Former editor laid to rest as President pays his respects

By Dara Bradley

President of Ireland Michael D Higgins, and his wife Sabina, were among the mourners at the funeral mass of John Cunningham, former editor of the Connacht Tribune, at the Church of Christ the King, Salthill on Friday.

Mr Cunningham – who was affectionately known as JC – was described as a “champion of the little man” and a “colossus in Irish journalism”, who was a “fundamentally decent human being and extremely positive human being”.

In his eulogy, Mr Cunningham’s successor as group editor of the Connacht Tribune, Dave O’Connell, described him as a man of great integrity, a fair man, “but most of all he was a decent man,” who “made only friends not enemies on his journey”.

Mr Cunningham, who died aged 66 after a battle with illness last Tuesday surrounded by family at Galway Hospice, was laid to rest at Rahoon Cemetery – his former colleagues at the Connacht Tribune provided a guard of honour to his graveside.

Recalling Mr Cunningham’s championing of a hospice in Galway before one was built in Renmore and when it was “just an idea”, Mr O’Connell said as a young reporter he had been dispatched by his then boss to Harold’s Cross to view how the palliative care facility worked. “The next time that I went inside the door of a hospice was to see John,” he said.

“He supported the hospice in every way he could, for over a quarter of a century. He was a director of the hospice for a number of years since his retirement and he was angry at the annual cuts to its funding. When the Taoiseach came to see him in the hospice, he found out JC doesn’t do photo calls. He committed the Taoiseach to addressing this problem of funding . . . His last story for the Connacht Tribune was about that shortfall in HSE funding for Galway Hospice and it appeared in last week’s paper in the same place that we recorded his death a week on. The point about this is that even through to his dying days his thoughts were still for somebody else and how he could turn a wrong into a right,” said Mr O’Connell.

During his career, including his 23 years as editor of the Connacht Tribune, Mr Cunningham was “a colossus in the Tribune newsroom; he was a colossus in Irish journalism” and to him “it wasn’t just a job, it was a profession and he loved it right through to this week – his column is in today’s City Tribune.”

Chief celebrant Fr Tony Flannery described Mr Cunningham as a “fundamentally decent human being and an extremely positive human being,” who had “a very deep faith” but “he didn’t wear it on his sleeve”. “He loved politics. But he had a quality that is actually rare enough in modern journalism – he liked and he respected politicians.

He respected them because he regarded them by and large as very good people, committed, dedicated people who were inspired to enter into public life and work hard. How many people in the modern world would say that about politicians? But that was John’s absolute basic human decency coming out all the time,” he said.

For more, read thbis week's Connacht Sentinel.