THE death of well-known Letterkenny man Jim McGlynn earlier this week has been learned of with great sadness.
He was known as a knowledgeable and intelligent man who was a familiar figure over many years in Letterkenny town centre. He had worked in Unifi for a number of years.
Over recent days, people have taken to social media to remember a man who battled an addiction but who had always had time for a chat.
In an interview in the Donegal News in March, 2013, Mr McGlynn, said he was happy to finally learn the remains at an unmarked grave in Dunfanaghy thirty years earlier were that of his brother, Noel.
It followed an inquest where Coroner John Cannon read the conclusion of a report on the DNA taken from Mr McGlynn and from the deceased man concluding that in “my opinion is that these findings strongly support that James McGlynn had a relationship to the deceased, either a brother, father or son – it was that close a link”.
Mr McGlynn had maintained for years that the body was that of his brother Noel who was 26 years old when he went missing from the family home at Ballaghderg, Letterkenny on June 17,1983.
He paid tribute to local Solicitor, Mr Kieran Dillon; Creeslough funeral director, Seamus Harkin and Michael McClafferty from Falcarragh who all helped him in recent years.
Mr Harkin explained that on July 1,1983 he buried a body at Dunfanaghy graveyard and the grave was marked with a white cross and an inscription.
When reports that a body had been washed ashore in Dunfanaghy emerged Jim’s brother Edward (Tony), a soldier, drove to the morgue at Letterkenny General Hospital thinking the remains could be Noel but he could not find the strength to identify the body. He returned to the family home and told the family the body wasn’t that of Noel.
However, in 2003, shortly before his death, Edward told Jim the truth and since then Jim visited the plot in Dunfanaghy hoping the body could be that of his brother. His mother died in 1986 and seven months later Jim’s father Charles, passed away. His younger sister Maureen died at the age of six in 1960.
Back in 2013, Mr McGlynn was considering erecting a headstone at the grave while also exploring the possibility of having the body exhumed and buried with his parents at New Leck Cemetery in Letterkenny.
Removal from his late residence at Ballaghderg, Mountain Top, tomorrow (Friday) at 10.30am for 11am Requiem Mass in St Eunan’s Cathedral with burial afterwards in the family plot at New Leck cemetery.
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