Writing by Yvonne Watterson

~ considering the lilies & lessons from the field ©

Writing by Yvonne Watterson

Category Archives: The Troubles

with all boldness

11 Monday Nov 2024

Posted by Editor in Anahorish, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Art, Awesome Women, Great Advice, Human Rights, Justice, Language matters, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Oprah Winfrey, Peace, Phoenix, Politics, Prop 300, Punishment, Seamus Heaney, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Theater

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Anna Deavere Smith, Gloria Steinem, Kamala Harris, Presidential Election 2024

On her afternoon talk show some years ago, Oprah Winfrey shared a list of eight powerful women she thought we should all know— as if we might encounter any of them at the grocery store or on the bus.  I remember one of them got my attention—Anna Deavere Smith, perhaps better known to some of you as Nancy McNally from the The West Wing, or as Gloria in Nurse Jackie. She told Oprah that woman should be bolder; that we should argue as much as our male counterparts, and that we shouldn’t try so hard to avoid conflict. We should speak up and out, she said. Boldly.

We should, and we do. At least two of us—the only two women ever nominated to be president by a major party—ran for President of the United States by doing so. They lost. Of course they lost. As post-election analyses continue to dissect the results with historians and pundits presenting their conclusions about why America overwhelmingly chose to elect Trump again, the fact remains that the United States is still bedeviled by misogyny.  If you don’t want to go that far, you’ll maybe look up and see that there’s only one crack in the ultimate glass ceiling.

Gender has always played a role in presidential politics, and the 2024 campaign was no exception. During the last one hundred odd days of it, we heard many of the same old story lines from the same old playbook that, according to Kristina Wilfore, co-founder #shepersisted  “undermine voter behavior toward women,”

Gendered disinformation is the spread of deceptive or inaccurate information and images against women political leaders, journalists, and female public figures. Following story lines that draw on misogyny, and gendered stereotypes, the goal of these attacks is to frame female politicians and government officials as inherently untrustworthy, unintelligent, unlikable, or uncontrollable – too emotional to hold office or participate in democratic politics. 

Vice President Harris chose to downplay her gender, her eyes fixed on a new era where it would be irrelevant in America. She rarely spoke about it or the historic nature of her candidacy as potentially the first Black woman to be elected president. Instead, she talked about the cost of groceries and prescription drugs and issues that should have galvanized the Democratic party—affordable housing,  protecting reproductive rights, bringing an end to gun violence, and strengthening the middle class. But it didn’t work, and too many Democrats chose to stay home on November 5th. Meanwhile, Trump and his allies chose to talk a whole lot about the Vice President’s  gender, to exploit it, with some of his allies branding her a “DEI candidate,”  “a childless cat lady,” “crazy,” “dumb as a rock.” One of them even likened her to a prostitute at a Madison Square Rally in the final stretch of the campaign.

She rose above it all. Was that a mistake? Maybe. Maybe she should have confronted him directly about his misogynistic remarks. Maybe during her one debate with him, she should have challenged him passionately on his overt sexism and his plans to put women back in their place, where he will protect us “whether we like it or not.” Maybe the more apathetic voters in those all-important swing states would have been more motivated to vote if they had seen Harris campaign harder on breaking the glass ceiling. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

Sure. Women turned out for Harris. She won a higher share of white women with college degrees, but her opponent won an even wider margin with women who did not go to college. And, in 2024 there were more of them who voted. Add his gains with men in every age group, there was just no way for Harris to make up that ground, no path to victory.  In a nutshell, Trump won the working and middle classes, and Kamala Harris won over college-educated people who are financially better-off. Why? Maybe the prospect of electing a woman to the Oval Office is too much for the United States. 

Maybe not. Maybe misogyny wasn’t the deciding factor in Trump’s victory, but for many women it certainly feels like the “same old tired playbook” helped him win.  It will take some time to retire that particular playbook. The fight will take time, as Kamala Harris reminded us in her concession speech, but “That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”

It will take outrageous acts—lots of them.


