The search for Johnny Herlihy
For a week, friends and strangers alike searched for the body of Jonathan Herlihy who, with Peter O'Keeffe, drowned rescuing a couple from the seas of west Cork. Their generosity stands in stark contrast to the corporate indifference of Aer Lingus, who charged Johnny's soccer teammates €10,000 to return from the US to search for their friend. By Justine McCarthy
From their vantage point at sea, the Garda and Navy divers were invigorated by the sight of hordes of people scouring the shoreline for the body of Jonathan Herlihy. Hundreds of friends, neighbours and others who had never met the 23-year-old Cork university student joined in the search for his body. He had been missing for a week since he drowned on Sunday, 3 September while rescuing a couple swimming in Owenahincha.
The search stretched along the jagged west Cork coastline from Clonakilty to Union Hall. When the body of Cork businessman Peter O'Keeffe (37) was recovered by a fisherman two days after the double tragedy, the volunteers poured down to the seashore. They came by car, bus, fishing trawler and pleasure craft from Cork, to the east, and Baltimore, to the west, looking for "Johnny", as his friends knew him. It was reminiscent of the huge communal search that took place in Midleton in January 2005, when 11-year-old Robert Holohan went missing after being killed by Wayne O'Donoghue.
Johnny had been in Owenahincha that Sunday for a surprise visit to his parents, who had bought a mobile home there. He was walking on the beach with his mother and grandparents when he noticed a couple in the water calling for help. On impulse, he swam to help them. His mother pleaded that it was too dangerous.
A week later, one searcher, an engineer from Cork city, recalled seeing a woman standing at the water's edge, repeatedly dipping a religious statue in the sea. Moments later, Johnny's body was found on the sand. "It was the most harrowing and humbling and inspiring thing I've ever been involved in," he said.
Johnny had stopped at a shop in Glanmire en route to Owenhincha to buy a box of cakes for his parents. Throughout the search, that same shop provided a steady supply of bottled water, soft drinks, biscuits and chocolate for the volunteers. Local women brought soup, sandwiches and freshly-baked scones and brown bread to the strand each day. The owners of a seaside hotel made it available as the search headquarters.
People came from all over Ireland to help – some UCC alumni even flew home from London. The UCC Soccer Club, with whom Johnny had won the Golden Boot Award in the Collingwood Cup in Belfast in 2004, had departed for a tour of the US. They were due to play two universities in Maine and a local side in Boston, and to attend the New England Patriots' first game of the season. Johnny would normally have been on the tour, but he remained in Cork to secure a post-graduate place in UCC on the back of his honours finance degree.
News of his drowning reached the soccer team almost as soon as they touched down in the US. The 35-member group decided unanimously to abort the tour and return to Cork to search for their friend. Aer Lingus, despite being informed of the tragic and humanitarian reason for the club's return to Cork, charged the students €10,000 to change their air tickets.
Club officials, loath to make an issue of it, are trying to negotiate privately with Aer Lingus for at least a partial refund to be made to the students.