Obituary: Jane Hogan, respected teacher and prolific photographer who cherished swimming in the sea

Jane Hogan, who has died at the age of 77, lived for her family, friends and daily sea sessions in Galway Bay. The inspiring teacher, photographer and open-water swimmer firmly believed a dip with “the Blackrock Clinic”, as she called the swimming community at Salthill, Galway, could be the best health insurance.

And if she didn’t coin the phrase, then it will always be associated with her as those who have warm memories of her constant good humour can attest.

Born in Salthill to Galway bookshop founders Des and Maureen Kenny, she attended Scoil Fhursa primary and Taylor’s Hill secondary schools, and studied at University College Galway as it was then.

She took psychology at postgraduate level in University College Dublin and returned to Galway to pursue a career in teaching, initially at the “Jez” or Coláiste Iognaid and then at Salerno in Salthill.

She had salt in her veins from an early age, competing with Galway Swimming Club. She also trained as a lifeguard — her father Des was first chair of what was then the Irish Water Safety Association, established by the late Galway TD and minister Bobby Molloy.

After she met and married Billy Hogan, they reared a family of five children.

At Salerno, she “came into her own as a creative and innovative teacher, a mentor,” her brother Tom Kenny recalled.

She was active in career guidance “always with the students’ interest at heart, often putting them on the right career path and in the case of many she was simply a friend”, he said.

Writers such as the late Brendan Kennelly and William Trevor were invited by her to Salerno to adjudicate student poetry contests. After retirement, she took up photography with a particular zeal and judged entries in the school’s photography competition for transition year pupils.​

Her camera became her constant companion and “she was lethal, there was no dodging her”, Tom remembered.

He recalled one experience when their brother Gerry was in intensive care in hospital and she “got past security — probably because the nurses went to Salerno”.

“They chatted for about an hour about their parents, about growing up in Salthill and so on, and then she finally got up to leave,” he said.

“As she got to the door, she turned around, he saw her hand going into her pocket as she said: ‘Would you ever stand over there beside the bed for a minute.’ There was no escape.”

Hogan captioned and filed thousands of images, and whenever she heard of a friend or acquaintance celebrating a significant event she would produce a small book to mark the occasion at her own expense.

As her family noted, she had a unique skill of always making people laugh for her photos, and she “leaves behind something of an archive of photographs of the people of Salthill and Galway city”.

She became seriously ill more than two decades ago and was treated in hospital, but recovered under the care of Dr Tom O’Gorman. That gave her family, who she adored, “the unquantifiable bonus of an extra 21 years in our midst”, they said.

Paddy McNamara, a fellow swimmer at Blackrock, Salthill, also remembered her enthusiasm.

“She would pull out the camera, and it was ‘stand there, pull in together’ as she got her snap,” he said.

He said Hogan was a very accomplished open-water swimmer, competing in many events in Galway and beyond.

Her daily swims took a realistic tack as she would take a break once sea temperatures dropped below 10C, he said.

“Jane would say to me that she would return when we had ‘a week of tens’, as in 10C,” McNamara said.

“As it happened, the Friday morning we buried her was the first morning the temperature went under 10C this winter, and that was poignant,” he said.

She was a familiar face in the Kenny bookshop and gallery in Liosbán, and “one usually heard Jane before one saw her, and it was very often her loud and hearty laughter”, her brother Tom said.

“The sound of her voice found for us a new music that brightened everything.

“I am sure she took photographs all the way up to heaven and I can easily imagine her saying: ‘Peter, stand over beside those gates till I take your photograph.’”

A guard of honour of 200 swimmers marked the route of her funeral. Staff and students also stood outside Salerno.

At her funeral mass at Church of Christ the King, Salthill, Fr Gerry Jennings said if heaven were half as nice as Galway Bay then it would be a “good place to be”.

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