How generous Gerry paid double tribute
IN writing about the two Luke Kelly statues last week, it seems that I understated the contribution of the late Gerry Hunt, who not only funded the one in South King Street, he commissioned it from the sculptor John Coll.
As he explained to Joe Duffy on Liveline in 2017, he didn’t know that the council was having a competition for the Luke Kelly memorial which was eventually won by Vera Klute, so it was on his own initiative that he had the statue made.
And it was his own money too — the best part of €40,000 — which, he explained to Joe, largely came from his devotion to his work as graphic-novel artist — he was a “slow” artist, which meant that he happily worked such long hours, he had stopped going on holidays. He preferred to spend money on this Luke project, the merit of which had been clear to him since he had played on the Dublin folk scene as a young man, and later when he became an architect with the IDA in Waterford.
When the John Coll statue was cast, Gerry went to the council — he had the support of Luke’s brothers, Paddy, Jimmy, and John, and of the former trade union leader Des Geraghty. It was also noted by the council that the John Coll design was radically different to the Vera Klute, so all things considered, they went with both of them.
Gerry Hunt passed away last year without seeing the statue being officially unveiled, but he was happy that it had all worked out the way it did. It was a quite extraordinary degree of public-spiritness which he had displayed all round, the sort of thing which ought to be marked in some way.
Oh, I don’t know… maybe a statue.