Kevin O'Doherty: Kevin O'Doherty was for more than 30 years a much respected figure in Irish tourism and travel, helping to lay the foundations of that industry as we know it today. He came of a staunch nationalist family which played an important part in the war of independence.
As a young civil servant in Dublin Castle, he managed to combine his career with occasional freelance sports writing. This led to an unexpected accreditation on behalf of the GAA to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. After that memorable experience, however, any notion of a career change was swiftly ended by a transfer to the busiest department in government - Industry and Commerce in Kildare Street.
Promotion followed, to the point in 1944 when he was chosen by Seán Lemass to be his private secretary. It was in a sense a double appointment, for in those immediate post-war years Lemass ran two departments simultaneously, supplies and industry and commerce, from the one office. In 1945 he had also become Tánaiste.
With such a dynamic boss, O'Doherty gained enviable experience, at the heart of the restoration of the Irish economy. That renaissance included a growing awareness of the potential of tourism and travel. In those times, he dealt every day with such mandarins as TJ McElligott, John Leydon and TK Whitaker. In an address to a seminar in Trinity College in October 2003, O'Doherty gave some insights into the energy and ability of Lemass and the mores of his departments.
Working at home during a two-day Christmas break in 1945, Lemass produced an 80-page concept for the creation of a labour court - written in pencil. When the office reopened on December 27th, this was typed up first thing, copied and presented by Lemass at a Cabinet meeting that same morning.
When John Leydon was secretary of the two departments, an oil refinery was about to be established at Dublin's North Wall (subsequently abandoned). After the site dedication lunch, the company presented gold watches to Lemass, Leydon and two civil servants. Foreseeing the possible political embarrassment for the minister, Leydon, immediately on return to his office, sent all four watches back to the company by courier, with a letter of explanation.
In 1946 the Government appointed O'Doherty secretary of the Irish Tourist Board, the title of general manager followed four years later. His responsibilities included the development of every kind of tourism amenity, the registration, grading and improvement of hotels (in those days bedrooms en suite were practically unknown), and the setting up in 1953 of An Tóstal.
This was a springtime event celebrated all over the State for five annual seasons as a boost for tourism, and to which we are still indebted for the Tidy Towns competition and for many festivals flourishing to this day.
In 1956, following the merger of the Tourist Board and Fógra Fáilte (the statutory publicity wing of tourism), Tim O'Driscoll became the first director general of the new organisation, Bord Fáilte Éireann. O'Doherty held various management positions, notably dealing with transport to and within Ireland.
The near-primitive conditions by today's standards which obtained in travel facilities in those days can be exemplified by the unloading of ships carrying visitors' cars to Ireland. One car at a time was placed in a hammock and swung precariously on to the quayside by a hand-operated crane. But then, as O'Doherty would drily remind you, there was a time when no car would even be accepted unless its fuel tank had been drained and its four wheels removed. All a far cry from today's drive-on drive-off ferry.
In 1969 O'Doherty was appointed managing director of the tours and travel division of a new enterprise, Hibernian Transport Companies Ltd (Shannon Travel). This was an amalgam of the Limerick Steamship Co and the Palgrave Murphy Shipping Line.
Within a year, however, Shannon Travel developed operational problems, compounded by a lengthy bank strike and went into liquidation. He returned to a number of Bord Fáilte-related appointments, most notably being responsible for the co-ordination of marketing campaigns in Britain.
When he retired in 1977 he went on to spend another 10 years as chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority, an industry-funded body, with the renowned Joseph McGough as his chairman.
As recounted in his book, My Parents and Other Rebels, published in 1999, Kevin O'Doherty was one of six children - four boys and two girls - born in Dublin to Kitty and Derry man Séamus O'Doherty.
His father was a member of the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which planned the Easter Rising. Both parents took part in the Rising, as well as two of Séamus's brothers. Deported to Leominster in Wales in 1917, his father later endured many raids on the family home in Phibsboro, a hunger strike in Mountjoy and an attempt on his life on his own doorstep.
Over the years he came to accept that the political process and diplomacy was the only way forward and, as an envoy to the United States in the years leading up to the Treaty, did everything in his power to promote this belief in Irish-American circles.
In time he sent for his family to join him in Philadelphia, where Kevin received some of his early education. When the family returned to Ireland in 1924 he was sent to St Enda's - eight years after its founder Patrick Pearse had left to lead the Rising.
O'Doherty was aged 93 when he died, alert and cheerful to the end. In tandem with his varied career, he had given a remarkable 75 years to the St Vincent de Paul Society. Not many weeks ago, when he made the annual appeal for the society in the Star of the Sea church in Sandymount, the response was a record collection. He is survived by his wife Patricia (née Roche) and by two sons, four daughters and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Michael Kevin O'Doherty: born June 29th, 1912, died May 8th, 2006.