WHEN retired Canadian couple Beverly and Gareth Davies decided to spend seven weeks holidaying around Ireland, Limerick was not on their list of places to visit. But the couple returned home from the Treaty City with a lasting impression of the Limerick hospitality they never expected.
When 76-year-old Gareth was suddenly stricken with double pneumonia while visiting the Cliffs of Moher, the dream trip ground to a nightmare halt.
As Gareth faced the first of four nights in University Hospital Limerick (UHL), Beverly, a retired urology surgeon, ventured into the city for some errands, leaving the hospital with nothing but a hand-drawn map made by UHL staff.
After hailing taxi driver John Hennessy Jnr, the two swapped numbers, with John promising to take Beverly back to visit her husband the following day.
Beverly’s first port of call was finding a charger for her smart watch – a gadget she says assists her with her “terrible sense of direction” – after leaving her charger at her Lahinch hotel room.
Disaster struck again when she reached the store to find she didn’t have enough cash to pay for the device, with her credit card also not working. Without hesitation, the incredible staff opened a brand new charger, telling Beverly to pick her watch up later in the afternoon – free of charge.
However, she encountered another snag visiting a nearby ATM to get some cash to visit her husband, realizing she had forgotten her PIN number.
As her anxiety grew, Beverly felt a tap on her arm – a good Samaritan who noticed her predicament, opened her hand, and offered the Canadian woman €20.
“I hadn’t cried until that point, but when she did that, the dam burst,” Beverly recalled.
The woman refused to let Beverly repay her, saying simply: “This will be my good deed of the day”.
And the kindness of the people of Limerick didn’t stop there. True to his word, taxi driver John picked Beverly up later that day to bring her back to her Lahinch hotel, refusing any offer of cash for the fare.
Later that night, while having dinner at her hotel, Beverly was in for another pleasant surprise, looking up from the table to see John and his partner, Joan O’Doherty, standing there.
Limerick City man John said that when he told Joan about Beverly’s situation, they couldn’t leave her on her own.
The next day, Joan took Beverly to the Crescent Shopping Centre to buy her husband Gareth some clothes, while John travelled to Lahinch to collect the couple’s rented car and return it all the way to Dublin.
“John and Joan saw me through one of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with – being away from home, every electric appliance I had was dead, and everything went wrong,” Beverly said.
“It was a big relief for my husband not worrying about me or about the car, and knowing that I had made a friend.”
It was another six days before retired engineer Gareth was safely able to fly home, in which time John and Joan showed the Canadian couple around Limerick, treating them to dinner at Russell’s Bar on the Father Russell Road – which Beverly says “was some of the best food we’ve ever had”.
When it was time for them to leave, John insisted on driving all four to Dublin Airport for an emotional farewell.
“I got closer to John and Joan in six days than I am with some of my relatives,” Beverly said.
“Everyone we met in Limerick was lovely, in all of the restaurants or going on a walk, somebody would stop and talk to you and just make you feel like you belonged.”
The pair arrived home safely to the Canadian province of Alberta last week. Since then, Gareth has had some time to reflect on his unexpected visit to Limerick and UHL, praising the staff and the care he received.
“I know there’s been some bad publicity (about the hospital), I actually read about it in the Limerick Post while I was here about the waiting and all the calamity,” Gareth recalls.
“I am so appreciative that I was able to be admitted and cared for, even though there was such a line of people in the emergency department trying to get in, I felt very humbled by it.
“Professor Margaret O’Connor and all of the junior doctors and interns with her, they were really accommodating and caring to me.”
For John and Joan in Limerick, they say they were just happy to be able to help Beverly and Gareth during their time of need.
“If we were abroad and something like that happened to us, we’d want the same thing,” Joan said modestly. “We just saw Beverly and she was so upset, so thank God they came out the other side of it and got back home.”
Despite their travails, Beverly and Gareth plan to return to Limerick, a visit to John and Joan at the top of their list and an open invitation for the local couple to visit them in Canada.
It goes to show, a friend in need is a friend indeed.