An Outrageous Act

The week before Barack Obama won his second term, I met Gloria Steinem in Phoenix.  Following her remarks at a YWCA luncheon, she described a deal she has been making for years at the end of organizing events. To sustain momentum, she promised organizers that if, in the next 24 hours, they would do just one outrageous thing in the name of simple justice, that she would do the same. She told us it could be anything. Anything we wanted it to be. She also said that only we would know what it should be—pick it up yourself, run for office, suggest that everyone in the office say out loud how much they make thereby allowing everyone to know who is being discriminated against.

In return, Steinem guaranteed two outcomes. First, she guaranteed that after just one day, the world would be a better place, and secondly that we would have a good time. Never again would we wake up wondering if we would do an outrageous thing; rather, we would wake up and consider which outrageous thing we might do today, tomorrow, and the next day.

I’m not sure I did anything that even felt remotely bold or outrageous until I was in my forties. The principal of a small high school in Phoenix at the time, I was struggling to turn it around while dealing with the devastating impact of a new Arizona law, Proposition 300. It required me to inform 38 of my bright immigrant students that they would no longer be able to take state-funded college courses, because they were in the country without documentation. They had been brought to the US as infants by parents in pursuit of a better life for them, but without Social Security Numbers or visas, the American Dream would remain achingly elusive.

The irony wasn’t lost on me as an immigrant from Northern Ireland, being asked to segregate children at school—school which should be the sacred space in any country – placing those who could prove citizenship in college classes and denying those who could not prove residency and could certainly not afford to pay their own way. Over 90% of my students lived below the American poverty level. The law was unfair. It felt un-American and anti-immigrant. To be specific, it felt anti-Mexican immigrant. My white Northern European skin seemed much more acceptable. Who isn’t Irish on St. Patrick’s Day? Because nobody told me what to do or what not to do about my students, I decided to reach out to the local media and anyone who would listen. By my own standards, this was outrageous. Bold, I even asked for money. The kindness of strangers helped raised over $100,000 to pay for tuition. The world was a little better, the way Gloria Steinem would one day tell me it would be, and the story made it to the New York Times, “A Principal Sees Injustice and Picks a Fight with It.”

Of all people, Anna Deavere Smith read the New York Times on a morning in March 2008 during a trip to Phoenix. Later that day, during Spring parent-teacher conferences, Nancy from the West Wing arrived at my office. Initially star-struck, I wasn’t sure what to say to one of Oprah’s phenomenal women. But as she explained what she was doing in Phoenix, we fell into an easy conversation that covered a lot of ground—from Northern Ireland to Arizona. She was in town to interview, along with me, an array of politicians, community activists, lawyers, and incarcerated women, for her one-woman play, “The Arizona Project,” commissioned to honor the 2006 naming of Arizona State University’s law school for retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—the first U.S. law school to be named for a woman. We talked about our respective childhoods, and Anna recalled that when she was a girl, her grandfather had told her that

 . . . if you say a word enough, it becomes you.

Walking in Other People’s Words

Inspired, Anna Deavere Smith traveled around the United States, interviewing people touched by some of our most harrowing social and racial tensions, recording her conversations with them, and shaping them into collections of monologues which she presents, verbatim, on stage. Using the real words of real people, Anna Deavere Smith breathes in – and out – America. It was surreal, sitting in my office talking to an acclaimed actress. She had “people”  who set up the camera in my office and left us to chat about justice and education and my beloved Seamus Heaney.

A fan of Heaney, she admired the picture of him hanging on my office wall. I made a copy of it for her,  and now that he’s gone, I like knowing his picture hangs in our respective living rooms.

Worlds apart but connected all the same. 

When our conversation ended, and the camera and tape recorder packed away, Anna Deavere Smith told her assistant to be sure to get a picture of the shoes. My shoes. They weren’t my favorites. They were uncomfortable. Beige, high-heeled and professional, chosen that morning I suppose in an effort to look a bit bolder at work, to be perceived as strong— a part of my armor.

