MARIAN TIERNEY-LONERGAN:MARIAN TIERNEY-LONERGAN, who has died aged 57, was a doctor from a prominent medical family in the southeast and was a founder of Duiske Concerts, a charitable foundation which brought world-class music to small-town Ireland.
Born in 1953 in Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny, her father and four uncles were doctors – as were to be her husband, a daughter, son-in-law, two brothers and a sister.
Following a boarding-school education at the Ursuline Convent in Waterford – where a trip to Italy and a role, as Lutz, in The Student Prince inspired a lifelong love of art and music – she graduated with honours in medicine from UCD in 1977. She met her own student prince, Tipperary man Val Lonergan, at 3am one morning in 1973 when their paths converged in central Dublin, while returning home from separate parties. They married four years later.
After a year in Canada, they returned to her home town where he became a GP and she worked at St Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny. She went on to diversify into general practice and established an innovative, popular specialist medical service for women which enhanced many lives.
The pair set up home in a former Church of Ireland Georgian rectory which they restored and they gave frequent and wonderful parties. She was a generous hostess with a flair for cooking.
Her patronage of the arts was unstuffy and practical. She supported young musicians and was a founder of the annual November series of Duiske Concerts which has brought world-class music to rural audiences.
The restored 13th-century Duiske Abbey in Graiguenamanagh was chosen to be the venue of the concerts and her requiem Mass was held there.
The final year of her life was marred by terrible grief when her daughter Bairbre died last summer. The sadness was somewhat mitigated by the arrival, in November, of a grandson, Dan, born to her elder daughter Róisín and son-in-law Ronan.
Diagnosed with cancer five years ago, she endured the arduous treatment with grace, elegance and a fighting spirit inherited from her father, who survived atrocious conditions as a prisoner of war in Japanese-occupied Java while serving with the RAF in the second World War.
She died during her favourite month and was buried within sight of “the hills blue” and “the yellow flare of furze” to the sound of “birdsong bouncing back out of the sky” as described by poet Kerry Hardie in May (For Marian) – a poem dedicated to her. She is survived by her husband Val, daughter Róisín, son Bill, son-in-law Ronan, grandson Dan, mother Teresa Tierney, extended family and a wide circle of friends in Ireland and overseas.
Marian Tierney-Lonergan: born October 11th, 1953; died May 20th, 2011