The death of Douglas Gageby is a milestone in all of our lives, for the extended Irish Times family who have come here, for Irish journalism and, it is no exaggeration to say, for Irish society, which he helped to mould into the country we live in now.
I first met him in early 1973 when he offered me a job as a cub reporter, on the recommendation of the then News Editor, Donal Foley.
Like Maeve Binchy, he was always Mr Gageby to me - a hugely authoritative figure whose journalistic reputation long preceded my arrival in Dublin, in the Irish News Agency and in launching the innovative Evening Press in the 1950s before coming to The Irish Times.
One of the first things I wanted to do when I became Editor of The Irish Times on October 12th, 2002, was to meet Mr Gageby. He invited me to his home, though he was ill at the time.
"What have you done to your lovely long red hair?" he greeted me.
"I'm much older now, Mr Gageby."
"And we have a Madam Editor. I'm delighted.
"Being Editor of The Irish Times is the best job in Ireland," he said.
"And how are you, Mr Gageby?", I asked him.
"Waiting to be with Dorothy," he replied.
He moved our newspaper from the margins to the mainstream of Irish public life. It was a huge achievement and he made it appear so effortless. Essentially, he possessed the key component which makes a good reporter: he was curious about people's lives and the way they lived them and he was always sceptical of the spin doctors' arts.
He believed in fair and honest reporting and keeping the clear distinction between facts and commentary.
As a Protestant republican espousing the spirit of Armour of Ballymoney - who never featured on my school curriculum - he recognised the vision of the young John Hume, sent John Horgan off to Rome to cover the Second Vatican Council, introduced a Women's Page to give expression to the emerging women's movement and gave a young generation of journalists their heads.
Up to a point, that is. He was there to curb their excesses of enthusiasm, to bring perspective and superior judgment to bear on their exuberance. And his great motto about daily newspapers was that tomorrow is another chance to get it absolutely right, to produce the perfect paper.
It would be fair to note, on this platform, that he wouldn't have been the great Editor that he was without the insights of some of those who worked with him: Bruce Williamson, who told us never to forget that the plural of referendum is referendums, John Healy, and Donal Foley, all of whom predeceased him; and Gerry Mulvey, his hands-on News Editor, here with us today.
Mr Gageby guided The Irish Times through the most turbulent, if exciting, developments in modern Ireland. Through the hopes, horrors and uncertainties of the Northern conflict as well as through the slow and sometimes halting emergence of a pluralist society in the South. Mr Gageby's Irish Times became the medium through which the alternative Ireland emerged.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to assume that these developments followed a preordained and inevitable course.
But they did not, during his first period as Editor from 1963 to 1974 when the outcome in either part of the island was far from clear.
He played no small part then - and again during his second period as Editor from 1977 to 1986 - in ensuring that we ended up with the peaceful and generally pluralist country we live in today.
He engaged Ireland in a conversation with herself and, to adapt a phrase from political history, Ireland won.
Like all of us, he had his pet interests. The SDLP, whose formation and advancement he supported; the Army, in which he had served during the so-called Emergency; and trees, which reflected his love of nature.
Above all, he was a newspaperman to his fingertips. He loved the dirty big print page, to be on the stone where he knew every printer by first name. He loved the buzz of the big story. The pressure of the deadlines.
Mr Gageby left Ireland a great newspaper, a beacon of independent and trustworthy journalism in a world of media conglomerates, cross-selling and so-called synergies.
And he left us the tools with which to maintain that position - reliable reporting, fair commentary, freedom from any sectional interest, a platform for the voiceless, an endlessly inquiring mind, and a determination to go on trying to make tomorrow's paper more interesting, more revealing, more incisive than today's.
