WE all knew, even as far back as Earlsfort Terrace, that Christina Murphy would be one of the outstanding people of her generation in Ireland. Whatever she chose her energy and brilliance and independence would have brought her to the forefront. It was the great good fortune of The Irish Times that she chose journalism. And it was the great good fortune of thousands upon thousands of young people in this country that within journalism she chose to specialise in education.
There are other educational commentators now. Other media followed the trail that she pioneered. Information services similar to the ones which she saw as being so necessary for young people, lost in the morass of the system, bewildered about life, are now replicated in other newspapers and by other agencies. But she was the pathfinder and she was the best. Her detailed knowledge was without challenge. Her grasp of the complexities of the educational system was phenomenal. And her passion for the issues was what made her not just an extraordinary information source but a great and committed journalist.
She believed nothing was more important than the decisions which young people made about their education, their training and their development. And she was as passionate about the future of the young person who wasn't going to pick up any grades as she was about the gifted ones whose points would carry them to whatever profession they might identify, in whatever prestigious college they might choose.
I first knew her in UCD in the 1960s when we were both involved in Campus, a college newspaper run by a group of students, mainly drawn from the Arts and Law faculties along with the odd stray medic. None of us, I think, had ever met anyone so forceful, so dynamic, so independent in her spirit and so utterly unimpressed by authority or rank or station. She carried those qualities through a career which, though now tragically cut short, nevertheless spanned three decades of enormous social and educational change in Ireland.
When illness first touched her almost a decade ago, her response was in character. From the beginning she fought it with a courage and a resolution which were almost frightening to behold. And as it advanced, she fought it harder, redoubling her input into the newspaper, launching new sections and services, stoking up fresh plans and ideas in between bouts of treatment. And she fought her battle silently. When she spoke of it to her colleagues it was on a need to know basis only.
She was a woman with an abundance of love and idealism to give to the world about her. She believed in the idealism of journalism and the newspaper of which she was a part. She loved her friends and she had close and good friends. She loved her native West of Ireland and her family there. She loved Dublin, her home and her garden. Above all, she loved Dermot and Eric with absolute resolve. For she knew her time was not unlimited.
Not so long ago she told me her plan was to make it to the millennium. I think we both knew even in that conversation that the odds were against her. But she believed in setting high targets and ambitious deadlines. It was the only one I ever knew her to miss.