CHRISTY LUCEY;CHRISTY LUCEY, who has died aged 80, was joint proprietor of the Gougane Barra Hotel in west Cork on the edge of the lake where St Finbarr founded an early Christian monastery and the river Lee rises in wild and spectacular hills.
Born on a small farm at Keimaneigh in the Gaeltacht parish of Ballingeary, on leaving national school he worked locally and did casual jobs on the farm of the Gougane Barra Hotel, which was then owned by the Cronin family. He began full-time employment there in 1955.
As the story in the family goes, Breda (nee Cronin), who inherited the hotel, soon set her eye on him as the man she was going to wed. They were married in 1960 and celebrated their golden jubilee last September.
The business at Gougane Barra dates from 1870 when the Cronins set up a shebeen at an old hunting lodge once owned by the Earl of Kenmare. The family later developed Cronin’s Hotel, which preceded the Gougane Barra Hotel.
Blessed with a gentle sense of humour, Christy often recalled that when he was born on Christmas Day 1930, his grandmother passed away; he joked that she had died with the fright of seeing him.
A natural host, he relished hotel life and loved being part of the everyday buzz that makes the old-style establishment tick. The hotel is at the heart of Ireland’s first national park, which was opened to the public in 1966 and is now a busy centre of cycling, walking, fishing holidays and other outdoor activities.
During his time, the hotel grew in size with the last big expansion in the 1970s. As a couple, he and his wife knew the importance of welcoming guests for the first time and being there for returning guests time and time again. The record for continuing visits is held by Prof David O Mahony of UCC, with 75 years of regular stays.
Steady employers in the area, the Luceys loved the early morning banter around the breakfast table. Meeting and greeting and generally looking after guests came as second nature to Christy, who was was equally at home with VIP visitors like Eamon de Valera, Mary McAleese and Jack Lynch, who was a regular guest.
Other special visitors included Joseph Patrick Kennedy, US ambassador to Britain and father of US president John F Kennedy, Cardinal Timothy Manning (Breda's uncle), and a long list of famous writers, actors and artists. One of them, Robert Gibbings, author of Sweet Cork of Thee and Lovely is the Lee, came to the hotel for a week and stayed for four months.
Christy was a friend and neighbour of the Gougane tailor Tim Buckley, his wife Ansty and their son Jackie. Along with other local people, the Luceys and Cronins stood by them at a time of persecution by clerics and politicians over publication of The Tailor and Anstyby Eric Cross, banned by the censorship board for its ribald, irreverent view of life in rural Ireland in the 1940s.
While researching that gentle collection of stories, which the tailor was forced by a priest to burn in his own fireplace, Cross lived for three years in a caravan on the hotel farm.
Aptly, when the Theatre by the Lake festival was launched by Neil and Katy Lucey, the fifth generation of the family to manage the hotel, The Tailor and Anstywas the first performance.
Besides being involved in the busy hotel, Christy also managed the farm and was proud of his flock of sheep and his potatoes, vegetables and milk. He hated the interference of too much regulation from Brussels of the food industry.
The land stretches up to the high mountainy ridge and he loved the camaraderie of all his upland neighbours, from Fóill a ’Stookeen to Maolach and onwards to Bealick.
Buried in Gougane’s little graveyard, midway between his home, the island and St Finbarr’s tranquil oratory, he is survived by his wife, Breda, children Joan, Finbarr, Neil and Maria, sister Ellen, and 10 grandchildren.
Christy Lucey: born December 25th, 1930; died August 3rd, 2011