Mourners told Fanning 'chose the artist's way'

MANY HUNDREDS of mourners thronged St Joseph's Church, Glasthule, in south Dublin, yesterday for the funeral Mass of Aengus Fanning, the editor of the Sunday Independent, who died last Tuesday, aged 69.

In a service that celebrated Fanning's twin passions, cricket and music, with honourable mentions for GAA, journalism and history, Nóirín Ní Riain led the liturgical singing while a mellow jazz band played some of his favourite pieces, accompanied at one point by Fanning's son, Stephen, singing Abilene.

As the offertory gifts were presented – the colours of his old GAA club, Austin Stack's, and a tin whistle – jazz singer Mary Coughlan led the band in a soft rendition of Closer Now My Lord to Thee.

Fanning’s wife, Anne Harris, spoke of him as someone “who chose the artist’s way”, who tried acting and dreamed of Lord’s cricket ground and the dazzling musicians of 1930s Chicago.

“He lived a life red in tooth and claw. He was ever alert to conventional wisdom in order to slap it down. Aengus’s boredom threshold has been much commented upon and much misunderstood. He hated what he called the bleedin’ obvious and loved anything original, no matter how tiny or simple.”

His core belief, his only belief, she said, “was Kant’s ‘out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing is ever made’. It led him to be a student of history, increasingly in recent decades. The lessons of history had to be learned so as not to be repeated.”

He had one editorial agenda, she said, “and that was never to give comfort to terrorists. Because of his passion for history, he thought of terrorism as a chameleon with the power to reinvent itself with a smiling face.”

He also had “interesting takes” on that crooked timber, she said. “‘It takes an honest man to admit he has told a lie,’ he would say quite often.” He filled the paper with writers he respected and admired. His two personal favourites were Eoghan Harris and Gene Kerrigan, “polar opposites, he would say with satisfaction”.

She concluded with a poem about his beloved cricket, At Lord'sby Francis Thompson, her voice faltering only near the end.

Fanning’s sons, Evan and Dion, also gave wistful, loving, at times funny eulogies. Dion noted that so many stories about his father seemed to begin at the same point: “Dad’s inability to understand that the accepted procedures in a situation might have to apply to him. From Kosovo to Ethiopia to parking meters in Blackrock, all had the same beginning.”

Evan said they “would go on these football excursions with him and there was always a sense of the three of us and this lunatic, though it was a calculated lunacy, if there’s such a thing. He wasn’t afraid to make himself simple for the pleasure of others.”

In his eulogy, Charles Lysaght said to a loud laugh of recognition that as an editor Fanning could be a “strange mixture of hands-on and hands-off. I remember being a bit disconcerted to be asked by Aengus if an article he had commissioned from me had appeared in that week’s paper.”

He was a man who lived for the moment, a free spirit, a man comfortable in his own skin and one utterly devoid of self-importance.

He seemed a man destined to “make old bones” but when Lysaght visited him at Christmas, his friend said: “I’m finished.” Lysaght urged him to fight, fight and fight again. “But I might have done better to say what he said to Ronnie Drew” when Drew was in similar circumstances. “He said, ‘We’re all effed in the end’.”

Fr Denis Kennedy in his homily talked about Fanning’s early life, beginning in Kerry as a promising minor county footballer, before moving on to study in Cork, and then to Birr to work on the Midland Tribune, where he met his first wife, Mary, the mother of his three sons.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer on Good Friday last year, said Fr Kennedy, and he fought it to the end. But he had no regrets. “His only sadness was leaving Anne and his ‘three lads’, as he called them.”

As the coffin was carried from the church, the band – including Myles Drennan, Hugh Buckley, Richie Buckley, Ciaran Wilde and Paul Sweeney – played The Last Wave Go By, a piece composed by Aengus Fanning himself.

The President was represented by his aide-de-camp, Col Michael McMahon, and the Taoiseach by Comdt Michael Treacy. Also in attendance were Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, former cabinet minister Mary O’Rourke, chief of staff of the Defence Forces Lieut Gen Sean McCann and former chief justice Ronan Keane.

Among the numerous representatives of the board, commercial and editorial staff and contributors past and present of Independent News & Media were Gavin O’Reilly, Vincent Crowley, Declan Carlyle, Michael Denieffe, Willie Kealy, Gerry O’Regan, Senator Shane Ross, Kevin Myers, Eoghan Harris, Colm McCarthy, Brendan O’Connor, Madeleine Keane, Leo Blennerhassett, Ulick O’Connor and Emer O’Kelly.

Also present were the editor of the Irish ExaminerTim Vaughan and the head of corporate communications at RTÉ, Kevin Dawson. Representing The Irish Timeseditor was managing editor Willy Clingan. Geoff Oakley, the former editor of the Tullamore Tribunewho worked with Fanning on the Midland Tribunewas present, as were Irish secretary of the NUJ Seamus Dooley and chairman of the Dublin branch Martin Fitzpatrick, along with Daithí O'Ceallaigh of the Press Council of Ireland and Frank Cullen of National Newspapers of Ireland. John O'Shea of Goal, Senator Prof John Crown, Gay Byrne, John Rocha, Michael Colgan, Alison Doody and Eddie Hobbs also attended.