It wasn’t until the night after President Obama was elected to his first term, when my students and I went to see Anna perform her one-woman show at the Herberger Theater that I understood the shoes.

Changing shoes between each of her monologues, Anna Deavere Smith walked for miles in our words, in our world. Boldly, she crisscrossed Arizona and America and showed us ourselves—how interconnected we are—prison system employees, incarcerated women, female lawyers, immigration activists and others including Justice O’Connor who was in the audience,  Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Mayor of Phoenix, and the principal I was at the time. We were looking in the mirror, and much of what we saw was bleak. At the same time, with a brand new President elected the night before, there was hope in the air.

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It’s time to get back at it, to look in the mirror, to take a walk in the shoes of other people—people with whom we vehemently disagree, people who appear to want something very different from the same place all Americans call home.  This is not the time to retreat or to recriminate. It’s a time for boldness, and I can think of no better voice to remind us than that of Seamus Heaney:

… make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you.

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Haunted

23 Wednesday Oct 2024

Posted by Editor in Dispatch from the Diaspora, Northern Ireland, Rituals, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, United Workers Council Strike 1974

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Halloween, Northern Ireland Troubles, Storytelling for Peace, The Wayside Halt, United Workers Council Strike 1974, Van Morrison

This weekend, inspired by an Instagram post about a perfect Fall appetizer, I bought a pumpkin. Looking at it taking up too much space on the kitchen counter, it occurs to me that it’s too big for the Hot Honey Pumpkin Baked Brie I planned. It will be better as a jack-o’-lantern by the front door. This leads me to Halloweens past and a story you should know.


Where I’m from, there’s some debate about Halloween, with some saying it’s derived from the ancient pagan festival of Samhain and others that it started out as Hallows’ Eve, the day before All Saints’ Day. Whatever it is, it remains my favorite time of year when, on the cusp of winter,  the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, the souls of our long-dead ancestors emerging through it, seeking warmth and communion with us.

Halloween in 1970s Northern Ireland was different from the holiday I eventually embraced in the United States. There were no expensive costumes and no elaborately carved pumpkins—there were no pumpkins. Wrapped up in our duffel coats, “disguised” in hard plastic ‘false faces’ attached to our real faces with a thin elastic band and through which it was almost impossible to breathe we roamed the estate, ringing doorbells and singing at the top of our lungs:

We roamed the housing estate, ringing doorbells and singing at the top of our lungs:

Halloween is coming and the goose is getting fat,
Would you please put a penny in the old mans hat,
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
If you haven’t got a ha’penny then god bless you

Somebody always thought to bring a torch to light up our faces. Sweating under our false faces, I suppose we thought we looked menacing. Meanwhile, our parents stayed at home and watched television. If we were lucky, somebody gave us sparklers which was very exciting because fireworks had been banned—outlawed due to fears that they might sound like bomb blasts or gunfire. I suppose there were also concerns that they might be used to make bombs or weapons.

With this behind me by the time I became a mother in the United States, I embraced Halloween in all its commercialized glory, unaware of its origins in my native land. I didn’t know until recently the legend of Stingy Jack who had been sentenced by the devil to roam the earth for eternity, his path lit by a burning coal inside the carved-out turnip he carried.  To scare away Jack and any other wandering evil spirits, Irish people eventually made their own versions of his lantern, carving ghoulish faces into turnips placed in windows.  When Irish immigrants arrived in America with their jack-o′-lantern tradition, they discovered that pumpkins made the perfect Halloween lantern. Indeed they do.

Every year, we’d go to the nearest pumpkin patch for three perfect pumpkins which would be carved and decorated, and when the sun went down on Halloween, my husband lit candles inside them to welcome the scores of children who walked to our door over the years. It always reminded me of that whimsical scene in E.T., tiny versions of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Tinkerbell, Spiderman, Jack Sparrow, Pikachu, even the sitting President of the United States.


