FitzGerald Kevin Columba

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Biografie:
Kevin Columba FitzGerald (1902-1993)
Kevin FitzGerald was a man of fine physique, 6 ft 3in tall and strongly built. With names such as his he could hardly have been anything but an Irishman; and he might easily have spent most of his life in Ireland, where his father (whom, characteristically, he described as 'usually a rich man') had bought an estate in Tipperary which it was intended that he should manage and eventually inherit. But things worked out otherwise, and after four years at Seale Hayle Agricultural College he finally joined the Agricultural Division of ICI. He remained with that company in various capacities until his retirement after 33 years' service.
The first passion of his life was books. He was an immensely literary man, very widely read and with a retentive memory; and he possessed a library of several thousand books, of which he had read all but a very few. He was a master of words, whether spoken or written, humorous or serious, and during the Second World War, and in the years after it, he did a lot of casual broadcasting - readings and short talks - for the BBC. During the 1950s and early 1960s he wrote perhaps a dozen thrillers which were quite successful at the time, although they would nowadays seem fairly dated. Incidentally a mountaineering interest begins to appear in some of them, with occasional references to 'Christopher Higgs', the thinly disguised proprietor of Pen-y-Gwryd. Later, he wrote a book on the Chilterns (where he lived), and also an official history of the Farmers' Club on the occasion of that club's 125th anniversary. But it was not until he was over eighty, and his eyesight was failing, that he wrote With O'Leary in the Grave, which can fairly be described as a little masterpiece - a brilliantly amusing account of his own youth and a vivid picture of his eccentric father. Later still, when he was completely blind, he dictated a continuation of With O'Leary, which he called Walking the Prodigal Way; but this was never published.
Kevin did many good works by stealth; for example, he was once a prison visitor, and so long as he could drive a car he went into Oxford once a week as a helper at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. At one stage in his life, he himself had been so serious an alcoholic that he was warned that he had only a few months to live. It must be extremely rare to give up, as he did, without assistance or treatment of any kind.
Mountains meant nothing to him until shortly after the War when, already in his late forties, he had a spell as ICl's General Manager in Ireland. One member of his staff there, Brian Hilton-Jones, persuaded him to come with him on weekend trips on the overnight Dublin-Holyhead mailboat, and it was then that he was introduced to Pen-y-Gwryd. From that time he became a lover of the Welsh mountains, and even of Welsh rock-climbing, for which it is fair to say he had no aptitude whatever; and this improbable passion soon extended to anything to do with mountains or mountain literature.
He was an immensely entertaining after-dinner speaker, and naturally was in great demand at the Annual Dinners of different British climbing clubs. He was an Honorary Member of the Climbers' Club; and he must have been one of the few people to have been elected to the Alpine Club (I am not sure under what rule) without ever having climbed in the Alps or any other high range, in disregard of all the normal election qualifications, simply because of his great love of mountains. He contributed three or four characteristic articles to the AJ and for two or three years in the 1970s was in charge of its obituary section, which he introduced with a few apposite lines of his own writing.
He was married to Janet Quigley, the creator of the radio programme Woman's Hour which is still running, and it was a tremendous blow to him when she died six or seven years ago. By that time Kevin had become totally blind, and his deafness was becoming increasingly serious. He will be widely remembered for many reasons, and not least for the dignity and the courageous, uncomplaining way in which he faced the handicaps of his last few years.
David Cox
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 99 1994, Seite 334-335


Geboren am:
1902
Gestorben am:
1993