At Anthony's funeral the mood was warm and almost happy, despite the coffin in front of the altar. Everyone wanted to be part of the goodbye to him. From childhood, as the first of a family of eight, he was used to taking responsibility. It sat easily on him and left him unsurprisable. With seven brothers and sisters, six children and 15 grandchildren, he saw sibling rivalry as an obvious part of life. You argued your corner, but you stayed at the table.
From Clongowes he brought home two precious things: the coveted Pallas Medal for mathematics, and a Pioneer pin from a holy man, John Sullivan. He became an engineer, a brilliant one, and served the ESB in the era of building generating stations. Chairman Paddy Moriarty remarked at his retirement that Anthony and his team had changed the geography of Ireland. There are unmarked monuments to him producing power all round the country.
They reflect Anthony's stability and fidelity over 60 years a Pioneer (but you could trust him to choose a good wine for the family; over 59 years married to Joan; all his working life in the ESB till he left it as chief civil engineer. Not only stable, but a lover of home. When he turned 65, he took to retirement so comfortably that we used to wonder why he had ever worked. He had side stepped the committees through which a man of his qualities would have shot up the career ladder, because the evening work would have taken him from home. Family came first.
Anthony had a biblical vision of society as an extended family in which the poor and the powerless make a claim on us by virtue of kinship. In the two homes which covered most of his adult life, he was rooted in the local community through the parish and the St Vincent de Paul Society, not as a hander out of goods so much as a sharer of his own goodness, part of every family that needed him. They filled Ballybrack church for his funeral.
As his son Oliver reflected at the end of the Funeral Mass: You can live your life quietly, without trumpet or drumbeat, and still leave an impression on a great many people's lives.