Shortly after Hugh Coveney was first elected to the Dail, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) decided to run a fundraising fashion show. It persuaded a number of TDs to perform on the catwalk. Each TD was paired off in male/female couples and I got matched up with Hugh Coveney.
A few days before the event Hugh realised he couldn't go through with the show and let the DRCC know. (I ended up being paired off with Ruairi Quinn). The reason Hugh couldn't perform was simple and overwhelming shyness. During the week that followed the event I slagged Hugh unmercifully about him standing me up. He took it all with his usual grace.
As I was leaving for Galway at the end of the week one of the Dail ushers stopped me and explained that there was an item that had been left for me - the most magnificent, and expensive, house plant with a note from Hugh apologising for failing to appear at the fashion show.
A generous man, a polite man and a shy man. It was probably his shyness and modesty that made him one of the most untypical politicians we have seen. Most TDs will find excuses to tell stories about themselves that just happen to reflect well on themselves.
Hugh never did that. People never heard from him that he had captained the Irish Admiral's Cup Team in 1979 or that he was in severe danger of winning when a hurricane wrecked the race.
He had no reason for self-praise because he expected people to treat him as he would treat them, with consideration and kindness. At all times Hugh was a gentleman but he did not suffer from the formality that is often associated with old-style good manners.
Everyone who knew him knew him as Hugh. It did not matter whether he held a ministerial office at the time, he simply would not allow people to call him anything other than his first name.
A tall elegant man, in common with many athletes he carried himself with easy grace and never resorted to the stoop tall people often affect to conceal their size. His time spent yachting had contributed enormously to his physical self-acceptance - there's no room on a small boat for separate changing rooms, so everyone has to get over any delicacy they might have over their appearance quickly.
Yachting also informed his attitude to women. Having skippered boats with mixed crews he knew that there was no reason to treat female crew members differently. That conviction carried over into both his private and public life.
The problem with a politician as untypical as Hugh Coveney is that the posthumous coverage seems too filled with sweetness and light. For balance, writers have to seek any point of controversy in a man's life, and so any blip - such as a demotion - gets recycled. In Hugh's case, what might more usefully be recycled was the characteristic grace he showed in the face of this reversal. The comment he had made in the Bord Gais controversy about his company's inclusion on a tender list was no more than one of those "how are you, how's the wife and kids?" comments with which all our conversations are littered. With Hugh Coveney, there could be no hint of him trying to gain some sort of unfair advantage.
The then Taoiseach overreacted badly to the situation and caused Hugh great embarrassment by demoting him from the Department of Defence and the Marine to a junior ministry at the Department of Finance. Despite the mistreatment meted out to him, Hugh's sense of duty and loyalty to his party never wavered.
Whenever he was questioned about the event he betrayed no ill will, showed no dissent through gesture or word. Rather, he used the opportunity to find positive things to say about his party leader.
It was all part of a personal philosophy handed on to his children. At the funeral Mass, his daughter mentioned one of his key phrases: "Never the backward glance". He taught his children, in words and in his own actions, never to wallow in bitterness, always to look to the future, to the golden apples after which the family boat was named.
When one of his children came up with the idea of a round-theworld voyage in that boat by five of them to raise money for the children of Chernobyl, he supported the idea and backed it with £150,000. It was not until after his death that this was revealed by Adi Roche.
Hugh was happy to underwrite the venture quietly, doing whatever fund-raising was required while the boat circled the world and getting no personal credit for it. I am not sure I could find, even among my dearest political friends, another politician who would think in such self-effacing terms.
That trip was a sacrifice for him in another sense. He knew he would not be seeing five of his children for the bulk of a year. Still he let them go, unashamed to cry in public when they set sail.
Hugh Coveney had solid friends within all of the political parties. His sudden death jolted many people into a realisation that if we had more like him, party politics would not present the bleak prospect it offers these days. It also provoked a level of public response not often seen.
Thousands of people paid their respects at the removal, the funeral mass or by signing the many books of condolence. The President and politicians from all of the parties were present, demonstrating his popularity across ideological boundaries.
It was impossible to get a taxi in Cork that day as they were tied up ferrying people to and from the airport for the funeral. But those details only give an idea of the scale of the event.
Its impact is summed up by what happened when Hugh's son Patrick talked about him at the end of Mass. As he spoke a hush spread through the congregation and out into the crowds surrounding the church. People, including some of the uniformed gardai in attendance, started to cry.
When Patrick had finished those outside the church started to clap. This turned into a wave of applause that swept through the church. They clapped because they could think of no other way to say how proud they were to have known this man.