Jerry O'Mahony who died on December 4th, aged 66, was one of the great Fianna Fail backroom boys in Cork.
He died only weeks after the death of his great friend, the former Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch.
For years, he and Jack Lynch had been not only close friends but political allies, and it was widely known in journalistic circles in Cork that as a close confidante of the Fianna Fail leader, Jerry O'Mahony was the oracle whenever it came to looking for information on the party. He was a mine of information and knew all the nuances of Fianna Fail. For that reason, his opinion was all the more respected.
A humble man with a family background in Kilmichael, Co Cork, he spent his formative years in Cork city's Blarney Street area.
He was an only child and he served his apprenticeship as an electrician, going on to become manager of Fitzgerald's electrical store on the Grand Parade in Cork.
Later, he formed his own business, and no Fianna Fail event in Cork took place without Jerry O'Mahony's overseeing the public address system.
His friendship with Jack Lynch stretched back to the early 1960s. When he ee wife Mary was getting married in 1968 and there was talk of an election in the air, the then Taoiseach, Mr Lynch promised Jerry O'Mahony's bride, Mary Molloy, that whatever happened, there would not be an election until their honeymoon was over.
However, despite his fierce loyalty to Lynch, he left Fianna Fail to become a founding member of the Progressive Democrats in Cork.
Even so, he maintained his friendship with the former Taoiseach and during Jack Lynch's illness, he was in touch constantly with the Lynch family although he knew by then that his own illness was terminal. Even during chemotherapy he and Mary travelled to Singapore and Bali as well as to electrical trade shows throughout the country. Jerry O'Mahony is survived by his wife Mary, son Donal and daughter Colette.
Jerry O'Mahony: born 1933; died December, 1999