Jerome Hynes: When the news spread earlier this week that Jerome Hynes had died suddenly, it sent shock waves through the worlds he had touched.
Wexford Festival Opera's chief executive, vice-chairman of the Arts Council and probably the finest arts manager in the country, he had achieved so much, his experience and abilities were so established, he seemed to have been around forever. In fact he was only 45, stolen at the prime of his life, without warning, while making a speech at the Theatre Royal on Sunday night, the eve of rehearsals for this year's opera festival.
In conversations and tributes over following days and at his heartbreaking but dignified funeral, there was an extraordinary warmth for a man who was universally admired and liked. Professionally unmatched, he was sociable, generous, outgoing, loyal, inspirational, great craic. Everybody seemed to love him.
Jerome Hynes was born in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, on September 30th, 1959. The family moved to Monaghan shortly afterwards, before settling in Dangan near Galway city in 1965, where his mother Carmel still lives. Education was at St Ignatius College (the Jes) in Galway and UCG (BA in 1980; HDipEd in 1981). He was already working part-time as a teenager with the Druid Theatre Company, founded in 1975 by his older sister, director Garry Hynes, and actors Marie Mullen and Mick Lally. He organised the company's first visit to the Edinburgh Fringe and was hooked.
Straight out of college in 1981 he became full-time administrator (later general manager), and he adroitly ran Druid over a period which established it as one of the foremost theatre companies, with a growing international reputation garnered from tours to Britain, the US, Australia. In the midst of all that he earned an LlB degree in 1988.
He left Druid nearly 20 years ago, but remained on the board until he joined the Arts Council in 2003; as his friend and colleague Marie Mullen said from the altar at his funeral this week, "he never left us in spirit".
The weekend before he died, he and his wife Alma Quinn and their three young boys, Conor, Feargal and Robbie, were on Inis Meáin for the culmination of the Druid Synge cycle. Someone that weekend remarked on how they were like five peas in a pod, so often together, so strong a unit.
Above all he lived for his family, devoted to Alma and his boys and fiercely close to his parents and siblings, Garry, Aedhmer and Donal. His father Oliver died a year ago.
In 1988, looking, as he said himself some years later, "for something new, to strike out on my own, I suppose", Hynes left his native Galway and the relatively young theatre company for a new challenge, as managing director (later chief executive) at the venerable Wexford Festival Opera.
Its reputation for producing rare opera to a high standard allied to a convivial atmosphere in the town were well established, but he set about making it more professional and streamlining the organisation from one run by a committee of management to one with a board structure and executive staff.
Over his reign, the festival doubled its capacity, achieved 100 per cent audiences and brought its ambitious plans well along the way towards developing a new theatre on the site of the existing, cramped Theatre Royal. He and Alma set up home in Wexford, put down roots and had their three boys.
Of his role in Wexford, Hynes himself said his ultimate goal was to deliver "an environment for the creation of good work" and then "to facilitate that crucial engagement, the most important of thing of all, the engagement between artist and audience".
That focus on art was critical to his success as an arts manager and his commitment to making it work better. As the reviews of operas were published, he and Wexford chairman Paul Hennessy would joke about how one of these days they'd get a review that said the administration was excellent.
In January 2003 because of what Hynes described as "deep frustration on the ground", he was one of what was loosely referred to as a Gang of Eight, including some of the country's top arts practitioners, who wrote a letter to this newspaper in the midst of a black period for the arts, arguing against cutbacks in funding and how they were being handled by the Arts Council.
When the Minister, John O'Donoghue, was putting together a new Arts Council later that year, he appointed Hynes as vice-chairman, a key position in what was seen as a change of the guard at a crucial time, with challenges in terms of funding and in how the council related to its clients.
According to those who worked with him there, he was imaginative and invigorating, always striving to make things clearer, simpler, better for artists. He chaired the council's Committee on the Traditional Arts, which has had a critical role in improving the lot and status of traditional artists.
Hynes's impact on the arts world had a very wide span, from the advisory board of Arts from Ireland at the Kennedy Centre, Washington, to the boards of the National Concert Hall and Business 2 Arts. He also sat on the boards of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Dunamaise Theatre, Portlaoise, on the executive of the International Festivals Association, as a judge in The Irish Times Theatre Awards and on Wexford Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
For others, advice or help sought was freely given, without interference; he was a brilliant strategist and those who worked with him say he could quickly analyse a problem to find the most sensible way forward. He was also wise to the workings of arts politics and the art of getting things done.
Whatever issues he took on, even when people were on opposing sides to him, they respected and liked him - "he only ever made friends", one person commented.
Jerome Hynes was bright and bright-eyed, clear-headed and full of enthusiasm, energy and joy. He was a busy, busy man who made every moment matter. As the Arts Council statement on his death began:
Uainn i gCéin ár ngiolla mear
(Far from us now, in a foreign place, is
our bright hero).
Jerome Hynes: born, September 30th, 1959; died September 18th, 2005