DML Eulogy
21 January 2021
 
My father had style. The last gift he gave David and me was two bottles of Champagne, one for Christmas and one for New Year's Day. We drank the first with some anxiety and the second with the heaviest of hearts. Dad was wise, funny, loving and beautiful, in Bridget's apt description. He wasn't spontaneous, except making one kind of decision. He had a wonderful sense of humour and a healthy sense of the ridiculous. Many, many people who have so kindly sent their condolences refer to him as a gentleman.
 
Thank you, Bridget, for reading this for me. Thank you, Lucy, for making Dad's arrangements, negotiating timezones and emotions with such loving consideration. 
 
Thank you to the staff and Fr Mark Higgins of St George's Hospital for your care of Dad and of Bridget. It is a great consolation to know that Dad received the sacraments before he died. Thank you, Canon John, for celebrating this Mass and all in the parish of Sacred Heart for your prayers.
 
After finishing school at the Marist Brothers in Invercargill, Dad went to Otago University in Dunedin, studying philosophy and literature, fostering his love of reading and his skills in writing and analysis. Otago is where Dad and Bridget met and fell in love the first time. Dad's attachment to the Dominican Order of Preachers, started at primary school with the Dominican nuns, grew with life in Aquinas Hall, and his interest formed in St Thomas Aquinas and his teachings. There are stories about climbing over the Hall's locked gates after late nights out, but they are for another time.
 
After graduating, Dad went to Australia, and taught in St Laurence's, the Dominican school in North Adelaide. One evening in August 1960, visiting the priory next door, he met on the doorstep Dolores Joseph, a young woman from Sydney, also visiting her friends the Dominicans. I never found out whether this was coincidence or Dominican match-making but after a swift, long-distance courtship, they were married in November of the same year.
 
They lived in Sydney and Dad started his long career in the Commonwealth Public Service, in the Department of Education. He looked after the Colombo Plan, which gave scholarships to Asian university students for study in Australia. Some needed extra help with their English. My mother was a teacher, and fortunately someone else in the Department found out and asked her to coach the students – Dad wouldn't have, ever, as he was stubbornly ethical. The students had individual lessons with my mother at home. Sometimes the English lessons became cooking lessons, with roles reversed, and were still going when Dad got home from work. Here is the seed of my parents' shared interest in making newcomers feel at home. Remember Dad was a migrant, and my mother also came from a migrant family. Here too is the foundation of their love of interesting food. Dad had already been introduced to Lebanese food at the weekly family gatherings (where the unmarried sisters did all the cooking). 
 
In 1967, we moved to Canberra as Dad had transferred to the Department of Immigration. This was when immigration in Australia meant welcoming people into the country, not trying to keep them out. Dad's new colleagues were friendly and, in small, quiet Canberra, they had created a social circle where my parents' naturally hospitable dispositions flourished. We entertained A LOT and made lifelong friends, Tony and Mary Butler among them. Mum and Dad dined with another couple so often, taking turns to host, that they agreed to buy one decent bottle of wine and shuttle it back and forth until it had aged enough to drink. I think Canberra is where Dad started playing golf regularly. He also finished the Master of Education he’d started at The University of Sydney a few years earlier.
 
Dad worked hard and did well and in 1971 was posted to Stockholm, as Counsellor Migration, a senior role. We had a ball in Stockholm, making the most of chance to visit Ireland often and many great cities in Europe. But my parents also worked enormously hard for their country, giving endless formal dinners and receptions and many less formal parties for their fellow diplomats and Swedish colleagues. They were popular hosts, offering a warm welcome and copious excellent food and wine. Dad was loved and admired at the Embassy and other missions for his good humour, fairness, hard work, good negotiation and pastoral care for all. Making friendly conversation with people from all backgrounds started as work and became part of his personality. His patch was the whole of Scandinavia and he was thrilled to play golf in Iceland late one summer evening. He was less thrilled having to make a speech in Icelandic.
 
We returned to Canberra and had more parties. Dad moved in time to a new Department with the unpromising name Administrative Services. He excelled, thriving in 'the back room,' as he called it, with Peter Lawler as his boss, mentor and, eventually, close friend. He worked with police forces, then royal commissions, leading to a deep commitment to defeating organised crime. He emerged from the back room as the first CEO of the National Crime Authority and he and Mum moved back to Sydney where they remained until Dad finally retired (after one false start) and Mum died.
 
I said Dad wasn't spontaneous except when making one kind of decision. When he and Bridget met again in New Zealand in early 2009, there was another swift, long-distance courtship and here we are. Thank you, dearest Bridget, for making Dad happy again. He was so sad and lonely after my mother died and his rejuvenation was marvellous to witness, though I did miss him when he moved to London. He enjoyed living in Wimbledon with you and joining your family, and fitting in to market life. His wish to have a room with a view was realised. He found his tribe with the Wimbledon Ageless Golfing Gentlemen. He loved travelling with you around England, to Scotland and revisiting Ireland and many familiar and new places in Europe, the US and Canada. You were so patient the day you, Dad and I drove around the suburbs of Stockholm for hours, pretending we knew the way to our old houses.
 
Dad had a new career after his retirement, as a researcher. He read even more widely and his interest in crime developed into an interest in espionage and its practice in Australia and New Zealand, with a sideline in reconsidering who shot Michael Collins. He made new friends with similar interests, conducting extensive correspondence online with Aaron Fox and Tony Percy in particular, relishing the internet, its communication and research affordances and the access to international news. The website Kiwi Spies houses much of his work. He was delighted with the publication of a long article by the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies. He would have been so proud to be quoted approvingly in the New Zealand Herald earlier this month.
 
I wanted to say a few words about the music we're listening to. No sacred occasion should be without the peerless JS Bach. Slane is a wonderful Irish tune and Eleanor Hull's translation of the ancient hymn describes Dad's deep faith. Dad, Bridget and I attended a marvellous performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the Albert Hall a few years ago. I agree with conductor Fabio Luisi that the violin solo in the Benedictus is the Holy Spirit with us. David and I worked with many of the performers on this recording. Dad loved St Thomas Aquinas's Pange lingua and this hymn is also for his friendship with the Dominican Order. Gordon Kerry is a close family friend of many decades and his setting of the Nunc Dimittis is perfect for this occasion. Keith Jarrett's playing of his own arrangement of 'My Wild Irish Rose' is a favourite of Dad and Bridget's.
 
After my mother died, Dad and I went to Invercargill to celebrate Binne's christening and Bridget McKenzie's and Peter Lenihan's birthdays. I stayed a few days and Dad stayed a few weeks, spending time with Peter and Di and friends and family in Invercargill, then travelling through the South and North Islands visiting old haunts and cronies. It was on this trip that he and Bridget met again after more than 50 years.
 
As I was leaving Invercargill, he hugged me and said 'The best sound I heard all week was you laughing.' So, my beloved father, listen and you will hear me laugh again. Not today, not this week, but one day, I promise. I will imagine I'm laughing with you, at one of your clever puns or a shared joke. God bless and thank you for making me a very lucky daughter.
 
 
 
Siobhan Lenihan