Hero Garda Dave mourned one year on
MONDAY marked the first anniversary of the tragic drowning of hero Garda Dave Hearne from Fethard, off of the Hook Head coast.
A ceremony was due to be held in the father-of-four’s honour, but couldn’t go ahead due to Covid-19 restrictions.
One year on and the heartbreak of losing such a vibrant, kind and fun loving husband, father, son and brother is still incredibly difficult for his family, who are struggling to come to terms with his loss.
Garda Hearne, who was based in Waterford, was due to be promoted to the rank of sergeant just a week after he tragically drowned while doing what he loved most, diving in the Irish Sea.
The accident occurred during a recreational dive on a wreck site located some 15km off Hook Head.
He was diving at the time with Hook Sub Aqua Club of which he was chairman.
Garda Hearne was a former member of the Garda Water Unit but had been based in Waterford over recent years as part of the Garda Traffic Corps.
The young officer had saved nine people over previous years thanks to his dauntless courage and life-saving skills.
Now his family have revealed they were visited by Garda Commissioner
Drew Harris after the tragedy - and he confirmed that Garda Hearne was to have been promoted to sergeant just weeks later.
He had passed all his sergeant exams - but died without realising he was to secure the promotion he had worked so hard to achieve. The Irish Bravery Awards Council paid tribute to Garda Hearne for his courage in helping save lives over the years - and noted that he had
proudly followed in the footsteps of his father, Declan, who was also honoured for his own bravery in 1958.
Garda Hearne’s mother, Gemma, said Hook Sub Aqua Club had planned to do a charity snorkel from Passage East to Ballyhack in his memory and a plaque was due to be erected in his name.
Describing her son as humble, she said he was only one of seven people to have been awarded a special grade in diving nationally.
She said one year on the family are still baffled as to what happened him that day.
‘We haven’t had the inquest yet; it was postponed three times, the last time due to Covid. His Dad Declan is very traumatised. Declan’s brother John drowned off the Hook when his trawler the Naomh Seosamh went aground in 1957. John was the oldest in his family and David the oldest in his.’
She said the family have just been ‘ bowled over’ by the support they have received.
‘I have a truck load of cards and letters. Our own extended family have been great. Barbara is a radiographer and only for her colleagues I don’t know how she’d have coped. They took over the house for the wake and funeral. She’s back to work now part-time’
She said Garda Hearne’s children are coping well under the circumstances but have their tough days too.
‘He dragged them everywhere within. They were as happy as a sandboy out on the water in his company and him in theirs’
She said with Covid the family have not been able to grieve his loss on this his first anniversary.
‘We can’t have a Mass or anything but we will have one at some stage when everything is back to some sort of normalcy. We are devastated now.’
The family paid a special thanks to those who tried to assist Garda Hearne on May 25 from Gerry Campion and the members of Hook Sub Aqua Club to the personnel of the Naval Service patrol ship LE Orla and the crew of the Coast Guard’s Waterford-based Rescue 117 helicopter whose subsequent ‘nose dip’ salute over Duncannon graveyard as Garda Hearne’s coffin was lowered was particularly poignant.
Gemma said his friends travelled from across Ireland and one friend, Patrick Murphy, even travelled from Ontario having only arrived there days previously from a trip to Ireland, to attend the funeral; as did 50 of her school classmates from her native Wicklow.
‘ These words from Julius Caesar, taken from one of the eulogies, were very fitting because for us they capture perfectly his essence,’ Gemma added.
‘His life was gentle and the elements mixed so well in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world: “This was a man”.’
Garda Hearne’s first anniversary Mass will be arranged at a later date.