Almost three years to the day since a 40-year-old diver sacrificed his life trying to save four people trapped in a cave off the north Mayo coast, a solid bronze statue was unveiled to his memory on Saturday.
Tiny Lacken pier was the place chosen by Mrs Annamarie Heffernan, widow of Michael Heffernan, as the most fitting location for the memorial to her husband. The life-sized figure, by Foxford-based sculptor Nick Hughes, looks out over a stretch of sea where Michael Heffernan loved to dive, not just to practise his rescue techniques but also to explore the local underwater flora and fauna which fascinated him.
Mrs Heffernan and her two children, Leigh Anne, six this month, and Michelle, who will be three in January, listened as Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers, who unveiled the statue, described their lost one as "a true son of Ireland".
Speaking later to The Irish Times, Mrs Heffernan paid tribute to the efforts of the Grainne Uaile Sub-Aqua Club and said she had found great support and friendship among the members, particularly Michael Loftus and Pat O'Malley. "They never forget the girls," she said.
Mrs Heffernan is philosophical about her husband's death. "It is nobody's fault. It happened," she said.
Kevin Myers, who was asked to perform the unveiling by the Grainne Uaile Sub-Aqua Club because of an article he had written in his Irishman's Diary column, described the request as the greatest honour ever done him. Of Michael Heffernan, he said: "He did the highest duty that anyone of us can do. He laid down his life for the love of his fellow man."
The ceremony, he said, not alone honoured Mr Heffernan but also the unsung and unseen heroes of this State's rescue teams who for years had been unrecognised for the sacrifices they made and were prepared to make.
Pat O'Malley, the sub-aqua club's chairman and a trustee of the Michael Heffernan Trust Fund, explained to the large gathering that Mr Myers had been asked to unveil the monument because of a powerful article published less than a week after the tragedy in which he posed the question: "When this year is over and all is done and we count our hundreds of dead, who will remember the name Michael Heffernan?"
Mr O'Malley explained that he read the article after getting off a plane in Dublin and afterwards pledged to himself and others in the club that Mr Heffernan's name would not be forgotten. The article brought great support and consolation to Mr Heffernan's family and members of the diving club, Mr O'Malley said.
Members of the Garda sub-aqua team, Ciaran Doyle, Kieran Flynn, Joseph Finnegan, Dave Mulhall and Sean O'Connell, attended Saturday's ceremony. The gardai themselves have been honoured for their bravery on the night of October 1997 when Carmel and Tom Murphy and their daughter, Eimear, along with their German-born boatman (who also lost his life), were trapped at Belderrrig. The team has since received Scott medals for bravery.
Mr Heffernan has been awarded the Carnegie Hero Trust Medallion by the RNLI. In February 1999, Mrs Heffernan accepted, on her husband's behalf, the Michael Heffernan Memorial Gold Medal which was presented by the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods.
"We could not have stayed away," Garda diver Ciaran Doyle explained. "I knew Michael over the years and his loss has been a tremendous one for his family and the whole diving community, as well as his friends and neighbours."
Capt Dave Courtney, head of the Shannon-based Irish coastguard helicopter unit, also attended the ceremony, as did members and officials of Ballyglass lifeboat, who played a leading role in the night-long rescue effort. Garda Supt Tony McNamara, who led the rescue mission, is cox of the lifesaving vessel.
The statue, which was blessed by Father Brendan Hoban, promises to weather well and, according to the sculptor, Nick Hughes, should last hundreds of years to remind future generations of the selflessness of a young father who left the comfort of his home on an autumn night in 1997.