Woman at centre of one of Rose of Tralee's greatest mysteries to attend 2024 contest
1972 Crowned Dubendorfer Rose Tralee In Claire Was Of
The woman at the centre of one of the longest unsolved mysteries in the history of the Rose of Tralee competition is due to attend this year’s contest.
The 1972 Rose, Claire Schmid Furrer, will be among 25 Rose of Tralee winners attending this weekend.
Known at the time as Claire Dübendorfer, the Swiss national was last seen being driven away from Tralee on the back of her then boyfriend’s motorbike.
Until 2020, she was never seen or heard of again by any member of the Rose of Tralee management.
Invites for the 25th anniversary of the contest in 1984, for example, were sent to her last known address in her native Switzerland but later returned ‘person unknown’.
Despite attempts by other winning roses over the years, nobody had been able to track her down.
So little is known about her that she merited little more than 100 words in what is regarded as the definitive history of the contest.
She has since been in touch with the festival and is due to attend later this weekend.
Now married, and a grandmother, she is an artist and lives just outside Zurich.
A contest spokesperson confirmed she is due to attend, but whether or not she will be doing any interviews has yet to be decided.
June Carey, who helped compile the information for Ryle Dwyer’s , said the mystery over her whereabouts was — up until recently — “the biggest mystery of the contest”.
As well as so little being known about her, nobody appeared to even know what her Irish heritage was, as she would have needed a family link to qualify for entry into the contest.
According to former Rose of Tralee escort Brian Sheahy, she was escorted wherever she went while she was in Tralee by her boyfriend.
“This was very unusual for a rose at the time,” he recalled.
“They did not usually come to the contest with their boyfriends, so it was very unusual.
“What was even more unusual was that wherever she was driven with the other roses, he would follow the bus taking them anywhere on his motorbike.
“My role was to organise escorts for all the roses and although I was tasked with designating an escort for her, her boyfriend did most of the escorting.”
For the contest in September 1972, she listed her profession as a textile designer, and she was one of 29 contestants.
She won the equivalent of around €13,000, along with — according to the archives of a US paper — "a number of gifts and travel assignments".
Although she would have been expected to go on a promotional tour after winning, the 21-year-old very quickly hid herself away from the public gaze.
She stayed in a remote house at Blennerville, outside Tralee, with her family.
The house, which was previously owned by a family of Tralee butchers, is now derelict.
Mr Sheahy recalled: “Herself and her mother and her boyfriend stayed at the house for about a week and then just left.
“It was all very unusual from beginning to end. They stayed there for about a week to get away from all the attention.
“And then they were never seen again.”
Indeed, the last sighting of Ms Dübendorfer was on the back of that motorcycle being driven by her boyfriend.