MORE THAN 500 mourners attended the funeral in Co Cavan yesterday of Andrew Grene, the senior United Nations officer killed in the earthquake in Haiti.
Mr Grene (44), special assistant to the head of the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti, died with 84 other UN workers when the UN building in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince collapsed on January 12th. Mr Grene, a former journalist, was at a meeting when the building collapsed.
His body and those of some 70 other UN officials were found three days later.
His family has established a foundation in his name to educate Haitian children.
Mr Grene’s remains were flown to Ireland on Saturday. He was born in Chicago but had dual Irish/US citizenship, and grew up in both the US and on the family farm in Derrypark, Belturbet, from where the funeral cortege made its way to Annagh parish church.
The small market town came to a standstill when mourners lined the streets as the cortege passed, the coffin draped in the blue flag of the UN, which was presented to Mr Grene’s wife Jennifer, accompanied by the couple’s sons Patrick and Nicolas, their daughter Rosamund, his mother Ethel, his brothers Gregory and Nicholas, and his sister Ruth.
President Mary McAleese was represented by her aide-de-camp Capt Niamh O’Mahoney, and Taoiseach Brian Cowen was represented by Comdt Michael Tracey.
Senior politicians, gardaí, representatives of the Defence Forces and of aid agencies were among the mourners. Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith, Fine Gael agriculture spokesman and TD for Cavan-Monaghan Seymore Crawford and his party colleague Senator Joe O’Reilly were present.
Church rector Rev Stephen Clark read a statement from the Grene family. “Today words are beggared to tell what is in our hearts; throughout his life Andrew gave us unstinting love beyond the bounds of what a sentence or a library could convey – he gave his love to society at large, to his friends and anyone in need of help, and profoundly and deeply to his family and young ones.”
Prayers were also said for the other victims of the Haitian earthquake and their families.
Mr Grene’s remains were interred immediately after the ceremony in the family plot where his father David Grene, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago, is buried.
It is now believed that more than 200,000 people died in the earthquake.