Tom Harte passed away on Wednesday 28th of September after a brief illness. Tom and the Harte family have very strong links with White’s Cross GAA down through the decades. Tom played with the Club through the 1970s and into the 1980s.
These were not the most successful years in the Club’s history but a notable achievement was in 1978 when we qualified for East Cork championship finals in Hurling AND Football in the same year. The most dramatic game on this run was the hurling semi-final. Trailing 1-16 to 1-09 to St. Itas with time almost up, White’s Cross got three goals in two minutes- with Tom getting two of those! We narrowly lost both finals that year but Tom, then in his mid 30s, was part of the panel that would get their hands on the hurling championship in 1982.
Upon retiring from playing, Tom got involved in coaching in the Club. During the mid 1980s a huge push was made by a handful of people to grow the under-age club in White’s Cross – Tom was one of the key people involved. Reflecting back on this period it is evident that Tom’s life was already very busy, as he developed and grew very successfully his own business and also got on with rearing a young family with his wife Mary.
Still Tom found time to give back to White’s Cross GAA. For two decades Tom invested great time and energy into the development of juvenile teams in White’s Cross. Little would he have known back then that the most famed player he coached in these many, many juvenile boys’ teams in White’s Cross was going to be his own daughter! Elaine Harte is one of the most decorated players to ever play football – her career saw her pick-up 8 Senior All Ireland titles with Cork and another 2 All Ireland titles with Rockbán.
Elaine first played football for her father’s teams – first outing it was because the White’s Cross team was short numbers and so Elaine was put in to make fifteen – Elaine’s own best memory of that day was wearing her pair of wellingtons inside in corner forward! From there Elaine continued to play with the boys – not because they were short numbers but because she was better than most… Tom continued his involvement with White’s Cross juvenile teams right up to the late 1990s. Elaine made her debut with Cork senior footballers in 2000 and from then on Tom stepped back from the Club’s teams – focusing his time on becoming one of his daughter’s best supporters.
While Tom was no longer involved in the day-to-day running of White’s Cross GAA he continued to be one of our best supporters. There was many a discussion at White’s Cross GAA committee meetings ended in the wise decision to “ask Tom”. The most of 20 years ago when it was decided to put tarmacadam on the car-park, a big financial project at the time, it was an intervention by Tom that made this possible. Anytime the Club has had to store something bulky that wouldn’t be appropriate to store at the Club’s grounds, invariably the go-to place is ‘below in Tom’s yard’. Indeed even at this time there are materials for the Club’s next development project down in the yard. If you take the Club’s most recent development project – the astro-turf – it has the Harte’s stamp all over it. The installation of three-phase electricity to floodlight the facility was necessary but has proven an arduous and time-consuming task to get up and running. Last February twelve months we were looking at the possibility of having no way of powering the lights at the amenity. We scouted the county to try and hire a generator but they were in very high demand and consequently very expensive. Again the Harte family stepped in – Tom’s son Brian who oversaw the astro-turf development project, working with the developers from start to finish agreed to purchase a generator, something the Club couldn’t afford to do because we were already over-stretched by the costs of the astro-turf development. Brian has loaned that generator, free of charge to White’s Cross GAA, and it is that generator that has lit our astro-turf for the past two winters.
This type of invaluable support epitomised the character of Tom Harte – quietly going about his business with no fuss or drama, getting things done, driving things forward in a most unassuming manner. One of life’s great gentlemen who we were blessed to have live in our community and in White’s Cross GAA. There is no doubt that Tom will be watching on as the third generation of the Harte family come through the juvenile ranks in the Club, showing talent in abundance like the two generations before…