One of the most assiduous salmon anglers in the country has just been honoured by the presentation to him - and the country - of a book in his honour, a Festschrift. And when you say that it is in honour of Ken Whitaker, you know that it covers a vast area of the history of this country in the years since he first became a public servant on October 10th, 1934. The high offices he has filled with such energy and dignity, although always remaining the most accessible and friendly of men; the individual sallies into the history books, as in his initiative, along with Jim Malley, the Northern Prime Minister's secretary, in setting up the landmark meeting of Lemass and Terence O'Neill; all of this is remembered in the book published by the Institute of Public Administration, and edited by Fionan O Muircheartaigh.
But for this corner we take his interest in angling, salmon angling in particular. Ken has written that, for a reasonably balanced life, everyone needs to have one irresistible temptation, preferably not an immoral one. Ken's is fishing. Being an assiduous angler doesn't necessarily mean being a high-catch scorer. For among the qualities of the practitioner of this art, a meed of philosophical detachment, of balance, is needed. Ken has this, but he recently told a friend that he had had nine salmon this year. Not bad in an indifferent year when you know a few equally assiduous practitioners who got two or three or even none.
It can be a stern discipline, as a rueful father knows from bringing his 14-year-old who had never gone after salmon before, to a choice beat on the Slaney. The 14year-old on his first salmon occasion got a nine-pounder. The father got nothing. Not only does Ken fish, he has sat on and chaired boards and committees concerned with the health (and in some cases, as with the sea trout) the very continuance of the species in our waters. Ken tells in his book Interests, published by the same IPA in 1983 of his first salmon.
And believe it or not, it wasn't until 1964 that he graduated from trout to the king. It was a hard fight, so that when the cooked fish arrived on the table "by common consent I awarded myself the curadhmhir or hero's portion." After that he couldn't be torn away from the river. "The sense of duty and purposiveness with which I am sometimes over-burdened, had drained away. To be away from the river was a deprivation." And still he had time to listen to a long story told on the river bank by an old man - in Irish - and Ken on the language and his friend Seamus Delargy is another story in itself. Festschrift being German, so end with the toast Germans use: Prosit, Ken. Y
(Ireland in the Coming Times: Essays to Celebrate T. K. Whitaker's 80 Years. IPA.)