Some images live on in the memory. Croagh Patrick on an April afternoon in 2022 – watching a man, gaunt and bent, make the final steps to reach its summit – will forever be one.
Thousands joined Charlie Bird that day; a few were famous, the majority were not. Each had been touched by the courage he had shown following the devastating news, broken to him in 2021, that he had motor neuron disease.
By the end of the climb, the former RTÉ news journalist was exultant.
For months, the Climbwithcharlie project had driven him. He was helped, as always, by his wife Claire and his daughters, Orla and Neasa. And a project was needed for a man who had learned that courage is not about the absence of fear but, rather, facing it.
The climb raised millions, brought the Irish together on hills and mountains across the island, dominating headlines and social media for days.
Every campaign needs a slogan. Charlie’s was “the hand of friendship”. For most, it would have sounded trite. With him, it never did.
On Tuesday, in the wake of his death at the age of 74, scores shared stories of simple encounters with him in his last few years.
Following his diagnosis, which shattered him for a time, he applied himself with relentless energy to “being useful”, as he once put it in a call before disease robbed him of his voice and it was replaced by an electronic version of himself.
He had not begun thinking the Croagh Patrick climb would raise so much. But there was a competitive streak at his heart. It was something that drove him onwards but it also often infuriated those who had to deal with him daily (and these were his friends) during 40 years of journalism when he regularly broke the big news stories of the day.
It was a competitiveness sometimes based on insecurity: his early life, his education gaps, his desire for respect that he often felt he did not get, even though he had triple-earned it.
There were many chapters in Charlie Bird’s life, which was filled with the greatest challenge in the end, but not without its low moments before. But the final chapter was simply glorious, a life well lived by a man who learned the greatest lesson along the way: be useful.
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