Lean Scully: Lean Scully will be remembered by future generations for her extraordinary €5.5 million bequest to the Edinburgh Festival, the single largest donation in its 60-year history, which has only just come to light following her death from meningitis last year, aged 71.
A keen supporter of the arts and member of Edinburgh's Muse supporters programme, Scully was a visitor to the festival for over 30 years, the event being the highlight of a hectic annual social calendar.
"Music and the great artists were her passion. She loved the symphony orchestras, the string quartets, the concerts and ballets. She stayed in the best hotels, bought £l,500-£2,000 worth of tickets each time and entertained her many friends lavishly," recalls fellow festival goer, Tony Ó Dálaigh. She often expressed a wish to live in Edinburgh. "She loved the Usher Hall, opera and crème de menthe," said Susie Burnett of the festival office.
A veteran, Dublin-based PR consultant whose clients in the 1970s included the Farmer's Journal and Bord Iascaigh Mhara, Scully was one of the few women to forge a successful career in an industry then in its infancy in Ireland. Naturally gregarious and fun loving with a deep throaty voice husky from chronic smoking, she was a skilled networker who led a vigorous social life. Her parties, particularly during Dublin Horse Show week, were legendary.
With a towering personality and physique to match, she brought to both her social and business life enormous energy and commitment. Yet though she had hundreds of acquaintances from all walks of life, close friends were few and she was, like many extroverts, fundamentally lonely. One close friend was Ann Lenihan, widow of Brian Lenihan, who remembers her as great company, loyal, proud and independent.
Born in Montenotte, Cork, in October l933, Lean Scully was the eldest of the three children of Albert Scully and Anna Hempenstall, the first female statistician in Ireland. When Albert took up a job in the Land Commission in Merrion Street, the family moved to a house in Leeson Park, Dublin. A brilliant student, Lean was educated by the Ursulines in Cork, graduated from Cork University with an MA in l954 and worked for a time as a French teacher in a convent school in Lurgan and later in the Vocational School in Cork. In l960 she was appointed executive secretary of the Irish Council of the European Movement and moved to Dublin.
Subsequently she spent a year with the Farmer's Journal before joining Peter Owens advertising agency and Hugh O'Neill public relations, leaving in l964 to set up her own consultancy business. At this time, a high point in her career, tragedy struck when, driving back from a conference with her younger sister Patricia, she had a near fatal car accident outside Rockwell College.
It resulted in serious facial injuries that necessitated extensive plastic surgery. The scars remained with her all her life and she never drove again and rarely referred to the incident. Patricia helped to keep the business going during this time before leaving for the US. In l967 she bought number 49 Leeson Park which became her home and business and where she lived with her mother. Three years later she purchased number 50 which she converted into three apartments and let, one of her tenants being musician Donal Lunny.
Lord Mountcharles who engaged her services to promote his restaurant at Slane Castle in the late l970s remembers her as an "astounding" person who enjoyed life in every possible sense, knew everybody and had a great sense of humour. "She taught me a lot of things; to have the courage of my convictions and to express them. She put steel in my back. She was always capable of pulling a surprise even in death," he says.
After Lean's mother died in l994, travel became her great interest and many of her friends, even those much younger found it difficult to keep up with her formidable stamina, endless desire for company and chat. Up to her death, she was still attending concerts, opening nights and continuing to live life, as she had always, to the full.
She leaves a sister, Pat Rooney in the US and a brother, Noel in St Raphael's, Youghal, Co Cork.
Lean Scully, born Cork, October 13th, 1933, died Dublin, January 26th, 2005