Timeless beauty: Portrait of Grace at a later age.

Grace died on December 13, 1955, after experiencing heart troubles for several years. Venerable Archbishop James Sherwin, who had received her into the Catholic church in 1916, celebrated Requiem Mass for Grace the following morning. She was buried with full military honours, her coffin draped with the Tricolour -- which was first seen flying over the General Post Office in the beginning moments of the Easter Rising.

The Irish Army was in attendance, with a firing squad and buglers to play the final salute. Among the mourners were Sean T. O'Kelly, the President of Ireland and his wife, Phyllis, and Eamon de Valera. Along with members of Grace's family, three of Joe's siblings attended. Many politicians and former members of the old Irish Republican Army were also there.

Grace was buried near the republican plot where other famous fighters for Ireland's freedom are at rest.

Recalling William Orphen's portrait of a teen-age Grace appearing in his "Young Ireland" series, the Irish Press wrote that "she was Young Ireland, gallant in her youth and staunch in her faith." Donagh MacDonagh, Thomas' son and a well-known writer, wrote of his aunt:

"Thirty-five years ago, I remember as a very small child hearing a balladmaker in the Co. Clare singing a song of his own composition: 'I loved Joe Plunkett and he loved me, He gave his life to set Ireland free.' That was a very few years after the Easter Rising of 1916, and my aunt, Grace Plunkett, had already entered the most secure of all National Parthenons - the world of the ballad. She was, in her youth, the balladmakers' dream of beauty, blonde and slim, but she had what few of the balladmakers' heroines have, wit and talent; a wit that was often biting and a talent that went hand-in-hand with it, a brilliant talent for the caricature.

What Ireland will remember longest is the scene at Kilmainham prison where she married, by the light of two guttering candles, the young man who was to be executed in a few hours ... Now she is dead, but as long as Ireland has a history she will be remembered."