So well-known was George Burrows as a broadcaster on nature and an acknowledged expert on angling that his earlier long and distinguished career with The Irish Times tends almost to have been forgotten. Not, however, by those who worked with him and learned from him the basic elements of journalism.
George died on the eve of his 89th birthday. He had a long life and there are not now many, if any, still alive who were his contemporaries when he worked in The Irish Times in the 1930s as a reporter, or who served under him when for a number of years, he was Chief Reporter.
He moved, as did many in those days, from the reporters' room to the sub-editors' table and it was while working there that with his fellow sub-editor Eddie MacSweeney that he thought up the idea of transforming the declining Weekly Irish Times into a picture paper. These were the days long before television was a part of daily life; the days of Life magazine and Picture Post, pioneers of a new and exciting form of publishing - photo-journalism.
The paper that George Burrows and Eddie MacSweeney devised, Times Pictorial, was itself unique in Ireland, a weekly paper that put heavy emphasis on photographs, and that made the reputations of, among others, the late Dermot Barry, one of the best newspaper photographers Ireland has produced.
In addition, the paper became a valued training ground at a time when there were no formal educational opportunities for aspiring journalists, no diploma or degree courses. You learned from those around you.
If you were lucky enough, as I was, to be taken on as a "junior" by George Burrows you learned a lot. The Pictorial was an ideal training ground, for duties included writing reports and features, sub-editing, designing and laying out picture pages and putting them together on "the stone", the steel benches on which pages were made up in the days of hot-metal printing.
George was a first-class tutor. Anyone who worked for him will remember being brought to the window of his office, which looked down upon D'Olier Street. At random he would point to a man on the street. "Now," he would say, "Just what do you think this [`this' being what you had just written] would mean to that man? Would it interest him?" Back to the desk. The first paragraph was stroked out. A couple of sentences were written in by hand, swiftly and without hesitation. "Now,", he would say, "Isn't that what you meant to write ?" Invariably it was.
Nobody knew better than he how to use the English language properly and how to put together a news story. During most of his time with The Irish Times he was Irish correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Herald. It was an education in itself to hear him telephone the copy desk of the Telegraph and dictate from scraps of shorthand notes a perfectly composed, coherent story - and minutes later from the same notes dictate essentially the same story, craftily re-worded, for the Daily Herald. When I knew him first in 1944 he was a golfer. Some years later he took up trout-fishing. He applied to it the enthusiasm and thoroughness characteristic of everything he did. In a few years he was an expert on angling, salmon and trout - and indeed anything else in river or sea. This led to a broad interest in birds, animals, trees and plants - the subject of his many newspaper columns and entertaining, informative talks on radio. It was an interest that led him to become a long-serving member of the council of Dublin Zoo.
The coming of television put an end to the era of the picture paper, but George had returned to The Irish Times sub-editors' table before the Pictorial closed down. Among other things, returning to night work gave him more daylight hours to pursue his outdoor interests.
He remained, however, a valuable and valued father figure at the sub-editors' table until his retirement in 1974, his experience unequalled in dealing with difficult and complicated reports, in eliminating sloppy writing and spotting potential libel. A natural cheerfulness that always lay just below the surface mellowed into a very obvious happiness and contentment which he carried on into his retirement.
I met him several times after he had retired. He had never enjoyed himself more, he told me. He was still fishing, observing nature, writing, broadcasting. And, though he didn't say so, in a genial, unselfconscious way spreading about a great deal of the wisdom and knowledge accumulated in the course of a long and fulfilling life.
A huge crowd last week answered the invitation to gather in a small church in Malahide to celebrate his life. There were representatives of all his varied interests, but principal among them his family, who were particularly important to him. They, most of all, will miss him. But in their deep sense of loss they have the comfort of knowing that many others too recognised in him a good man and a happy man who enjoyed to the full a long, contented and useful life.
K.G.