Deirdre Purcell

2023 - 2 - 17

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Independent.ie"

Funeral for novelist Deirdre Purcell hears of unopened Valentine's ... (Independent.ie)

The last Valentine Day's card Kevin Healy bought for his late wife Deirdre Purcell sits in their home, unopened.

Those attending spoke of her kind spirit and the empathy and support she showed others. She also had two respective RTE tribes; Part One and Part Two - each reflecting the various periods in her career she worked there. She was a gem," he said. In recent days, many have shared memories of her and the same words keep coming up: generous, loyal, creative, and fun. Her son Adrian Weckler said her death had a profound shock on the family. The previous evening, Deirdre and her husband Kevin had spent time discussing a potential holiday abroad and looking at pictures of dogs they were considering adopting from a local shelter.

Deirdre Purcell funeral: 'The suddenness of her death was ... (The Irish Times)

Husband told mourners of unopened Valentine card for writer (77) who died Monday.

Mass celebrant Fr John McNamara said Deirdre Purcell’s “sudden and unexpected death” had been “a huge shock not only to her family but to thousands of people across the country and beyond who knew and loved this author, this journalist, this actress and this broadcaster”. “But the person she loved maybe more than anyone was Kevin,” he said. There was no time hardly even to say goodbye,” he said. I am enormously grateful for the absolute care and dignity they afforded Deirdre in her final hours in this world that she loved so much and for the invaluable support that they gave me also.” She would have made a terrible juror for a prosecutor,” he said. An actor, writer and broadcaster, she died on Monday in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, having taken ill at her home in Mornington, Co Meath.

Mourners told Deirdre Purcell was 'creative and loyal' (RTE.ie)

The funeral has taken place of the journalist and broadcaster Deirdre Purcell in Dublin. The best-selling author passed away suddenly on Monday at Our Lady ...

Gavin Jennings, Rachel English, Valerie Cox and all of those great journalists," he said. "Then 30 years later, she came back to Morning Ireland. Speaking at the end of the mass, he said his mother "loved to laugh" and he said she "had a special place in her heart for the absurd too". He said "she believed everyone was unique and talented and beautiful" and he said the compassion she showed "was the bedrock for a great many of her friendships". Her son Adrian said his mother's death was a shock and he said her family and her friends are "still trying to process it". He said "the suddenness of it all was particularly cruel for her broken-hearted family and friends".

Former newsreader Deirdre Purcell was 'warm & creative presence ... (The Irish Sun)

FORMER RTE newsreader Deirdre Purcell was remembered as someone with a "warm and creative presence" at her funeral mass today.The best-selling author,

Next was a book to mark her many novels and books and her passport as she loved to travel. Among them is a very beautiful tribute from Uachtarán na hÉireann, Michael D. They included her laptop as it was important to her as a writer, and a journalist. He also described Deirdre as a "loyal RTE woman", as he said: "She worked right through to the end. He said: "Deirdre was a person, known to many people, a public person if you like, but she was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, and a special friend to many people. FORMER RTE newsreader Deirdre Purcell was remembered as someone with a "warm and creative presence" at her funeral mass today.

Mourners Hear Deirdre Purcell Never Got To Open Valentine's Card (EVOKE)

The funeral has taken place of renowned novelist and broadcaster Deirdre Purcell in Dublin. The 77-year-old passed away suddenly on Monday as a result of a ...

He said she was endlessly loyal and supportive with an abundance of 'friendship tribes' who meant the world to her. 'She was a gem.' he said. He told how the message in the card read 'life is such an adventure with you by my side'.

Deirdre Purcell: Journalist and broadcaster who became one of ... (The Irish Times)

Her best-selling novel Falling for a Dancer was made into a BBC series in 1998 starring a young Colin Farrell.

As well as covering pivotal events including the Kerry babies tribunal, Purcell developed a niche for herself as a writer of long pieces with well-known personalities in entertainment, politics and business. With the support of a live-in childminder, she courageously continued to work as her career as a television presenter in RTÉ began to blossom. Soon afterwards, she won the woman journalist of the year award and, in 1986, the Benson & Hedges Journalist of the Year award. In 1979, Purcell and Kevin Healy, then news features editor in RTÉ, had become a couple and he encouraged her to follow her instinct and join the vibrant new team of journalists at the re-launched Sunday Tribune edited by Vincent Browne. It was during the Dublin run of this show that a Jesuit priest who was head of the theatre department at Loyola University Chicago invited her to be the first European theatre artist to act in plays in the new campus theatre while studying at the university. And her 1997 novel, Love Like Hate Adore, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), a prestigious annual literary prize awarded to a woman author of any nationality for the best original novel written in English.

Gentle, generous, thoughtful — Deirdre Purcell's life was a lesson in ... (Irish Examiner)

'The phenomenally successful woman who had so many careers arguably put more effort into quietly helping other professionals than will ever be known,' ...

The same diligence and devotion characterised her fulfillment of the requirement to give interviews to publicise her books. Nor did she need the reassurance of constant media presence or the parading of her private griefs. Instead, she would work with the group to understand a scene, to analyse the emotions in it, to help young actors move from the shallow obvious to a full understanding of what the writer intended. Every one of them revealed the subject in a newly engaging way. (This was only a few years after it had been believed that no woman could ever read TV news because her appearance would be such a distraction to the nation.) The rules dictating that you can’t make it, in any of those areas, without being a driven, hard, self-absorbed diva.