There was never a trick, always a treat from a big popcorn bowl filled with Kit-Kat bars, M&Ms, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and full-size Snickers bars. Word on the street was that all the good candy was at our house. Between us, we took turns handing out the candy, but I preferred to be with the merry band of trick-or-treaters, strolling along Montebello Avenue, stopping only a few paces behind to wait while my miniature make-believe princess knocked on the doors of strangers. This annual trek through the neighborhood always ended with her sprinting to our front door, where she rang the doorbell and called out “Trick or treat!” Feigning surprise, her daddy would fling the door open and fill her plastic pumpkin basket to the brim.

Our last family Halloween was quiet. It was a school night, the Wednesday before the 2012 General Election. Not yet a United States citizen, I couldn’t vote, but I nonetheless studied the pamphlet of Arizona Propositions on our kitchen table, and my husband let me fill in the bubbles on his ballot. I remember promising him I would become a citizen in time for the next presidential election.

When I voted early last week, I imagined him smiling down at me. Imagine. Me, early.

That particular Halloween didn’t feel right, with November just hours away and the night air still hovering around 80 degrees. Nonetheless, when the sun went down, our ritual began. We lit the candles in the pumpkins, and Sophie decided it was her turn to dole out the Halloween candy. Sporting ears of a fictional Japanese cat and a black tail, both hand-sewn by her best friend, she took great delight in the younger children who couldn’t wait to be scared by the pale motion-sensitive ghost howling above our door.


I remember I was preoccupied, sitting at my computer paying bills for the breast cancer treatment that had dominated our lives that year, scrolling through work emails I hadn’t found time to read at work, and following news of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy. I was also half-listening to Van Morrison playing in the background, and as he repeated the ritual of nights spent “spinning and turning in the alley like a whirling dervish,” I remember feeling a strong pull to days gone by. Surreal and visceral, maybe the kind of moment Greill Marcus described in his Listening to Van Morrison.

Given the courage, we live by moments of interference between past and present, moments in which time comes back into phase with itself. It is the only meaning of history. We search the past not for other creatures but for our own lost selves.

In an instant, Van Morrison takes me back to County Antrim and into the lives of two sisters I have yet to meet in real life. The first, Mary, had once stumbled upon something I had written online and left a comment that forever connected us, as is the way of the virtual world. You know how it goes—we search for one thing and find another that renders the first forgotten. Within this much smaller world, I learned that her cousin, Pauline, had been my hairdresser in the 1980s.

Every time I visited her for bigger hair or more highlights, there was always a moment—a ritual— when I considered silently, the family pub across the road. The Wayside Halt stood on the edge of the dual carriageway between Antrim and Ballymena. Nondescript, it was the kind of place that wouldn’t merit a second look, unremarkable except to those of us who knew about the horror that had visited on May 24, 1974. When I sank into Pauline’s hairdresser’s chair, I thought about it.

It wasn’t until one night years after I had left Northern Ireland, that I learned more about what had happened at The Wayside Halt. I don’t remember how the subject came up—my father was maybe trying to explain The Troubles to my American husband, and the ways in which we were all impacted by those years. He recalled for us that evening, when one of his friends had suggested they call into The Wayside Halt for a quick pint since it was on the road home. Knowing the unlikelihood of a “quick pint” and because he was in a rush to complete bread deliveries before dark, my father declined.

Even in the days before cell phones, news in our place always traveled fast. Before daddy reached Randalstown not an hour later, the harrowing word had arrived that a mob of Loyalist paramilitaries had barged into the Wayside Halt and shot at point-blank range, Mary’s uncles—Shaun Byrne and his brother, Brendan. Other pub owners in the Ballymena area had been attacked too, their places of business vandalized because they had remained open during the United Workers Council Strike of 1974 a seminal two weeks in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles.’ Just a child at the time, I remember the rolling electricity blackouts—the “power cuts” that meant candle light and dinners cooked on a camping stove to cook. In my naivete, I didn’t know I had any reason to be afraid.


