Gerry Watson, Professor of Ancient Classics at Maynooth from 1959 to 1997, died at Tallaght Hospital on July 24th, after being ill for some time. Nonetheless, his death came as a terrible shock to all who knew him; for he was only 64.
Gerry was ordained (Armagh archdiocese) in 1959, and joined the staff at Maynooth in the same year. He came from Portadown, the son of a Catholic officer of the RUC, and was one of seven children; his three brothers and three sisters survive him, and to them now, and to the rest of his family, go out our special sympathy and prayers.
Maynooth opened its doors to lay students in 1966-67, and that experiment (which has led to a university of nearly 5,000 students, in 1998) was then an exercise of no little uncertainty, requiring great faith and vision and persistence on the part of those who encouraged and fostered it. Gerry was central and pivotal in that development, a figure who, as a priest, had one foot in the traditional camp and, as a liberal, looked instinctively forwards. Such a position, straddling two often different worlds, brings with it great pressures, and Maynooth as it is now owes Gerry an incalculable debt for absorbing those pressures so productively over such a considerable period: sine labore nihil.
Gerry Watson's professional expertise lay in the area of Greek Philosophy and Patristics. His Belfast Ph.D. was on the topic The Stoic Theory of Knowledge, published in book form in 1966. There followed books on Plato's Unwritten Teaching (1973), Phantasia in Classical Thought (1988), a book on St Augustine (1990), and Greek Philosophy and the Christian Notion of God (1994). But he was no narrow specialist, and taught at different times a wide range of courses extending from Homer to Lucretius and Sallust and Tacitus.
However, Gerry's eminence as a Classical scholar, marked in 1978 by his election to membership of the Royal Irish Academy, was only one side of his achievement. In his youth a distinguished footballer, he played as time went on both an important part on key college committees and above all attracted to the Maynooth Classics Department a steady stream of students of ability. By the late 1980s there was a higher number of students studying Greek and Roman Civilisation at Maynooth, as a proportion of the total student body, than at any other university in Ireland or Britain. That was a phenomenal achievement, and it was owed in large measure to Gerry's ability to translate ideals and vision into the realm of the practical.
Gerry Watson now lies at rest in the College cemetery at Maynooth: that is fitting, for his whole adult life was devoted to the place, and to its advancement. Requiescat in pace; and may those of us who come after be worthy heirs of what he built up. M.P.