Gentleman Jim – the consummate journalist

Obituary by Dave O’Connell

Jim Fahy was a man of many paradoxes; a big imposing man who never tried to impose himself on anyone; an instantly recognisable face who only ever wanted to tell the story, never to be it; a reporter for the big, international story…but just as happy to record the minutiae of ordinary life.

Where there was no contradiction however was in his commitment to his profession – his quest to bring the news to the masses, driven by a phenomenal work ethic, an insatiable desire to find the answers and a lifelong dedication to his role as RTÉ’s man in the West.

That dedication to his craft brought plenty of plaudits – his career was bejewelled with over 40 awards for his work – but he always saw himself as the storyteller, never the story.

Like so many of the national service’s finest broadcasters, he cut his journalistic teeth in the world of newspapers – in Jim’s case, under the expert tutelage of Tuam Herald editor and owner, JP Burke.

And he learned well from the Master, because over his 38 years as RTÉ’s first Western Correspondent and Western Editor, he set the standard for regional broadcasting, covering his patch with curiosity and enthusiasm that never dimmed from first day to last.

His long-running Looking West series has rightly been singled out in recent days as his greatest legacy; those conversational documentaries that told – in the first-person and from memory – the story of Ireland through so much of the last two centuries.

Ever patient and dogged, he would sit for hours and hours with those who could offer a direct line back to the Famine – recounting the stories they’d heard from those who’d lived through it.

Thus he opened a window, for example, on life in the Big Houses, chatting with those who lived there – as easily to members of the aristocracy as the household staff – to get an insight into their lives and the world around them.

He loved words – possibly a throwback to his early days in print – but he also knew how to let a picture tell a story. And he also knew when to listen.

The past few days has also recalled his famous interview with the late Monsignor James Horan, against a backdrop of JCBs digging into the boggy mountain that was to become Knock Airport, as he asked the question the world wanted to – “Monsignor Horan, what exactly is going on here?”

“We’re building an airport…and we have no money, but we’re hoping to get it next week or the week after.”

You didn’t need an intrusion – just an ability to ask the question and step back to let the answer tell the tale.

He chronicled every big Galway story from early seventies to 2011 – Digital’s rise and fall and the similar trajectory of Bishop Casey; All-Ireland wins and losses; the Saw Doctors, Druid’s growth, the Arts Festival, the Races; the BrazilIans in Gort; sea tragedies; the Christmas tears and goodbyes at Knock airport; the Kiltartan floods and the Derrybrien mudslide; Michael D in the Dáil and the Áras – producing what good journalism is supposed to do…provide the first draft of history.

The Kilreekill native who had long lived in Tuam was the station’s longest serving regional correspondent, when he retired in 2011. Truth be told, that wasn’t his decision; it was just the state broadcaster’s arbitrary policy of retiring people at the age of 65.

Typically, he wanted to fade away on the back of a final broadcast – a piece on Paul Fallon’s 1,000-mile charity run as he passed through Oranmore on New Year’s Eve 2011, where typically he jogged alongside, still asking questions as he tried to take his quiet leave.

But the big man was never going to be allowed to simply fade into the ether, and President Higgins led the tributes to Jim in a personal message on that evening’s Six One News – saying how much he would be missed and how Jim had reported on everything political, cultural and international that had happened in the West under his journalistic tenure.

Fittingly it was the President who again led the tributes on Jim’s death at the weekend, describing him as ‘one of Ireland’s finest broadcasters’.

“It will be as RTÉ’s voice of the west of Ireland that Jim will be most fondly remembered,” said President Higgins.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin also took time out to remember Jim Fahy’s ‘distinct voice and eye for a story uncovered every facet of life in the west of Ireland, as well as major international events like 9/11’.

Because the Galway man was one of the first journalists from Europe to arrive in New York in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Galway and the West was his daily beat, but the world was his oyster.

He’d interviewed Mother Teresa and travelled to Somalia with former President Mary Robinson in the late 1990s – a decade after he’d produced a series of programmes from London on that latest generation of young people to emigrate to Britain.

Typical of the man, once he retired, he made no effort to hold onto the limelight; instead he enjoyed life with Christina, his children and his grandchildren; he pursued his passion for sailing and reading – and if he departed this world way too soon at the age of just 75, he packed a lifetime into every day.

The recurring tribute from so many of his colleagues – in RTÉ and the wider journalistic community – was the advice he generously imparted, the encouragement he ceaselessly offered, and the praise he never failed to bestow when a job was well done.

He thrived on the big stories but never missed the small ones either; he mixed in exalted circles but had a passion for the ordinary and the marginalised – a need to tell their story in his own kind and inimitable way.

Jim Fahy died at home in Gardenfield, outside Tuam, on Friday night, surrounded as always by his beloved family. His Requiem Mass took place in the Cathedral of the Assumption, Tuam on Monday, with burial afterwards in Kilbannon Cemetery.

His wife Christina will miss him most of all, as will his son Shane, daughter Aideen, daughter-in-law Brenda, Aideen’s fiancé Colm, his treasured grandchildren Amy, Dylan, Hugh, Clodagh and Dara, brother Pat and his wife Nora, his relatives, friends – and all who knew him in the media world of wich he was such an integral part.