Obituary: Roddy Day – highly regarded teacher and community leader

Roddy Day, who has died aged 73, was one of the most highly – and affectionately – regarded members of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation during a long and fruitful professional life.

Born in Fermoy, he spent his early years in Tralee, leaving behind a promising career as a Kerry minor when his father’s work took the family to Dublin in 1959.

He entered St Patrick’s Training College in that year, where a contemporary was John Coolahan, later professor of education at UCD.

Vitality and professionalism

Prof Coolahan noted last week that Day was “an outstanding contemporary exemplar of the vitality and professionalism that has, historically, always underpinned the key relationships between primary school teachers and their communities”.

Teaching in Ballyfermot, he exhibited an unusual genius for local and community involvement in the best tradition of the local “master”, urban or rural. Not just his pupils, but their parents and the wider community, benefited to an extraordinary degree from his unstinting commitment and invigorating presence. Later, in Corduff in Dublin, children and parents from the local travelling community were beneficiaries of his presence.

Advice and support

In the INTO he was part of an emerging group of younger teachers behind Gerry Quigley. He was an unfailing source of perceptive advice and support for his contemporariesbut never sought to capitalise on his undoubted standing by seeking office for himself.

Roddy Day was also possessed of an attractive tenor voice – not surprising, perhaps, since he was related to the Kerry tenor Connie Foley, who traversed the music firmament in Ireland and the US like a meteor before being eclipsed by the 1960s pop revolution.

He is survived by his wife, Kathleen, née McDonagh, and by their son Cameron.