Eugene Kavanagh, who has died aged 76, was of the sixth generation of his family to continuously own and run one of Dublin's most famous pubs, John Kavanagh's, known as The Gravediggers, on Prospect Square, Glasnevin. The business, which has been in the family since 1833, got its nickname from its proximity to Glasnevin Cemetery.
At his funeral service, he was described as “a publican that didn’t drink, a racehorse owner that didn’t gamble and a marathon runner that would light up a cigarette at the start line to throw off his competitors”.
One of five children of Michael Kavanagh, a carpenter, and Ellen Edgeworth, he was reared in Shandon Park, Glasnevin and attended St Vincent’s CBS primary school. He was just eight when his father died and he spent 2½ years in the orphanage attached to the school until his mother married her late husband’s brother, John M Kavanagh, who ran the family pub; he became stepfather to five children.
He left St Vincent’s secondary school before his Intermediate Certificate after he passed an exam to enter Guinness’s, where he worked for 19 years. At both school and work he excelled at soccer and amateur boxing.
Leaving Guinness’s
While on a holiday on the Isle of Man, he met Kathleen Siddal from Yorkshire and they were married in October 1962. In 1973 he gave up his job in Guinness’s and bought the family pub from his stepfather.
Raising a young family above a busy pub was not easy. Eugene Kavanagh had a policy of no music, no singing and no television in the pub. The story is told that after the funeral of Luke Kelly, the cream of Irish and world music descended on the bar and had begun to tune up to play in honour of the deceased when they were told in no uncertain terms by the proprietor: "Not in here you're not. If I let you sing here today, I'll have to let that shower in the corner sing every night, and they're hopeless!"
He developed a reputation for fairness and for treating everyone in the same way. He enjoyed chatting to his customers, was quite a raconteur and loved to tell visitors – many of whom came from far afield – about the history of the pub.
He took up marathon running when he was 42, completing the Dublin in under four hours and the Boston, two years later, in three hours 15 minutes. In all, he did 160 marathons and 18 ultra marathons.
At age 50, he ran the Everest Base Camp Marathon and went on to do the Great Western Run in Colorado and a 60-mile race in Somalia. He supported Clonliffe Harriers Athletics Club, sponsoring the Clonliffe 2, one of the oldest continuous road races in Ireland and the world.
He was also a founder member of the “Kavanagh Striders”, a group of merry marathoners that ran most of the world’s best-known city marathons.
Later in life he fulfilled his love of racehorses by becoming an owner. This was a passion he shared especially with his youngest son, Niall, who was known as his “best pal”. They had many successes with his horses War Room, Love Rory, House Limits and Rory’s Little Sister.
Favourite question
A favourite question he had for unsuspecting tourists was: “Do you know that all the residents here in Prospect Square cannot be buried next door in the cemetery?”
When asked why, he’d respond: “Because they’re not dead yet!” and then he would slip away through the interconnected bar door, chuckling.
He is survived by his widow, Kathleen, his sons Anthony, Eoin, Ciarán and Niall, his daughters, Anne and Sinéad, and his sisters, Kathleen Mongan and Phyllis Malarky.