The sudden death of Dr Alec Hughes left the community in Moate and the surrounding area, among whom he had worked for over 40 years, stunned and saddened.
Born in Terenure, Dublin, in 1924, he was educated at St Mary's, Rathmines, where he showed early schoolboy prowess at rugby: he captained the under16s team in 1940 and the Senior Cup team in 1943. That year saw St Mary's battle against Rockwell in what The Irish Times described as "the best seen in Dublin this season" and in his history of the Leinster Schools Senior Cup, published in 1988, Declan Downes wrote:
"Centre Alec Hughes's 1943 XV set the tone for future generations by playing champagne rugby during a cup run which ended in a narrow 9-6 final defeat by Rock. Hughes inspired his teammates in the school's finest hour on the rugby field". Unfortunately, a broken leg during what should have been a pre-med year meant he lost the year, and qualified in Medicine at UCD in 1949. A few years' experience in hospitals in Dartford and Middlesborough followed, after which he returned to Ireland, to an anaesthetist's post at Mullingar General Hospital.
He used tell the story that he answered an ad to the job in an Irish newspaper in 1954 at the princely remuneration of £6 a week and "his keep", which was somewhat more promising than being drafted at the time to Malaya in her Majesty's Service.
A year later he took over a fledgling practice in Moate, which he built up single-handedly so successfully that he employed a partner in 1981. In effect, he introduced modern medicine to Moate in the mid-1950s. He was a link between the old order and the new, and when he put up his plate as a country GP in 1955 on a decrepit old Georgian house, the dining-room became the patients' waiting-room, and the butler's pantry his surgery, and so they remained even into the heady days of the GMS scheme, when he added on another surgery to accommodate his new partner. The 1950s and into the 1960s were a time of home birth deliveries, often by candlelight or lamplight, before the advent of electricity and running water in isolated country houses, but it was an exciting and challenging time too, to which he brought new insights, dedication and humanity.
Alec Hughes had many interests apart from medicine. He loved classical music, the Mahler symphonies especially, and in view of the manner of his death, how apt now are the words from one of Mahler's songs in Das Lied von der Erde, a particular favourite of his:
"My heart is weary. My little lamp has gone out with a splutter, it urges me to sleep."
He loved the theatre too, and for many years he and his wife, Vera, were regulars at the Dublin Theatre Festival. Living in the Midlands, they were, as one would expect, veteran season ticket-holders at the All Ireland Amateur Drama Festival.
Creative writing, of poetry in particular, was another abiding interest when he had the time. He enjoyed foreign travel, good company and conversation, discussing current affairs and politics, but it was ironic that the malaria contracted while on holiday in Kenya at the beginning of the 1990s contributed largely to early retirement and to the poor health of his remaining years.
For several years, the community at large had already missed him as a kind, caring, dedicated and compassionate physician. Words that spring to mind about him concern his breadth of knowledge and of everything that concerned culture, his rectitude, his gentleness and his understanding of others. One elderly patient put it succinctly: "Dr Hughes was a gentleman".
That is the greatest compliment that can be paid to his memory, and that will give some solace to his sorrowing wife, Vera, and his five children in their great loss.
Leaba i measc na naomh go raibh ag a anam uasal caoin!