Elizabeth Healy
Born: November 27th, 1927
Died: April 17, 2018
Elizabeth Healy, who has died at the age of 90, was a pioneering rock climber, astute editor and earnest writer of guide books on Ireland’s natural and built heritage. The middle child of five (she had two older brothers, Paddy and Jack and two younger sisters, Eileen and Mary), Elizabeth – or Betty as she was known to family and friends – had an adventurous spirit from an early age.
Her childhood home was close to the Lough Park Nature Reserve in Cork city and with her siblings, she loved walking and running on the frozen lake. On one occasion, the ice broke under her and she fell into the freezing water with a smaller child on her back both of whom clambered to safety and ran all the way home. When the family moved to Crosshaven – her parents ran a shop in Barrack St, Cork City – the children spent their days outdoors, catching mackerel and shrimps, gathering mushrooms and watching the ocean liners in Cork harbour. At aged 12, she “borrowed” a rowing boat with some friends and got swept out to sea, later to be rescued by the gardaí.
Elizabeth Healy left school at 15 with a basic education and shorthand and typing skills. She told her mother that she was never going to get married because she wasn’t going to stand at a sink and cook food twice a day. She never did marry.
She began her working life in Dwyer’s shop in Cork city, moved to London for a year (where she said, they laughed at her accent) and returned to work in Cahill’s Printers in Dublin. However, it was only when she went to work for Bord fáilte, did she find her true passion.
Bimonthly magazine
She was editor of Bord Fáilte's bimonthly magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes from the early 1970s until 1986. The magazine then had a circulation of about 95,000 copies with the vast majority of subscriptions based in the United States. Essentially it was a vehicle for attracting tourists to Ireland but under the sharp editorial eye of Elizabeth Healy, some of Ireland's best known writers – Séamus Heaney, Douglas Gageby, John Montague and Mary Lavin – were commissioned to write pieces. Drawing on the skills of in-house photographers and the illustration and design skills of the late Dutch designer, Jan de Fouw, Ireland of the Welcomes in that era captured the essence of a modernising Ireland.
Outside of the office, Elizabeth Healy had a voracious appetite for adventure and the outdoor life. In his book on the history of Irish hill-walking, climbing and mountaineering, The Way That We Climbed (Collins Press, 2015) Paddy O'Leary describes her as "the country's leading woman climber for many years and the pioneer of many fine routes". Irish climber, Dermot Somers says she climbed as an equal among an unconventional group of gifted men – Frank Winder – later to become professor of Biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, physicist Peter Kenny and Seán Rothery, later to become a prominent architect.
These hardy rock climbers of the 1950s and 1960s put up new climbing routes on rocks that were difficult to reach, with lots of vegetation, midges and in poor weather conditions that would seem extremely daunting to rock climbers today. Elizabeth Healy pioneered climbing routes in Glendalough and Luggala in Co Wicklow and in Glenvegah, Lough Barra and the Poisoned Glen in Co Donegal. She was also part of climbing expeditions abroad including one to Monte Rosa in the Swiss/Italian Alps where the climbers were stranded for four days in an Alpine hut.
Guide books
She was also known for her well researched guide books – in particular The Book of the Liffey – from source to the sea with Christopher Moriarty and Gerard O'Flaherty (1988) and A Literary Tour of Ireland (1995). Her other guide books include The Wolfhound Guide to Dublin Monuments (1998), The Wolfhound Guide to the River Gods (1998) and In Search of Ireland's Holy Wells (2001).
As a writer, she also contributed to Sunday Miscellany, the gentle meandering RTÉ I Sunday morning radio programme. Her hobby for painting and her interest in poetry – and in particular the poetry of WB Yeats resulted in an exhibition of her paintings inspired by WB Yeats poetry in the Sligo Yeats Museum in 2011.
Even in her later years, Elizabeth remained fiercely independent and never lost her quest for adventure. Some of her later exploits included astronaut training with the American space agency, Nasa, dog sledding and riding in tandem around Central Park in New York. She swam daily all year round with a group of friends at White Rock on Killiney Beach and continued to live in her home in the Dublin suburb of Monkstown until her death.
Elizabeth Healy is survived by her brother Jack and sister Eileen, sister in law May, brother in law Denis, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, great grand nieces and grand nephews.