The funeral of Co Offaly man Damien Horan who died in a Hawaii plane crash was told that he had “achieved his dream” of becoming a pilot.
A Hawaiian lei was among the gifts presented at the altar at his funeral on Saturday afternoon.
The 30-year-old Tullamore man died when the small plane he was flying crashed in the Hawaiian island of Kauai on May 23rd.
Horan and all four passengers on board were killed when the Cessna aircraft caught fire as it hit the ground just a minute after take-off.
Hundreds of mourners attending the funeral Mass at the Church of the Assumption in Tullamore heard the deceased’s sister Briana sing ‘There Are No Words’, a song she composed last week about her brother and his love of flying.
In his homily chief concelebrant Fr Sean Heaney said Horan was a man who successfully followed his childhood dream of becoming a pilot. While his untimely death was a true tragedy for his family, the man’s single mindedness and determination should be celebrated, he said.
“He achieved his dream. He worked so hard to fulfill that dream,” Fr Heaney. said. “Everything in his life was focussed on that and at the end thankfully not only was he just a pilot, but he had a pilot’s certificate to pilot multi-engined planes.”
The funeral ceremony was followed on webcam by relatives in San Francisco and friends in Western Australia where the crash victim had worked and trained as a pilot.
He was on a skydiving excursion at the time of the accident which claimed the life of two instructors and two brothers from the US who had booked a tandem parachute jump.
Chief mourners at the funeral were Horan’s parents Dermot and Teresa and his two sisters Ciara and Briana. His remains were buried in Clonminch cemetery, Tullamore.