Funeral Services for Dick Irish (Philippines)

DICK IRISH
June 26, 1932 – June 17, 2016
Funeral Service
Thursday, June 23 at 12 Noon
Trinity Episcopal Church, Upperville, VA.

Richard K. “Dick” Irish, 83, author Go Hire Yourself an Employer, a popular self-help book in the 1970s, died Friday at his home in Marshall Va.

His wife, Pat Reilly, said he died of complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Irish was an early member of the Peace Corps, serving with his late wife, Sally Irish, in the Philippines between 1962 and 1964.

They were teachers in a Muslim village in Mindanao, where Mr. Irish attained the honorific of Sultan of Raya.

He later learned that meant a leader with no followers. He named his farm Raya.

Prior to the Peace Corps, Mr. Irish had served in the U.S. Army in the 83rd Engineer Battalion, Bussac, France, as a German interpreter from 1954 to 1956.

After a brief stint at Peace Corps Headquarters under Sargent Shriver in the early 1960s, Mr. Irish left the Peace Corps to help found TransCentury Corporation in Adams Morgan and became an international executive search specialist. He was vice-president of Career Planning Consultants Inc. of Charlottesville, Va. He later started his own consultancy called Leadership Search, which specialized in finding executives of nonprofit organizations.

It was as a result of this work that he published Go Hire Yourself an Employer (Doubleday/Anchor 1973), which went to three editions and sold over 800,000 copies,

If Things Don’t Improve Soon, I May Ask You to Fire Me (1975) and How to Live Separately Together – A Guide for Working Couples (1981).

Mr. Irish was finishing work on Allies and Adversaries: Churchill and the Man Who Would be France, when he died. It will be published as an e-book later this year.

Richard Irish was born June 26, 1932, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of Col. Wynot Rush Irish and Juliet Wilkin Irish.

Stationed with his family in post-war Germany, he attended Institut Montana, a prep school in Switzerland.

He transferred to Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, where he received the Nevils Diplomatic History Prize.

On graduation in 1954, he was drafted into the Army and sent back to Europe. He then taught at the Institut Montana.

His first wife, Sally Irish, died in 2003. He is survived by his wife of 10 years, Pat Reilly, a sister, Dorothy Beall, and many nieces and nephews.

Mr. Irish was a member of the National Peace Corps Association and the Cosmos Club in Washington D.C.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Middleburg Humane Society or the Marshall Rescue Squad.

Funeral services will be held at noon on Thursday, June 23 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Upperville, Va. where he will be buried in the church cemetery.