Obituary: Joe Costigan was a much-loved family man whose kindness and interest in people steered his life

JOSEPH (Joe) Costigan, d a native of Borris Road, Portlaoise and Lacken Rise, Carlow, formerly of Rathnapish, Carlow passed away peacefully in the care of St Luke’s General Hospital, Kilkenny on Sunday 6 September.

Joe, who was in his 91st year, had been active up to the final few months of a long life well-lived.

He was very well-known and highly respected by all who knew him in Carlow and district and by family members and friends in Portlaoise.

Joe spent the greater part of his working life in Carlow town, in the employment of the Department of Posts & Telegraphs (P&T) nowadays Telecom Éireann. He started out with the P&T working in Waterford and Portlaoise.

On his retirement from Telecom, Joe’s life took a completely new direction when he went to work in the offices of Caredoc, Carlow’s out-of-hours doctor service. That was in keeping with Joe’s deep empathy for the healthy welfare of people.

In both places of employment, Joe derived tremendous work satisfaction and was held in the highest esteem.

He was an active sportsman in his younger days, playing soccer for Barrow Rovers and Gaelic football for Tinryland, but he retained an abiding love for the blue and white of Laois in football and hurling.

Joe was a founder member of Carlow Lions Club, his involvement in keeping with his sense of unselfish community service. Lions Club members formed a guard of honour when Joe’s remains were removed to the Church of the Holy Family, Askea for his funeral Mass on Thursday morning 10 September.

In a splendidly crafted eulogy to his dad, his son Neil told the congregation that for most of his life he was introduced as Joe Costigan’s son – not Neil.

Neil said the Costigans had the only telephone in Rathnapish. “That meant it was never really ours. Neighbours came in for news of every kind – births and deaths and results and jobs and not one of them was ever turned away from the door or asked for a penny. The eye on the clock was for us. A call costs money and money was finite and his own five children were the only people in Rathnapish he ever timed.” Neil continued: “If a thing could be built, Joe built it. Antennas went up on our roof for the television – and for the CB and the ham radio – one of them seven storeys high. And he shared the signal with all of Rathnapish. He was in at the start of community television here, dragging a picture into houses that had none. Some of it worked. Some of it was pure harebrained. None of it was for money.” Joe, he said, went into Telecom Éireann as an engineer and came out of it a personnel manager. He started with lines and exchanges and equipment and he finished with people, their transfers, their troubles and their children’s exams. He was as good at the second job as the first. The empathy. The caring.

Then came Caredoc, which he took on at an age when most men are looking for the door.

“He was good at both jobs for the same reason. It was kindness and a sense of charity. And he would never have thought of either as a work skill.

Then there was Joe’s work for the Lions Club, years of it. Working quietly for every charity that asked. “Charity cycles, book sales, defibrillators, Message in a Bottle, on and on. The same schemes as ever, only now for other people.

People kept telling Neil since Joe’s passing that he never once looked for credit for any of it. It was meant as high praise, but he (Neil) felt it would have puzzled his dad. He would not have seen a virtue in it. He would have wondered what else you’d do.

He was a man who liked to win and was honest about liking it. Racquets in the CYMS, where besting Fr Little was a matter of some personal satisfaction. Golf, where he worked his handicap down for years and then used it to beat his brother Jackie, which, as far as he was concerned, was the whole purpose of a handicap.

Neil then went on about his dad’s love of music.

“The accordion, and Irish music on it, was the only music he had much time for. He played the Monday night sessions in the Seven Oaks for more than 40 years. Every Christmas, he went up to the Sacred Heart Hospital to play for the old folks. I was there last year with him. He was very likely the oldest man in the room. It never occurred to him because he carried on the whole way through as though he was still 16 and only in the door.

A friend told Neil once that he had the coolest dad in Rathnapish. “I get that. He (Joe) would have been baffled.” Neil then referenced his parents’ marriage of 63 years, noting that Kitty (née O’Sullivan) was involved in every part of what he had just described.

“It was Kitty’s hall the neighbours stood in, her roof the antennas went up on, her patience the schemes were tested against.

Neil said his parents had the best of it together and they had the worst of it together and he never saw either of them face any of it alone. “Whatever my father managed in this life, he managed it beside her.” Joe was a grandfather seven times over and he was better at that again.

He saw the world with his son Paul. The two of them travelled all over Asia and the United States together and his father was in his element the whole way.

Sadly, Paul passed away as did another of the Costello sons, Joe.

“No parent should have to do that once. They did it twice.” Carlow businessman Seán Swan was a friend of Joe Costigan’s for some 60 years.

They played racquets in the CYMS, College Street, now the Carlow Sports & Social Club.

Seán also remembered that Joe and himself were charter members when Carlow Lions Club was formed in 1977, adding: “Joe was a stalwart for every job he was assigned in the Lions Club, all of which he fulfilled without complaint.” It was a great source of regret to Seán that Joe and himself would not now fulfil their ambition to become joint presidents for jubilee year of Carlow Lions Club in 2027.

At Joe’s funeral Mass, various generations of the Costigan family undertook the readings, prayers of the faithful and the bringing forward of the Offertory gifts, while son David extended thanks to everyone for their kindness towards the family at a time of great loss.

The singing of hymns at Mass was by Bernard Hennessy.

Following Mass, Joe was laid to rest in St Mary’s Cemetery, Carlow with sons Paul and Joe and Fr Little reciting the final prayers at the graveside.

Joe is mourned by his wife Kitty, daughter Carolyn McConachie (Nottingham, England), sons Neil (Luleá, Sweden) and David (Enfield, Co Meath), brother Jackie (Portlaoise), grandchildren Douglas, Alex, Grace, Leah, Abby, Klara and Zoe.

He is also survived by son-in-law Norman, daughters-in-law Roisín, Victoria and Olivia, brother-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, many friends and former colleagues in Telecom Éireann and Caredoc and by his many friends in Carlow sport.