If Seamus Kelters had been sitting in the middle of the third carriage beside the rain-streaked window on last Wednesday night's 9.45pm train from Stansted into London, I can picture the conversation.
His first words when we convened were usually: "So are you ok?"
Then, after an hour or two of confidences exchanged and confidence restored, his last words were usually spoken with a wee head tilt, lips characteristically pursed, one eyebrow raised, a deadly straight stare, and a tough index finger poked affectionately into my chest: "Now, what I'm asking is, are YOU ok?"
Always. That was Seamus, always about other people. In the hours after he passed away, he’d have seen the answer himself.
While heaven’s tears were falling in the outside evening air, my tears – like so many others - were dripping inside.
Seamus had become ill this year with a condition identical to my late father Oliver's illness.
But they shared more than that connection.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Seamus was the fiercest journalist in Ireland to pursue the issue of fair employment through the columns of this newspaper.
There were other excellent news journalists in The Irish News back then, people like Brendan Anderson and Conor Macauley, and others. Yet Seamus was possessed with a doggedness that placed job discrimination on the public agenda, working very closely with campaigners like daddy and colleagues.
That connection sustained.
Seamus had bravery and vision to focus on fair employment when it wasn’t largely popular or appreciated in official circles. And he did so because he believed that news media’s duty is to make society better, not by propaganda for any individual interest but in public service of social justice and accountability.
Rigorous source protection, triple-fact checking, slow-burn investigations, thematic story development, sharp news style, high impact exclusives, informed analyses – reliability, integrity, research, triangulation, patience, trust, ethics, instinct - these were the hallmarks of Seamus’s journalism on fair employment.
On miscarriages of justice. On state wrongdoing. On non-state wrongdoing. On corporate impropriety. On politics, conflict, truth, tragedy, and many other topics.
Seamus’s work made a monumental but under-acknowledged contribution to building greater fairness in this society. For everyone.
He authored much of Lost Lives. But he wrote so much more, including wonderfully crafted short stories of memoir.
In later decades at the BBC, Seamus worked diligently to investigate issues of corporate corruption, community crooks, political shenanigans, business skulduggery, government ineptitude.
One of his professional concerns was the unwillingness of some media to back genuine public interest investigations with time, patience and money.
Had Seamus lived in a different society in a different era, he’d surely have been recognised at the scale of Woodward and Bernstein – the Washington Post journalists who broke the Watergate affair.
Seamus Kelters was that brilliant.
He displayed an innate talent for joining dots and perceiving patterns that can’t be taught in journalism school, forensically building jigsaws of fact.
The corrosive nexus between politics and business throughout our society remained a major ongoing story for him.
Seamus had seen around every corner in the north, and then some. We sometimes talked about how life paths go in different directions, but that he’d made good choices.
Those choices flowed from impeccable values.
One of Seamus’s great gifts was falling out with all the ‘right’ people – usually those with big questions to answer.
And he never backed down, no matter in whose face he stood. Fearless, formidable.
More so, his core values bridged close friendships from every background and creed; and they gravitated with the greatest – the likes of Brendan Murphy, The Irish News’s former picture editor.
We stayed in touch throughout Seamus’s illness and were hoping to meet again a couple of weeks ago but he got too unwell.
He continued critically challenging opinions and assumptions – including mine, as does only an honest friendship.
I’m writing this in London on Saturday visiting my daughters. And I’m praying quietly for Seamus’s final broadcast - his funeral mass –happening now in Belfast.
He cared very deeply for younger people and giving them all a future they deserve.
An irreparable loss for Camilla, Brendan and Michael. Rarely did a conversation end without Seamus lovingly mentioning each of them.
(His Gaelic football forays with Derriaghy were another matter altogether, still being referenced with an old friend again last week.)
Someone who taught us to keep learning, be braver, try harder, question more, overcome flaws, think independently, become better people. To stay honest. And laugh, a lot.
Seamus Kelters. 54 years of deepest humanity and humble brilliance. An irreplaceable privilege to have known. He’d be blushing at the tributes. Old school.