Shaun and his brother Brendan were executed while the children were in the sitting room upstairs. In the picture Mary sent me, the only child not home that evening was the little girl at her father’s right shoulder.

Eight fatherless children. Two widows. A community devastated.

The Byrne Brothers.

The Quinn brothers –  Richard, Mark, and Jason –  three little boys burned to death on July 12, 1998. Just eleven, nine, and seven years old, they had been asleep when a petrol bomb was thrown through their bedroom window. In our small world, their grandmother was the subject of my brother’s first interview as he started a career in journalism covering the kinds of atrocities that should only have happened once.

Bloody Sunday, La Mon Restaurant, Crossmaglen, The Miami Showband Massacre, Kingsmills, Internment, the bombing of Omagh and Enniskillen, Greysteel, Frizzell’s fish shop.

The list goes on, hearts grows numb …

Physically untouched by this string of horrors, but changed nonetheless, the images are indelible in the storehouse of my memory. Father Daly waving a blood-stained white handkerchief; the blood on Market Street in the heart of Omagh’s little market town; the platform boot on the side of the road near Banbridge; mourners at the Ballymurphy funeral on a little black and white television.

So many names.

Too many ghosts among us.

This is Anne Byrne’s Halloween story first posted on November 1, 2005. Like her sister Mary, she had left a comment for me. The world contracts once more.


Uncle Brendan and the Hallowe’en Parties

I loved Hallowe’en when I was wee, except it was called Holloween in those days. Next to Christmas, it was the best holiday of the year.  It was also mid-term break. Holloween was always celebrated in our house.  When we were very small my mother would make a lantern from a turnip she’d scobe out with a knife which, if you’ve ever tried to do it, is bloody hard work. The next oldest sister to me was very keen on traditions even ones she’d made up herself.  When she was around eight she decided that every year she and I would make witches’ hats out of newspapers rolled into cones and blackened with shoe polish.  So we did this for at least 3 or 4 years.  We’d run around the yard with the pointy, floppy hats falling down over our eyes, our faces and hair stained with polish, singing:

I’m Winnie the Witch, Witches can fly and so can I, I’m Winnie the Witch’

I have no idea where this came from.

In the evening we would tie apples from a string attached to the ceiling and try to bite lumps out of them or duck for apples in a basin of water set on the kitchen floor.  This involved much splashing on the quarry tiles and younger siblings spluttering and snottering into the water.   I was pretty crap at it but my brother would have drowned himself rather than admit defeat. He would suddenly rear out of the water, his whole upper body soaked, grinning so widely that he was in danger of dropping his prize.  Later we’d have apple tart with hidden money in it wrapped up in silver paper.

When we all got to be a bit older my aunt and uncle, who had no children of their own,  held a party each Hallowe’en.  They only invited our family and one set of cousins which meant they had 15 children in attendance. There was always a bonfire and sparklers but no fireworks as they were banned in Northern Ireland.In the middle of the party there would be a loud clatter on the door and my uncle would go and investigate.  Without fail he would return with a scary stranger with a stick, wearing a thick coat and a scarf wrapped round his face.  Usually the stranger did a lot of muttering and, more often than not, he’d use his stick to take a swing at you if you came too close.  As the evening progressed and we worked ourselves up into a frenzy the stranger would suddenly reveal themselves to be the man who lived next door or even occasionally our Aunt Mary.  Presumably she got drafted in by my uncle in the years when he couldn’t persuade any of the neighbors to come and scare us half to death. I think the parties started coming to an end when I was in my early teens but by then I’d grown out of them.

I always think of my uncle at this time of year.  He was murdered, along with his brother, in the mid 70s but in Spring not October.  The scary, masked strangers who came to the door that night didn’t reveal themselves to be friends or family.

