Dr John Lynch, who died unexpectedly and suddenly at his home in Clonmel early on St Patrick's Day, had his early schooling in Nenagh, where he was born on May 24th, 1936. His father Joe, a Kerryman from Ballybunion, was the town's dentist. The family of his mother, Moira Gleeson, had been in North Tipperary from time immemorial. Two of them, Father John Gleeson of Lorrha and Dermot Gleeson, wrote notable local histories.
After primary school in Nenagh, John attended Clongowes Wood College where he made friendships which lasted, as did those formed when he started at the College of Surgeons in Dublin. He punctuated his medical studies with stints canning peas in Peterborough - where he regularly held up proceedings to rescue field mice from the production line - and swimming to catch octopus in the Mediterranean. Field mice and fish perhaps sum up half of his consuming interests throughout his life: he knew every bush and grass, every bird and insect, every tree and mammal that inhabited the Irish countryside, and he knew the famous fishing rivers and lakes of Ireland, particularly the Suir and his beloved Shannon, where he kept a boat at Dromineer and was as well known as if he had never left Nenagh. On the Shannon, his frequent companion was his lifelong friend Gerry O'Dowd, with whom his exploits ranged from sliding down the precipitous slopes of Keeper Hill on tin trays as boys, to arguments on the ethics of using sounders to locate their quarry in the deep of Loch Derg.
John spent a few years in the army medical corps in Germany, before practising as a GP in Hartlepool, whose bleak shores took little time to urge him back to Ireland. He had completed his qualifications in psychiatry by then, and took up a post at St Luke's hospital in Clonmel, where he bought a new home and set about transforming the building site that was the garden into a haven for birds in the shrubs and bushes and pond. The Suir became his haunt, as was his his study, where he indulged another of his great passions - books. He had a wonderful collection, acquired in the backstreet bookshops of any town he visited or the more established ones of Dublin, or at Mealy's book sales in nearby Castlecomer. Military history, fishing, travel and the local history of Tipperary were among his favourite topics. His professional life was spent mainly in Clonmel, with a regular clinic in Nenagh, where the rods he kept in his car were often put to evening use.
John retired three years ago and the remote places he read of became possibilities for him to explore. He took off with a group of friends to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Kamchatka - and last year, the northern Rockies - to fish places that were beyond anything he had even dreamed of.
One of his greatest attributes was his ability to make friends in every walk of life. He was a natural raconteur, with a tale or a bon mot for every occasion, whether it was picking up his daily paper at the local shop in Clonmel or sitting at a camp fire to the north of Ulan Bator.
He returned from remote Patagonia six weeks before his death - his second trip to the unspoilt rivers of that steppe-like region of Argentina.
He leaves his wife of 37 years, Dolores, their children, Stephanie and Elinor, Stephanie's children Isabelle and Joss, and his only sister, Claire. His family was his other great abiding interest and in the past three years he could talk of little else but the antics of his grandchildren - and the next fishing trip.
J.M.