When anyone asks me how I knew Eoin Fennessy, I usually say that we were in college together. That answer is technically true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I first met Eoin in September 2003 among a group of students in my first-ever class when I started lecturing in National College of Ireland. Eoin was a brilliant student and deservedly won the special achievement award and the student of the year award at his graduation in 2004. Irish football fans would be familiar with the chant of “A Team of Gary Breens”. Many times during my lecturing career in National College of Ireland, I wished I had a class full of Eoin Fennessys! “A Team of Fennos”!
We followed Eoin’s subsequent career progress with pride, with his Chartered Institute of Management Accountants accounting qualification, his tax qualification, tax advisory career and promotion up through the management ranks in BDO, where he was deservedly popular with colleagues and clients. And I quickly learned that the best way to catch up with Eoin was to suggest meeting for a “cuppa”!
Most of all, we followed with admiration the way that Eoin faced the battle with his illness since being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in October 2010. Eoin’s illness didn’t define him, but perhaps the way he faced it did define him. Eoin was a very private person, but put aside his natural reserve by engaging wholeheartedly in a very public campaign that raised €60,000 for cancer research.
When National College of Ireland hosted the annual conference of the Irish Academy of Management in 2011, Eoin attended the conference dinner and was seated beside the then-president of National College of Ireland and former captain of the Irish rugby team, Dr Phillip Matthews. Eoin was a great rugby fan and also loved making connections, and if the person was someone important, so much the better! The day after that dinner, I noticed that Eoin had made a new LinkedIn connection: Dr Phillip Matthews! So I tackled Eoin about that, and I said (slightly tongue in cheek) that it really wasn’t good form to be accumulating connections like that with someone you met once at a business dinner. But Eoin didn’t see anything wrong with that, because that was just his personality. Paul Creedon, who has known Eoin since they were both four years old, says that in his schooldays Eoin was known as “Friendly Fennessy” because he would chat to anyone. And inter-school rugby rivalry certainly wouldn’t get in the way of making new friends! The huge turnout at Eoin’s funeral Mass in the Church of St Thérèse in Mount Merrion, from every aspect of Eoin’s life, was a testament to the esteem he was held in by everyone who knew him.
One great piece of advice I got from Eoin’s school and college friend Tiarnach Donnelly when I was dealing with a family bereavement was: “Ná bhrón an bás, ach an saol a cheiliúradh ina ionad” or “Don’t mourn the death, celebrate the life instead.” So to conclude, all I wish for is that Eoin Fennessy or “Fenno” or “Friendly Fennessy”, or however people knew him, will be celebrated for the inspirational person that he was: a great son to Tom and Lorraine; a great brother to Caroline; and an inspirational colleague and friend to so many, and a great example for his colleagues in BDO and for future generations of students in National College of Ireland. And in the words of Van The Man, “Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic”!
Eoin Fennessy BA, ACMA, AITI. June 10th, 1983, to September 17th, 2016.