All this happened a long time ago and besides, the past is a different country – but it has been haunting me lately.

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Omagh. On a sunny afternoon.

15 Thursday Aug 2024

Posted by Editor in Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats

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"Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto", 1994 World Cup, 2004 World Series, bombings, Boston Red Sox, Giants Stadium, Good Friday Agreement, Ireland, Irish DIASPORA, John Hewitt, New Jersey, North Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland, Omagh, REAL IRA

photo-62

“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Last month, after almost 26 years, the British government opened the first hearing of an independent statutory inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured hundreds in the County Tyrone market town on 15 August 1998. 

If justice comes, it won’t be swift. The first hearing is mainly  procedural. No witnesses will be called or evidence heard until next year.  Bereaved and traumatized families and survivors must wait, as they have done for almost three decades.

They are in my thoughts as I look out on the morning from my parents house in Northern Ireland. I think it is the first time I have been back here on this date since the summer of 1998. 

A brand new mother that year, I had come home with my baby girl. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret – and this is no small feat in rural County Derry – we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise to celebrate my mother’s sixtieth birthday.  It was delicious. We had all swallowed the same secret, and my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark.

The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time was different. We really believed it was over, that there would be no bombings, no shootings, no army checkpoints. There was something symbolic, magical even, in returning home with a baby in my arms to a brand new optimism fueled by The Good Friday Agreement signed only four months before.

It had been different four years before. That trip had coincided with Ireland’s qualifying for the World Cup. The country was ecstatic – factories, offices, shops, even banks, all closing early so everyone could make it home, or to the pub, in time for kick-off at the Ireland v Italy match being televised live from Giants Stadium in New Jersey. My brother and I had considered going to the pub to watch the first-round match, but daddy convinced us to stay home, have a few tins of Harp, maybe a half ‘un of Whiskey and watch from the comfort of the living room. So we stayed at home and watched on telly – in joyous disbelief –  as Ireland went up 1-0 against Italy at Giants Stadium. When the lads in green scored a goal, we roared with pride even as we were afraid to look, not unlike Boston Red Sox fans prior to the 2004 World Series.

The second half of the match was well underway when two men, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into a tiny packed pub, The Heights Bar, in the village of Loughinisland, County Down. With an AK47 and a Czech made rifle, they shot madly and indiscriminately at the sixteen men gathered around the bar watching Ireland beat Italy. They killed six of them. According to witnesses, the two gunmen laughed as they made their getaway. The first killed, Barney Green, was in his eighties, someone’s grandfather, and as I recall from the stories that later poured from that heartbroken village, he had put on his best suit to mark Ireland’s making it to the World Cup.

It chills me still to think of Barney Green struck down with such savagery in the very moment as that jubilant Irish squad burst out of an American football stadium, awash in green, buoyed by the chanting of 60,000 supporters, anticipating champagne and a night of revelry, only to be silenced and sickened by the hideous dispatch from a country pub back home. Surely that would be the last time we would hear of such horror. No. It would not. Omagh was just up the road.


For many Northern Ireland families, mine included, the youngest generation had known only a country in conflict. But in 1998, my daughter would witness a new country. The people – including my parents who had voted for the first time in their lives – wanted peace and said ‘yes’ to the question  “Do you support the Agreement reached at the multi-party talks on Northern Ireland and set out in Command Paper 3883?” It was a resounding yes from the people, in anticipation of the brand new day Northern Ireland deserved.

When my mother’s 60th birthday arrived that year, I telephoned in the morning with love and good wishes and a promise that I would arrange a trip back home soon. Yes, she had received the flowers I’d sent, and she was looking forward to going out for dinner with daddy that evening. On their way to a favorite restaurant, he took a detour for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie, where they were greeted with delighted shrieks of “Surprise!” from the well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars were parked on another lane, far out of sight. One of my cousins assumed the role of This is Your Life host, Eamonn Andrews, complete with a big red book and related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled.  When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she suggested calling me so I could at least be part of the celebration by phone. Naturally, I was unavailable, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us delighting in the fact that my mother was oblivious to all the subterfuge.

