“We here in Monaghan are very proud of Seán Rocks. We are very proud of his achievements. He was one of us.”
Those lines were said by Canon Paddy McGinn to a large crowd gathered for the funeral of Seán Rocks in his native town of Monaghan on Monday.
The actor and RTÉ presenter, who died on Wednesday after a brief illness, was 64.
President Michael D Higgins was among the mourners who extended their sympathies to Rocks’s wife Catherine in St Macartan’s Cathedral. Directly afterwards, Sabina Higgins enfolded Catherine in a long hug. The length of the embrace felt testament to the shock, felt by all, that a man who had been on air presenting Arena, RTÉ’s flagship arts and culture show the Friday before last, could be so suddenly gone.
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“We have many questions,” Canon McGinn said. “Why Seán? Sometimes we have no answers.”
Rocks’s voice was “soothing and consoling”, said Canon McGinn. He had an ability “to get the best out of people”, while his listeners considered him a friend.
Among the mourners were actors Stephen Rea, Ciarán Hinds, Aidan Gillen, Bronagh Gallagher and Stanley Townsend. Musicians Julie Feeney, Camille O’Sullivan and Colm Mac Con Iomaire were in attendance, as were novelists Patrick McCabe and Sinéad Gleeson.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was represented at the funeral by Commandant Joseph Glennon.
In attendance from RTÉ were presenters Miriam O’Callaghan, Philip Boucher-Hayes, and RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst, as well as many who had worked with Rocks over the years, including producers Sinéad Egan and Kay Sheehy, and colleagues from Lyric FM, where Rocks had also worked.
Quiet sobbing could be heard as the coffin was brought up, with Rocks’s young sons, Christian and Morgan, in blazers and trainers, and Catherine leading the way, their hands on top of the coffin.
Rocks met Kerry-born Catherine in 2004. “You became the love of his life,” Canon McGinn told her. “In 2015, Christian was born, and in 2017 Morgan was born. He was devoted to you.”
Reflecting on Rocks’s character, his great friend, the actor Marion O’Dwyer told mourners: “Seán didn’t send you a voice note, you got a personal podcast. The boys know whenever someone makes them laugh, that’ll be their dad in heaven trying to make them laugh.”
A pair of headphones, a box of Seamus Heaney poetry, a wooden spoon, a theatre award, and a family photograph were among the items presented by Rocks’s family at the altar as symbols of his love of family and the arts. Heaney had been one of Rocks’s lecturers when he did his master’s degree in Anglo-Irish literature at UCD.
As a boy he went to the local school, St Louis in Monaghan town, before attending Carysfort College to become a teacher.
Based in Dundrum in Dublin, Rocks began presenting radio programmes on RTÉ Lyric FM in 2000, before moving on to RTÉ Radio 1. Among his achievements were serving as MC at events at Áras an Uachtaráin, and also serving as host MC at the State banquet at Dublin Castle for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland in 2011. As an actor he performed in plays in the Abbey, Gate and Peacock theatres.
Music was performed by Rocks’s family and friends, including Conor Linehan, Ellen Cranitch, Ailish Lavelle, Martin McCormack and the Monaghan Folk Group. His friend, the actor Seamus Moran, delivered a reading. Gráinne Rice, Rocks’s sister, sang a version of Be Not Afraid.
Outside the cathedral, as blustery weather threatened to throw people off-balance, memories of Rocks were swapped. Many recalled his sense of mischief, his charm and his tremendous facilities as an actor and broadcaster.
From the pulpit, the listeners were represented too, with Canon McGinn reading out some of the many tributes and letters of sympathy written on RIP.ie. One listener, Helen from Dooks in Co Kerry, had quoted Raymond Carver: “‘And did you get what/ you wanted from this life, even so?/ I did. And what did you want?/ To call myself beloved, to feel myself/beloved on the earth.’
“The nation loved you,” she concluded.
