Michael O’Regan a gentleman and a journalist

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ colum.

Michael Commane

It must have been in the

mid-1990s that I asked my provincial if I could go back to college and do a post grad in journalism. I presumed he’d say yes. I was correct, he did. I was delighted and did a year’s post grad in the then DIT, now TU Dublin in Aungier Street. 

After the course I spent a few months working at The Irish News in Belfast and then got a job with the Newry Democrat. It was sometime around the time of the death of Princess Diana that I saw an ad in The Sunday Independent where The Kerryman newspaper was looking for journalists. I answered the ad, got the job and spent a number of extremely happy years working as a sub editor at the newspaper. 

It was my job to edit texts, put stories and pictures on pages. It was a pressurised job and I by no means was the fastest sub editor in the world but I learned so much about words and how to string sentences together. The job gave me a great feel for words and how important they are.

Every Monday morning Michael O’Regan’s weekly column would land in my inbox. The sad death of the proud Kerryman on Sunday, February 18 has received wide coverage in the national media and in The Kerryman. 

Michael was parliamentary correspondent for The Irish Times but took great pride writing his brilliant weekly political column in The Kerryman, where he started out on his journalistic career. It was my job to sub it and then place it on the page. In all the years I did that job I don’t think I ever had to change a word and if, on the odd occasion, I had a question for him he always dealt with it in such friendly way. 

Michael O’Regan never for a moment thought his words or full stops were the most important in the world. As a result of working with him on that column we became friends over the years. 

Any time I wanted advice about something I was writing I always knew Michael was at the end of the phone. In the close to 30 years I have known him he was always so kind and helpful to me.

And then in recent years when he fell ill with cancer we had some great chats.

Michael had that wonderful gift of making me feel important. He never stood on ceremony and always had time to listen and consider a different view than his own.

Only in January I called him to go over some legal issue pertaining to a piece I was writing. He was so helpful. He went through it with me, and by the time the call ended I found myself taking his advice and then editing the piece accordingly.

I attended Michael’s funeral Mass in Holy Cross Church, Dundrum. The Mass booklet was a fabulous production, which included John B Keane’s poem ‘My Father’. It was a true Christian goodbye to a man who had spent his life in courage and sensitivity, always trying to tell the story in as an objective and truthful a manner as possible. In doing so he could often be funny but never nasty. 

He was a people’s person, who enjoyed observing them. I shall miss him. A gentleman and a great journalist.