Cornelius (Con) Howard: born March 26th, 1925; died October 4th, 2009:CON HOWARD, who has died aged 84, is widely recognised as the founder, and was for many years the mainstay, of the Merriman Summer School.
This was in addition to a successful career as a diplomat, during which he was attached to the Irish embassies in London and Washington.
According to Howard, the summer school arose out of a conversation with the late Donal Foley of The Irish Times in O'Neill's pub in Merrion Row, Dublin. As was his wont Howard was discussing the poet Brian Merriman and how best his memory could be honoured.
"Foley grabbed me, actually he almost throttled me, and said, 'Will you for God's sake do something about it'," Howard recalled. "You've been going on about Merriman for long enough."
A meeting was called, and a committee formed. In addition to Foley and Howard, founding members of An Cumann Merriman included Ciarán Mac Mathúna and Seán Mac Réamoinn.
Their first task was to revive a project which had been mooted many years before - the erection of a plaque to Merriman in Feakle, Co Clare, where he had been buried in 1804.
His outstanding, bawdy, poem Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) had provoked opposition to the project, and the first attempt to have the plaque erected failed. Finally, in 1968, a bronze plaque by Séamus Murphy was erected in Feakle.
That year also the first summer school was held. Among those in attendance was Liam Ó Dochartaigh, who remembered: "Behind it all was Con Howard. He was the juggler, the first director. He brought it all together."
The school went from strength to strength, and a winter session was added. Howard believed that as well as airing issues of national importance, it helped to revitalise interest in the Irish language and Irish dancing, particularly set dancing. The lectures, debates, partying, dancing and impromptu sing-songs contributed to the school's reputation, and it attracted many overseas visitors.
Born in Dysart, Co Clare, in 1925, Con Howard was educated at St Flannan's College, Ennis, and joined the Civil Service in 1944.
A clerical officer with the Department of Posts and Telegraphs for six years, in 1950 he was transferred to the Department of Industry and Commerce. In 1956 he moved to the Department of Foreign Affairs and in 1958 was posted to the Irish consulate in Boston, where he served for five years. In 1969 he was posted to the Irish embassy in London. His three-year stint in London coincided with the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles, and as information officer he had his hands full.
In a letter to this newspaper in 1994, the journalist Wesley Boyd paid tribute to Howard's work in London: "[ his] influence on editors, leader writers and political correspondents in Fleet Street . . . was so effective that the Stormont government sent one of the North's best journalists, Tommie Roberts, political correspondent of the Belfast Telegraph, to the Ulster office in London as press officer to counter Con's work."
In the 1970s he served as Irish consul in Boston, and was later attached to the embassy in Washington. Returning to Dublin, he was assigned to the department's economic division for most of the 1980s and retired as counsellor in 1990. Howard did not completely sever his links with diplomacy, however, and for six years represented Sri Lanka as honorary consul in Ireland.
The Society of St Brendan was another brainchild of Howard's. The society in 1986 organised a major international conference on America and Ireland in the 16th to 19th centuries.
A conference on Ireland and Australia in 1988 led to Howard's friendship with the distinguished Australian artist Sir Sydney Nolan, who later donated 50 paintings to the Irish nation.
Also in the 1980s Howard played a prominent role in the revival of the Wren Boys in Dublin. And he organised the first Bastille Day celebration in Ireland's capital. Another initiative, which never came to fruition due to lack of funds, was a re-enactment of the voyage of the Catalpa, the whaling ship used to rescue Fenian prisoners from the penal colony of Western Australia.
He is survived by his wife Margery (née Coleman), son Conor, daughters Hilary, Áine, Aileen, Patricia and Morgan.
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