THE funeral will take place in Letterkenny on Monday of Joe Kelly, the Donegal businessman who passed away suddenly in China on Sunday, November 1.
Joe (55) was the global Vice-President of corporate communications at Chinese technology giant Huawei and had been living in Shenzhen since December 2012.
The son of Frank and Ann Kelly, 7 Wolfe Tone Place, Joe is married to Derry woman Una (McDevitt) and the couple have two boys, Aidan (17) and Eunan (15).
He is also survived by his twin brother Michael (Boston), sisters Eileen Donnelly (California) and Breid Kelly-McCollum (Letterkenny) and his younger brothers Francis (Belfast) and Conal (Letterkenny).
His remains will arrive in Letterkenny on Sunday morning before going to the family home at 7 Wolfe Tone Place on Sunday afternoon.
Funeral mass will be celebrated in St Eunan’s Cathedral at 11am on Monday by Fr Philip Kemmy with burial afterwards in Conwal cemetery.
On compliance with current Government and HSE guidelines, funeral and Interment will be private to family only please.
After taking early retirement from An Post, Joe completed a three-year degree in Media Studies at the University of Ulster in Coleraine.
Various jobs
After graduating from university, he worked in various jobs, including as a technology and business journalist for a few years. He wrote for the Financial Times and a few other national newspapers in the UK, but mostly wrote for technology magazines in the US and the UK.
There followed two different PR consultancies in London before he became Director of Communications for Xerox Europe in 1997, Vice President of Public Relations for Marconi PLC in 2001 and Managing Director of Communications for BT Wholesale in 2004.
He arrived to live and work in Shenzhen in southern China near Hong Kong in December 2012 as Vice President of communications for global technology company, Huawei.
A talented photographer, Joe had been chronicling his various travels through South East Asia and uploading images onto his Facebook page with plans to put them together in a book. He had outlined his plans to build in Gartan and retire home to Donegal.
When he lived and worked in England, Joe, Una and the boys would come home to Ireland four or five times a year but trips home have been less frequent in more recent years. Just two weeks before his death he had to defer a planned trip home for Christmas due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Joe’s mother Ann (nee Glackin) is from Glenswilly while his father Frank is from the Oldtown.
A loving husband, father, son and brother, Joe was also a good friend to so many of us who grew up in the Letterkenny of the 1970s and ‘80s.
Rest easy young man.