PRESIDENT MARY McAleese and Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea were among more than a 1,000 mourners at the military funeral of Cadet David Jevens who was laid to rest in Barntown, Co Wexford, yesterday.
The 21-year-old Air Corp pilot died with his instructor Capt Derek Furniss (32) when their Pilatus PC-9 training aircraft crashed into a hillside in Connemara on Monday.
The body of Cadet Jevens was brought to St Alphonsus Church, Barntown, from his home in Glynn on a gun carriage yesterday morning.
The cortege was led through a guard of honour of some 100 Air Corp members while a brass band from the First Southern Brigade played the Celtic Lamentas the bells of the church chimed.
The coffin, draped in the Tricolour with Cadet Jevens's ceremonial hat on top, was carried into the church by a bearer party made up of cadets from his senior class, who wore black armbands.
His parents, Liz and Donal, and his siblings, Sarah and Christopher, linked arms as they walked into the church.
President McAleese and Dr Martin McAleese met privately with the family before the funeral Mass began. Also present were his girlfriend, Niamh Fenlon, and his grandparents.
"We are here to celebrate David's 22 years on this Earth and not his untimely death," Donal Jevens said at the funeral. The initial feelings of "disbelief, shock and total and utter sadness are now slowly diminishing and have changed to the grim reality that David is gone". He spoke of his son's boyhood goal to be an Air Corp pilot.
"Nothing else would have satisfied him." He was a servant of the State who "died living his dream but there are no regrets at all. He wouldn't have changed anything and neither would we."
He spoke of nights spent stargazing with his son. "David always talked about that he wanted to be up there some day; and he did and he is right now looking down on us."
Celebrant Fr Pat Stafford, parish priest of Glynn, said Cadet Jevens had "died before his time and had lived life to the full".
Bishop of Ferns Denis Breen said it was "not the length of years that makes age honourable. A longer life rarely achieves as much as a full life."