Hostel colleague recalls bus crash victim

Mr Kevin Garry (43), started work at around 8.30 a.m. last Saturday morning, says the manager of the Salvation Army hostel where he worked as a cleaner.

"He worked cleaning and tidying and washing in here every morning," says Mr Howard Russell, surveying the carefully assembled rows of 16 beds in an upstairs dormitory.

"He looked after the four beds downstairs too. He'd come in to this room after a night where people would have been smoking. There would sometimes be needles and it could get quite smelly. He would return it to the way it is now," he says.

"And I know everyone probably says this, but to Kevin it was more than just a job. There's cleaning, and there's cleaning as you would your own home. He never just threw linen on the bed, or just swept. He took care and laid things out properly. Where people might turn a blind eye to the odd thing, he'd go the extra mile."

Folded neatly on each blue mattress are a green sheet, pillow case and blankets. By each bed is a Bible and the wooden floor is gleaming. "This is in a way his legacy. As you can see, someone has done a decent enough job here this morning, keeping it up to his standards."

Kevin, from Leixlip, Co Kildare, was one of the five people killed in last Saturday afternoon's bus accident. He had just finished his shift at the Salvation Army's Cedar House hostel at lunchtime and had been waiting for his bus home. Kevin had been working at the hostel just off O'Connell Street in Dublin since November 2000. It provides emergency and short-term accommodation, a health service, a community welfare service and information services to homeless people seven days a week. "About 2,500 people use the services here each year," says Mr Russell. "We see about 50 rough sleepers a night. It's amazing how many people have literally fallen in here and walked out again a few months later, their heads held high."

Kevin had been a chef until a traffic accident 15 years ago left him partially immobile and without full use of one of his arms. It also left him with a speech impediment, which, Kevin had said, people always judged him on.

"People would always assume there was something wrong with him, and there was not a thing wrong with him mentally. He was sharp as anyone.

"He really was part of the family here," says Mr Russell. "All the staff loved him. Not many of the residents really knew him because they'd be gone by the time he came in to clean. But Kevin's whole thing was just coming in, doing the job well and he had no interest in the politics of work.

"He'd stand up for everyone, wouldn't hurt a fly. He was just a lovely, lovely, cracking guy."