Naturally, ma was disappointed when the phone went to voicemail, but she was quickly distracted by the doorbell ringing. Thinking it was yet another cousin or a friend with a birthday present, she opened the door, where, looking up at her from a nest of pink blankets, was her beautiful baby granddaughter. A perfectly executed surprise, planned down to the very last minute, it was one my mother would cherish always, a jewel in a box.

At about the same time, another plan was coming to fruition, a diabolical scheme, that would just a week later, rip asunder the tiny market town of Omagh in the neighboring county of Tyrone, devastating families from as near as Donegal and as far away as Madrid, Spain, and reminding us all that Northern Ireland’s Troubles were far from over.

Like most of us here, I don’t know all the details. I’m afraid of them.

It frightens me to consider the machinations of minds that could craft a plan to load a nondescript red car, plate number MDZ 5211, with 500 pounds of explosives, park it in the middle of a busy shopping area, and place two phone calls to the local television station, one to the Coleraine Samaritans, with a warning 40 minutes before the bomb inside it exploded. There was confusion as the police evacuated the shoppers – mostly mothers and children on back-to-school shopping sprees. Thinking they were moving them away from the Court House to safety, the police moved people to the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb was about to be detonated.

I wonder if they felt that familiar relief, the kind you know from past experiences of bomb-scares and hoaxes, if they felt they were out of harm’s way and just in time, believing that it would all be alright. Maybe they told themselves it was just a bomb scare, like old times, and not to be taken very seriously, but they would of course cooperate with authorities so they could get back to their Saturday afternoon shopping, seeking out bargains for backpacks and books, new uniforms and lunch-boxes, full of the promise that accompanies the start of a new school year.

omagh_imminent

Spaniard Gonzalo Cavedo and child posing by the car carrying the bomb that killed 29 people, many of whom are in the picture, including the photographer. Mr. Cavedo and the child survived. (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

Mere seconds after this photo was taken with a camera later retrieved from the rubble, the 500 pound bomb inside the red car exploded, blowing the vehicle to bits. Like a butcher’s knife, the blast cut through the row of little shops. I recall the harrowing accounts of witnesses, unable to unsee blood flowing in the gutters and pieces of people in the street, unable to put words to the savagery, the carnage before them. Little Omagh was a killing field.

We weren’t listening to the radio that afternoon, so we didn’t hear the news. My brother, his girlfriend, and my baby girl were driving around the North Antrim coast, listening to CDs of Neil Young and Paul Brady, occasionally breaking into song as we took in the wild scenery around us. We stopped occasionally so Sophie could see up close the horses and cows peering at us over gates on sun-splashed country roads. It was a beautiful, windy Irish day, and we were happy. 

We had no reason to believe anything was wrong. Why would we? But heading home at dusk, we were stopped at a police checkpoint and told to take a detour. Instantly we knew. It had happened again. My parents were at home, stunned by the same old story on the news and they were worried sick. They had no idea where we were and paced the floor until their driveway was lit up again with the headlights of my brother’s car.

There was no peace. 

Another atrocity. Another day on the calendar for the people of Northern Ireland that would leave us wondering how we would ever recover from the maddening, wrenching anguish that visited us once again. My country is so tiny – I’ve been told it fits into one third of the state of Kansas – that I imagine everyone knew someone who knew someone maimed or killed in the largest mass murder in its history.  A relative of an Antrim barman had been killed in the Omagh bombing, and I remember wondering what I could possibly say to him by way of condolences, knowing there are no adequate words.

Like so many others, I had dared to believe that peace had come to the country I had left but still loved. I should have remembered what I know can never be forgotten from The Isle of Innisfree –  that “peace comes dropping slow.”

