TERI GARVEY “just didn’t do doom and gloom”, husband Declan d’Estelle Roe recalled at her funeral service in the Church of St Philip and St James at Booterstown, Co Dublin, yesterday.
In a pre-recorded address, “as I won’t be able to talk on the day”, he remembered the first time he saw her in Arklow. He asked a local garda whether she was going out with anyone. She wasn’t.
The following Sunday he met her at a dance and, leaving, they passed the same garda, who commented: “For a quiet fella, you’re a very fast worker.”
Declan remembered how, in spite of her illnesses, he and Teri had such a rich intellectual life together. How, despite being told she would never reach 40, she was 60 last June; how, though told she would have no children, they had three.
Historian Diarmaid Ferriter recalled “the extraordinary, brilliant Teri”; her exceptional talent as a teacher at the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) in Dublin for 20 years; the excellent broadcaster she had been; her abilities as a producer; and in dealing ”with some of the more irascible presenters at RTÉ”.
There was within her a “sense of always battling”, from when she had Hodgkin’s at 16, to breast cancer in the 1990s and that latest prognosis four years ago. Yet “the ‘Why Me?’ question” was not Teri.
Rather, she wanted her toenails painted red “for her lying in state”, and harangued Joe Dolan “for dying before her, as he wouldn’t be around to sing Such a Good Looking Woman at her funeral”.
Her “three precious children were central to her existence”.
He recalled her disregard for political correctness and how, at a conference on breast cancer, she was asked about the effect it had on her husband.
“Declan is a leg man, not a tit man,” was her response. “All of us who loved her . . . cherish our memories of Teri,” he said.
Rector Rev Gillian Wharton presided while Nollaig Feirtéir acted as MC. Teri’s daughter Iseult read from John O’Donoghue’s Benedictus, while soprano Katie Black sang Mozart’s Laudate Dominum.
Chief mourners were husband Declan and their children Dabheoc, Dallan and Yseult.
The large attendance included RTÉ’s head of radio Ana Leddy, as well as producers Lorelei Harris, Yetti Redmond, Bernadette Comerford, Máire Nic Gearailt, Nuala O’Neill, Kevin Reynolds, Peter Mooney, Kevin Hough, Seamus Hosey; presenters Joe Duffy, Tom McGurk, Roy Willoughby, Vincent Browne, John Quinn, Lorna Madigan; newsreader Eileen Dunne; poet Dennis O’Driscoll; writers Alan Titley and Anthony Jordan; actor Barry McGovern; books editor Niall McMonagle; and Mary Little of the CRC.
