Tributes have been paid to Toni (Patricia) Ryan, an experienced scuba diver and founding member of the Howth Harbour Coast Guard unit who has died at the age of 71.
Ryan participated in hundreds of Coast Guard call-outs in the north Dublin Bay area, training in cliff climbing and applying her scuba diving experience to coastal rescues.
As Coast Guard colleague Louis O’Moore said at her funeral, she was a “pivotal figure in the history of the Irish Coast Guard in north Dublin” from the time she joined the Howth unit in 1999, and she played a key role in the unit’s administration.
“Beyond the daily tasks and responsibilities, she was a touchstone for many of us,” O’Moore said, describing how she was regarded as the “mammy of the unit”, providing support, wisdom, encouragement and chat and counsel for those who needed it.
Howth Coast Guard officer in charge Colin Murray, who has also paid tribute to her key role, recalls that she took her camper van out to cliff locations during long searches where it became a hub for cups of tea and sustenance.
Dalkey Scuba divers members Mary Patterson and Aisling O’Connor have clear memories of her active involvement in their club, and how her relaxed approach to life made her a “natural diver” and ideal diving buddy.
“Toni took to diving like a duck to water,” Patterson said.
Toni (Patricia) Ryan was an active member of Dalkey Scuba divers
“She was a very active member of the club, taking part in the weekly dives around Dalkey island and the Muglins, and coming away on club weekends west, to places like Killary fjord and Kilkee,”she said.
“She was truly a "bubbly character", genuinely upbeat and always smiling. Looking back on it now, she obviously had great support from family and friends...Scuba diving is not an inclusive child-friendly pastime,” she noted.
“She left Dalkey to continue diving nearer to home with Aer Lingus Divers, and, around the same time got herself a campervan,” Patterson said.
“ I would bump into her every couple of years, in Howth, where she was a member of the Coastguard and in various places along the west coast in the campervan, where she would be diving, snorkelling or just hanging out and enjoying herself with her dive club friends,” she said.
“The Coastguard photo of her really captures the essence of Toni: practical, willing to get dug in and ............that smile,”Patterson said.
Dalkey Scuba Divers member Aisling O’Connor said that she had many memorable dives with Ryan on weekends away on the west coast.
“She had a small campervan, and so loved the club weekends,” O’Connor said.
“She was so easygoing, above and below the surface, soaking up nature, which she was passionate about,” O’Connor said.
Among her many rescues with Howth Coast Guard was that of a father and two sons, aged ten and two years respectively, who capsized from their kayak in Baldoyle estuary in windy conditions on the May bank holiday weekend of 2007.
Ryan, first coxswain Declan McQuillan and second coxswain Keith Plummer were out training on the Howth Coast Guard rigid inflatable boat (RIB). Due to several sandbanks in the area, the unit had a window of just 20 minutes before bringing all three casualties safely ashore.
Ryan already had many responsibilities when she volunteered for rescue. Her husband, Brendan was killed in a car crash at the age of 32, when her son Ian was six, her daughter Emma was four, and her youngest child, Shane, was just five months old.
The couple, who were childhood sweethearts growing up in Phibsborough, were both motorbike enthusiasts. Her husband ran a motorbike shop in Bray, Co Wicklow for a time, while she commuted to her job in the Bank of Ireland in Cabinteely on a Yamaha twin motorbike.
They moved to Bayside, Sutton, and acquired the camper van to take the young family to road races all over the country.
After she found some of her husband’s diving gear at home shortly after his death, Ryan took up diving with Dalkey Scuba Divers and played tennis with Sutton Lawn and Trackside Tennis clubs, becoming the first ladies singles champion at Trackside that same year.
She travelled to all over the world on scuba diving trips, latterly with Aer Lingus Diving Club. As her son Ian recalled at her funeral, her favourite Irish spot was Inishbofin, Co Galway, due to the welcoming atmosphere at Day’s Hotel.
She bought a second camper van in the 1990s, taking her children angling, and there was nothing she couldn’t fix, according to her daughter Emma, who says her mother once told her she would have loved to study engineering.
Around 2001, she took her own mother, then in her early eighties, and her daughter Emma in a hired camper down the west coast of North America.
Later in life, she studied at the National College of Ireland and took a job in her fifties as clerical officer in the Courts Service, working in the fines office. She volunteered for St Michael’s House service for people with disabilities for many years, and was a volunteer for swimming events at the Special Olympics in Ireland in 2003. Her family said this meant so much to her as her younger brother, Paul, had Down Syndrome.
She retired in 2017, and her youngest son, Shane, died that year. Once again, in spite of her grief, she was determined to live her best life. She was extremely close to her eight grandchildren, and encouraged her daughter Emma and her own three children to become involved in watersports through Howth Sea Scouts.
Ryan began spending more time in Ballyheigue, Co Kerry, where she took up golf, swam almost every day in the Atlantic, and went to cookery classes and became very involved in the community in the west Kerry village.
The late Toni (Patricia) Ryan
She had a strong faith, and at her funeral, where Margaret Brennan sang, she was blessed with seawater taken from the Irish Sea at Rush by Fr Kit Sheridan of Bayside.
Howth Coast Guard unit members were her pallbearers at the family’s request. Murray, her former officer-in-charge, has paid tribute to “all of the enthusiasm and experience she brought to the unit” and has described her as “irreplaceable”.
