I knew him well, and liked him, for more than 35 years, and yet, long after his retirement, even as assistant director of Met Eireann I could never address him otherwise than Mr Rohan.
Killian, in real life, was a jolly, kindly man, but for meteorology's sake, and quite deliberately, he hid it well from a whole generation of young Irish weather-people. In charge of the Meteorological Office at Shannon Airport for most of the third quarter of this century, P. K. Rohan was many an aspiring meteorologist's first encounter with authority in the adult world. A school-leaver's fears of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose would be augmented by the deja vu of a more than passing resemblance to Oliver Goldsmith's most inspiring character; to youngsters, Killian was indeed a man severe, one stern to view, and almost literally . . . the boding tremblers learned to trace, The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he.
Full well the busy whisper circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.
But, yes, we can go on:
Yet he was kind, and if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was at fault
except in Killian's case, his passion also included integrity and meteorology. And if he had little patience with the trivial miscreant, to those in any serious trouble he often proved himself a friend in need, and more than once, quite literally, a life-saver.
Weather Eye, too, has every reason to remember Killian Rohan. Month after month in this column you will have read statistics of our Irish weather, details of means, extremes, and averages, quoted with authority and never, ever contradicted. Where do they come from, you may have asked yourself from time to time. The answer is, they came from Killian Rohan.
P. K. Rohan's Climate of Ireland was, and is, the definitive work upon the subject. He was always interested in climatology, and although he went on, for all too short a time, to be perhaps the most effective director that Met Eireann ever had, it was as head of climatology that he found his metier. With his accumulated expertise in this enormous subject, he was once again in line with Goldsmith's paradigm:
And still they gazed, and still their wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
Patrick Killian Rohan died on Monday, April 26th. One, and only one, of Goldsmith's epigraphs will not apply:
But past is all his fame; the very spot
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.