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Róisín Ingle: Our colleague Tommy’s superpower was finding solutions. He died solving a problem

Tommy Putt, The Irish Times’ facilities manager, had worked at the paper for nearly 50 years when he died, suddenly

We learned a lot about Tommy at the funeral, including that he adored his granddaughter Sierra

Róisín Ingle's face
Róisín Ingle
Wed Feb 15 2023 - 05:00

If you work in an office, or for any organisation large or small, there is always someone tasked with what you might call the niggly jobs. I am fond of the word, but niggly probably doesn’t do those jobs justice. They are too big for the word niggly. They are the jobs that keep a place and its people afloat. I’m talking about the person you go running to when the lift breaks down, or when the light bulbs have gone or when the air conditioning is on the blink. The person in your company’s building who gets things sorted. A fixer, in the most literal sense.

At The Irish Times the person who got things sorted, our ultimate Mr Fix-It, was a man called Tommy Putt. His official title was facilities manager, but that only scratches the surface of what he did. I never thought about it like this, but as I write his name it occurs to me that Tommy was probably the most put(t) upon man in our organisation.

Tommy was calm and placating and always reassuring. It didn’t matter what was broken or missing or banjaxed. His face told you not to worry

He worked at The Irish Times for nearly 50 years. He joined as a 15-year-old, running errands, when the newspaper was based on Fleet Street in Dublin city centre, and when the old building’s printing press would rumble into the early hours of the morning. At one point he was the personal driver of the former chief executive and chairman of the paper, Maj Tom McDowell. Tommy was a key person in corralling us staff and our office detritus when we moved from Fleet Street into our shiny new building on Tara Street. More than perhaps anyone else in the company, he was a reliable thread between the old and the new.

I should clarify that Tommy didn’t go around the place like someone who was put upon. Quite the opposite. We all came to him with problems and what we got in return, as one colleague remembered, was a classic Tommy Putt facial expression. It was a rueful, bemused smile, eyes twinkling behind glasses. Calm and placating and always reassuring. It didn’t matter what was broken or missing or banjaxed, it didn’t matter what thing had gone generally awry, his face told you not to worry. “Tommy’s smile was like being lifted on a kindly wave and transported to a safe shore,” one colleague said.

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Tommy died suddenly, just over a fortnight ago. He was getting the car ready for the NCT, tinkering in his garage – he was a world-class tinkerer and an Olympic-level potterer – when he died. He was 64. He died fixing something. He died solving a problem. You hear that phrase sometimes: he died as he lived. Tommy really did.

When the air conditioning was too cold or the office felt too warm, and we complained, Tommy would laugh and tell us to put a coat on or take a cardigan off

I have emails to and from Tommy going back years. They are usually him reminding me of something I was supposed to do, something to pick up, a piece of mail or a parcel, or more usually me asking him for help with something. We had one ongoing situation with a bike in the basement car park. It was an old Raleigh I’d acquired, a bike I kept meaning to bring home or pass on to someone, but I never did. So it sat there where it shouldn’t really have been. Tommy and I had got into a familiar, gentle exchange about the bike. He’d ask me what I was planning to do with it, I’d tell him I would come to collect it, then I’d forget and the bike would stay where it was. Every few months Tommy, because God loves a trier, would remind me again.

Just before Christmas he emailed me about the bike, saying he’d found a buyer for it. Would 50 quid do? Result. He put the money in an envelope and it was there when I picked up a pile of post. He emailed me later to make sure I’d got it. We wished each other a happy new year, and that was the last email we exchanged.

Tommy dealt in the currency of problems, and his superpower was finding solutions. As another colleague said, “The usual response from him was ‘No problem, I’ll get that done.’” He’d drive you mad sometimes, though. When the air conditioning was too cold or the office felt too warm, and we complained, he’d laugh and tell us to put a coat on or take a cardigan off. He could sometimes be a messer, a divil with a dry sense of humour.

At his funeral, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many Irish Times people turn out for a colleague. We made a guard of honour outside the church in Rathmines, rows of us standing either side of the hearse that held his wicker coffin. It was his colleagues who carried the coffin into the church, six pairs of helping hands carrying a man who helped us all so much.

Behind the scenes Tommy Putt was as vital to The Irish Times as any of us working here, arguably more

We learned a lot about Tommy at the funeral. From his younger brother David and his daughters Lyndsey and Saoirse. He was a keen fisherman. He adored his granddaughter Sierra. He was mad about American country music. He’d sit up late with his daughters by the firepit he built in the garden, blasting out the sounds of Colter Wall. “Every day is a holiday,” was one of his favourite phrases, his wife, Kyra, told me. It summed up his approach to life. He genuinely loved every single day working at the newspaper, she said. His family and The Irish Times were the loves of his life.

We said thank you to Tommy a lot at The Irish Times. We’d an awful lot to thank him for. I’d like to think even when he was alive he knew how much he was appreciated, but he could scarcely have realised how much and how deeply he would be missed by so many.

He wasn’t a writer. He never had a byline. Readers, until now you never knew his name. But behind the scenes Tommy Putt was as vital to this organisation as any of us working here, arguably more. So for one last time, thank you, Tommy. From all of us, for everything.

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