CHARLIE ROCHE:CHARLIE ROCHE, who has died aged 84, was a past president of the Irish Pharmaceutical Union, Irish delegate to the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union and a Fellow of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland.
But community care was the hallmark of the man and he combined professional and family life with a chairmanship of the Pharmacy Benevolent Fund and a 40-year stint with the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
Charles Aloysius Roche was born in Whitehead, Co Antrim, in 1927 but his family moved while he was still an infant to Ballinagard House, Co Roscommon. At the age of nine, he became a boarder in Terenure College, Dublin, where his lifelong love of rugby began.
He remembered watching from the college as bombs dropped on the North Strand in 1941 and served as president of the college past pupils union in 1964 and again in 1965.
Following a family tradition, he qualified as a pharmacist in 1950 and was sales manager with pharmaceutical firm Warner-Lambert when he moved his family first to Delgany in 1969, and later to Greystones in Co Wicklow where he opened his pharmacy in 1974.
He held the office of president of the Irish Pharmaceutical Union (now the Irish Pharmacy Union) from 1982 to 1984. He was honoured with a fellowship by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland in 1987 as a result of his commitment to pharmacy.
However, it is through his charitable work, most notably his association with the Society of St Vincent de Paul and his interest in the development of Greystones, that most people will remember him. On a local level he also found time to help set up the Greystones Development Company a forerunner of Greystones Chamber and in 1998 he was given a civic award by Greystones Town Council.
Charlie Roche was friendly, approachable and interested in everyone he met. At his funeral, friends spoke of the deliveries of medicine to those too ill to travel, while quite a few remarked payment was frequently not even considered.
He and his family were also keen inland waterway sailors and with his wife, Dr Paddy Roche (née Johnson) he was first up the river Suck to Ballinasloe when the navigation was restored in 2001.
She survives him, along with their children, Hilary, Charlie Jnr, Fiona, Paul, David and Richard. He was predeceased by his son, Fergal. He is also survived by his sister, Hazel.
Charles Aloysius (Charlie) Roche: born 1927; died: April 14th, 2011