Lives Lost to Covid-19: Jim Power was always eager to do others a good turn

This article is one of a series about people who have died with coronavirus in Ireland and among the diaspora. You can read more of them here. If you would like a friend or family member included in the series, please email liveslost@irishtimes.com

JAMES POWER 1928-2020

James Power, from Gracefield Avenue, north Dublin, was known to most as Jim, and as someone who was always keen to give others a helping hand.

Born in 1928, he grew up on St Declan's Road in Marino, but the family had an enduring connection to his father's birthplace, Glasnamullen, Co Wicklow, known as "Power's Corner".

He worked in the motor industry, and it was in Buckley Motors’ Santry assembly plant where he would meet the love of his life, Nuala, who was working there as a secretary.

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They married in 1955 and moved to Gracefield Avenue, Artane, where they would spend 63 happy years.

They had three children, Margaret, Vera and Gerry, and eight grandchildren; Sarah, Andrew, Robbie, Aoife, Moya, Molly, Anna and Jack (this reporter).

Jim would often be found with a screwdriver in hand and was fascinated with how things worked, from car engines to wrist watches.

He had a long career that culminated as service manager of Renault Ireland.

His brother Paul says Jim was always eager to do others a good turn. He “was a great man for finding someone a job,” going out of his way to give others a hand up.

After retiring he volunteered for many years in a soup kitchen run by Crosscare in Dublin’s north inner city.

He was a lifelong learner and an avid computer user into his 90s. For him technology was a window across the other side of the world to his daughter Vera, and grandchildren Aoife and Moya in New Zealand.

Through that window he was able to watch them grow up just as much as his grandchildren in Dublin and Limerick, sharing many emails, photos, poems, and words of constant encouragement.

At his funeral Mass in January, his daughter Margaret described Jim as a “generous and compassionate man of kind deeds.” He had “a great skill of connecting to people who were troubled and bereaved, somehow knowing the right words to say”.

He was a honorary life member of Clontarf Golf Club, and a fan of football, rugby, Formula One racing and snooker.

But even the most nail biting match would be interrupted if it clashed with Coronation Street, Nuala’s favourite soap.

The pair held court in their sitting room to a regular stream of visitors, with a seemingly endless reserve of biscuits and homemade apple tart at hand.

A fan of a robust debate, Jim did not suffer fools, and any politicians canvassing the house faced a grilling.

He missed Nuala dearly after she died in May 2018, and would often joke that “the walls don’t talk back to you”.

Geraniums, chrysanthemums, and daffodils filled his long back garden. He grew apple trees, and tomatoes and grapes in a greenhouse.

One of my very first memories as a child is of both Nuala and Jim tending to the flower beds. Later in life it would fall to the grandchildren to take up the shears and trowels to keep the garden in shape, under his expert direction.

The last time I saw Jim was in October, during a socially distanced visit to dig up a flower bed and plant two rows of daffodils.

Following a fall before Christmas, he went into Beaumont Hospital, where he contracted Covid-19, and after turning 92, died in the early hours of New Year's Eve.