s Hospital to provide a new site for the College Boat Club. He would have loved to see the project completed as he had planned — boathouse and separate clubhouse. Maybe some day.

In rowing he saw two great objectives for the Boat Club —the Irish Senior Eights Championship and victory at Henley. Henley success proved elusive, but again he persisted and invited Geoffrey Page to offer his experience to College rowing. And Henley success came with victory in the 1974 Ladies’ Plate. It used not to be all on the water during Geoffrey’s visits to Dublin. I have fond memories of get-togethers in Neptune and Commercial or in Ryans of Parkgate Street after practice with Dermot, Geoffrey, Peter Linehan, Donal Hamilton, Pat O’Sullivan, Frank McKenna and Barry McDonnell.

The lads from the crews of 1971 and the following years developed great attitudes to training and winning from the enthusiasm generated around that time. After the drinks came food with more drinks and Dermot was never slow to put his hand in his pocket to take care of the tab in places like the Bailey, the Wicklow or the Hibernian. They were the high-end eateries of those days and Dermot was generous to a fault where the Club was concerned.

Dermot was nothing if not persistent. He saw no reason why every objective would not be achieved by persistence and dogged determination. Long before John F Kennedy asked it, Dermot Farrelly was asking “why not”? If you were to win at Henley every other year, Dermot would most likely say “but Harvard win every year”. Impatient and difficult to satisfy Dermot could be.

Where do I see Dermot? I see Dermot in his office at Baggot Street (later at Herbert Street) at 5.30 p.m. of an evening ready for another 0.C. meeting — Dermot pipe in mouth; the office perfumed with tobacco smoke. I see him in Larry Murphy’s after meetings or In the Stag’s Head when meetings were held there. I see him driving in his beige-coloured M.G. into the old Boat Club at Longmeadows of a Saturday evening. I see him afterwards amid the gathering in the Athletes’ Rest.

I recall him and myself in Jim Miley’s company in Miley’s pub in Blessington on Summer evenings after a Metro Regatta meeting in the Downshire.

I see him with Wally Stevens, Eamon Goggin and others working late on the Regatta installations on the lake.

I see him at Henley with Maura observing perfect Regatta decorum in dress and behaviour.

When I think of Dermot I ask myself did I ever see him dishevelled in appearance? Or unruly or Loud-mouthed? Never., Most of us can go overheard from time to time but never Dermot. He just had that innate sense of propriety, He was gentle and mild mannered. He was generous of spirit — incapable of being mean in thought or deed.

I think of him with great affection. He will be Dermot — forever questioning; forever pushing out the boundaries.

May God rest him.

TOM SULLIVAN