DIARMUID Harte was born in Clonakilty on May 20th 1937 to Jer and Molly Harte at 3 Wolfe Tone Street.
He attended the local national school and St Marys Secondary School, run by Mrs Dineen.
When he completed his Leaving Certificate, he worked in several posts including with Noel C Duggan in Millstreet and Davies fireplaces in Dublin.
In his spare time, he set up a company and exported items of Irish interest, like jewellery, to the USA.
He went to England in 1960 where he worked for British Railways but quickly realised his destiny was in Ireland and returned to Dublin, where he worked for H Mason and Co in Dame St from 1960 to 1964.
They traded in ophthalmic and scientific equipment.
He worked for the International Meat Company from 1964 to 1968. From 1969 to 1982 he worked for Telecom Eireann (now Eir).
While there he studied at night, holding down a full-time job.
He got DipITM from Rathmines Business School and then studied in Trinity College and obtained a BA, MA, H Dip E and a PhD.
He took a two-year leave of absence from Telecom Eireann and taught at Mount Temple Comprehensive School and Sandford Park School.
He joined the Royal Irish Academy in 1982 and retired in 2002 but continued to work as a consultant in the Irish language for various government departments for many years.
His love for the Irish language started at a very young age.
His grandparents, who lived with the family at Wolfe Tone Street, spoke Irish to him.
He recalled his father putting him on the bar of his bicycle as a small child and cycling out to a rural part of West Cork to speak with an elderly man who couldn’t speak English.
Both his parents had a great repertoire of poetry and songs.
They used to hold poetry sessions in their home on Friday nights so Diarmuid had lots of poems both in Irish and English off by heart.
He was also fluent in German, French and Italian languages.
He loved art and designed the scroll for Clonakilty Town Council when it was twinned with Chateaulin, France in 1986.
He wrote articles for Ireland’s Own under the title ‘Picture from the Past’.
He painted in his retirement years, joining the local Portmarnock art group and also researched family history, managing to contact distant relatives around the world.
He kept in contact with his many relatives in Clonakilty and visited them regularly.
Diarmuid was keenly aware of the value of the materials – the sound recordings, books and notes presented to him when he first began his academic career.
He presented them in 1997 to Coláiste na Rinne in County Waterford.
He was always studying and up to six weeks before he died, he was still studying Greek and Latin.
He is survived by his wife Margaret and his son Ronan, three grandchildren and his sister Christina.
