David Adare FitzGerald, one of the major figures of his generation in the Irish hotel industry, died two weeks ago aged 83.
He was born to Margaret and James FitzGerald in Boyle, Co Roscommon, in 1919, the second of seven children. The family moved shortly to Galway where his father took up a teaching post in University College.
A keen amateur genealogist, his father traced the family directly to Big Tom FitzGerald of Adare, Co Limerick, in the early 18th century and more sketchily to Gerald, the Earl of Pembroke, whose marriage to Nesta anteceded the Norman invasion of 1169.
Anxious that the fils de Gerald reflect their origins with accuracy (and indeed, their earlier derivation from the Gherardini of Florence), both father and son would take pains to insist on the capitalisation of the G in their surname.
The family moved to Grace Park Road in Drumcondra in 1926 when James took up a job teaching classics in Belvedere where he remained, nicknamed "Mr Pills" after the author of a Greek grammar, until his death in 1963. One benefit of his employment was that his five sons could all attend the school.
The academic environment was a defining experience for David. He excelled in the classics and developed a life-long love of poetry. He developed a fascination with electronics. He began with crystal radios which opened for him the world of politics and culture. He moved on to ham radio and tape recorders, communicating with friends across the world.
University was not an economic option as he left in 1938 and he joined the trainees in hotel management at the Gresham under the tutelage of Toddy O'Sullivan. He also joined the Forsa Cosantha Athúil and paraded with broom handles in the national defence during The Emergency.
FitzGerald met Mildred FitzPatrick of Dartmouth Square at the Belvedere Operatic and Dramatic Society in 1939. However, such were the frugal times that they could not afford to get married until 1947, when he landed a job as manager of the Grosvenor Hotel.
Their only son, Garret Adare, was born in 1950 and the opportunity to start their own business beckoned the young couple to Belfast in 1955 but the IRA launched a campaign in 1956 and they were subject to intimidation in their Finaghy neighbourhood. The business faltered and it was time to move.
The options were few and he counted himself fortunate to obtain a job managing the Grand Hotel in Greystones, Co Wicklow. They were to remain there until 1978. Greystones was a demographically unusual hamlet of 3,000 souls, a rather dilapidated echo of empire, which sported one of the few national schools in the Republic run by the Church of Ireland. The somewhat run-down Victorian pile that was the Grand Hotel was favoured mostly by visitors from the majority community in the North and from Britain.
The couple transformed the hotel and in many ways, their community. They initiated programmes of entertainment at Christmas and Easter, broadening its appeal to the emerging Catholic bourgeoisie, while retaining its original clientele.
They changed the name to the La Touche Hotel, affording it an identity distinct from the many Grand Hotels of the time. Typically, he chose a name with historical resonance. The hotel stood on an estate previously owned by the eponymous Huguenot bankers.
FitzGerald emerged on the national and international scene in the hotel business, playing a leading role in the Irish Hotels Federation, the training body, CERT and the International Hotel Management Association.
As the hotel became more successful, he fostered its impact on the cultural and sporting life of the town. He co-founded the Greystones Operatic and Dramatic Society (the GODS) and the Greystones Debating Society (the GDS) where several doyens of current tribunals cut their teeth at mock trials. An avid sports fan, he engaged in the development of new facilities for the Greystones Rugby Club and the move of the lawn tennis club to a site opposite the hotel.
Visitors to the hotel reflected the delayed but turbulent emergence a more liberal and prosperous Ireland in the 1960s. David Andrews and David Thornley, Ulick O'Connor and Hector Legge were just some of the regular visitors. Brendan Behan planned to stay, but made it only for breakfast,after spending the remains of a long day in the adjacent Garda facilities. Other occasional visitors included the Bolshoi Ballet, Éamon de Valera and the Sultan of Oman.
Both worked long hours, but Mildred was never compensated financially for her efforts, other than by a cut glass bowl on her retirement.
Although the hotel was transformed as an enterprise, they never shared materially in its success and so it was not surprising that they were recruited by P.V. Doyle, David to the Burlington and Mildred to the Tara Towers. Their joint income now permitted them to buy a small apartment, their first private property, with the exception of their year in Belfast, since their marriage 31 years before. They remained there happily for the next 25 years.
FitzGerald was rarely separated from his tape recorder and this resulted in his capturing a remarkable oral history of Irish social development and world events over the past 45 years. He read avidly and his prodigious memory and gentle style rendered accessible his knowledge of Greek and Latin aphorisms, fragments of Shakespeare and a breath of poetry in a way that was unusual in his time and virtually extinct today.
He was afflicted with Parkinson's disease in his later years, but always maintained his dignity and humour through a long illness with cancer, during which he was cared for lovingly at Carew House and Leeson Park nursing home.
This polymath was pleased to have a biology room in the new science block at Belvedere named in his honour shortly before he died and a fund will be established further to reflect his affection for poetry and the classics. He is survived by his wife Mildred, his son Garret Adare, his sister Nesta, brothers Desmond and Tom and by his grandchildren, John Adare, Genevieve and Hugo.
This gentle man lived his life in a way that reflected his favoured words of Pindar - temperament is destiny.
David Adare FitzGerald: born November 30th, 1919, died November 14th, 2003.