THE passing of Galway Blazers’ honorary whipper-in, JJ Dempsey (89), after a brief illness, brought sadness throughout the hunt country. He hunted from a young age with the Blazers.

He was a quiet, modest and polite man, always with a welcoming smile, and a great horseman who was certainly a role model for any prospective young person wanting to further a hunting career.

He ran a livery yard in Kiltulla near Dunsandle where his parents brought up a large family. His customers were mainly masters and followers of the Blazers, and once they started to keep their horses with JJ, they never changed stables.

Blazers joint-master Liam Clancy, who kept his hunt horses with JJ for nearly 40 seasons, described him as, “An old style friendly gentleman, who never uttered a cross word in his life. When he got frustrated with something he would just say, ‘Hump it’!

JJ treated the horses like children, and if a horse was off colour, he did not hunt them. He found many good horses for his clients over the years, and one in particular that Liam Clancy likes to mention was a horse he recently retired after a remarkable 22 seasons that JJ found for him, which he appropriately named, JJ! He believed that if you had good horses, you could hunt indefinitely and two of his favourite horses were Malone and Socks.

RETIREMENT

JJ started whipping in to his brother Michael in 1979 and never really retired, which presented a dilemma for the Blazers’ masters and committee as they wanted, at some stage, to mark his long and dedicated service to the hunt, but did not want to offend him by suggesting retirement was even a reality.

Hunting was and is a way of life for the Dempseys, as JJ’s nephew, Tom, hunted the Blazers until recently when his brother Michael retired as huntsman. While his son Kevin is field-master of the Blazers, his niece, Dr. Rose Dempsey, is a joint-master of the Blazers, and a son-in-law whipped in to the Blazers, Liam Hennessy and his grandson, Evan, is whipper-in to the Waterford Foxhounds. His nephew, Michael Jnr, was a former huntsman of the East Galway Foxhounds, and his son-in-law, John, is a brother of Scarteen master Chris Ryan.

In recent years when he was not following the hunt on horseback, he followed the progress of his grandchildren and sourced ponies for them.

He was predeceased by his wife Carmel and is survived by his sons John, Gerard, Kevin and daughters Collette, Regina and Yvonne. Also by his sons and daughters-in-laws, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and his brother Michael and sisters Sr. Angela, Sr. Margaret, Mary and Noreen. The Requiem Mass took place last Monday at the Church of The Immaculate Conception in Kilconieran with burial afterwards in the adjoining graveyard. N.M.