Nothing had changed, and everything changed at 3:10PM in Omagh when the bomb exploded, injuring over 300 and killing 29 people and unborn twins. Until Britain’s High Court ruled in 2021 that there were plausible arguments that the bombing by the Real IRA militant group could have been prevented, there has been – and little reason to believe that there would be – justice. No one has ever been convicted. 

The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”

May we never forget them or the thousands of families still seeking justice and information about what happened to their loved ones during The Troubles. May we stand with them and protect their path to the truth, to justice, and to peace.

Bear in mind these dead.

“Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto” by John Hewitt

So I say only: Bear in mind

Those men and lads killed in the streets;

But do not differentiate between

Those deliberately gunned down

And those caught by unaddressed bullets:

Such distinctions are not relevant . . .

Bear in mind the skipping child hit

By the anonymous ricochet . . .

And the garrulous neighbours at the bar

When the bomb exploded near them;

The gesticulating deaf-mute stilled

by the soldier’s rifle in the town square

And the policeman dismembered by the booby trap

in the car . . .

Patriotism has to do with keeping

the country in good heart, the community

ordered by justice and mercy;

these will enlist loyalty and courage often,

and sacrifice, sometimes even martyrdom.

Bear these eventualities in mind also;

they will concern you forever:

but, at this moment, bear in mind these dead.

13920888_10210319570086764_6748659015835251386_n

James Barker (12) from Buncrana

Fernando Blasco Baselga(12) from Madrid

Geraldine Breslin (43) from Omagh

Deborah Anne Cartwright (20) from Omagh

Gareth Conway (18) from Carrickmore

Breda Devine (20 months) from Donemana

Oran Doherty (8) from Buncrana

Aidan Gallagher (21) from Omagh

Esther Gibson (36) from Beragh

Mary Grimes (65) from Beragh

Olive Hawkes (60) from Omagh

Julia Hughes (21) Omagh

Brenda Logue (17) from Omagh

Anne McCombe (45) from Omagh

Brian McCrory(54) from Omagh

Samantha McFarland (17) Omagh

Seán McGrath (61) from Omagh

Sean McLaughlin (12) from Buncrana

Jolene Marlow (17) Omagh

Avril Monaghan (30) from Augher

Maura Monaghan (18 months) from Augher

Alan Radford (16) Omagh

Rocio Abad Ramos (23) from Madrid

Elizabeth Rush (57) Omagh

Veda Short (46) from Omagh

Philomena Skelton (39) from Durmquin

Frederick White (60) from Omagh

Bryan White (26) from Omagh

Lorraine Wilson (15) Omagh

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Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

04 Saturday Feb 2023

Posted by Editor in Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats

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"Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto", 1994 World Cup, 2004 World Series, bombings, Boston Red Sox, Giants Stadium, Good Friday Agreement, Ireland, Irish DIASPORA, John Hewitt, New Jersey, North Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland, Omagh, REAL IRA

photo-62

“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

After almost 25 years, the British government has announced it will hold an independent statutory inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured hundreds in the County Tyrone market town on 15 August 1998. 

For the families affected, this is a momentous decision that comes two years after a High Court judge ruled there were “plausible arguments” that there existed a “real prospect” of preventing the atrocity.  As they brace themselves for next steps and at least two more years during which they will be re-traumatized by festering questions about the bombing, I am drawn back to the summer of 1998. A brand new mother, I had taken my baby daughter back home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret – and this is no small feat in rural County Derry – we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise to celebrate my mother’s sixtieth birthday.  It was delicious. We had all swallowed the same secret, and my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark.

The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time was different. We believed it was over, that there would be no bombings, no shootings, no army checkpoints. There was something symbolic, magical even, in returning home with a baby in my arms to a brand new optimism fueled by The Good Friday Agreement signed only four months before.

It had been different four years before. That trip had coincided with Ireland’s qualifying for the World Cup. The country was ecstatic – factories, offices, shops, even banks, all closing early so everyone could make it home, or to the pub, in time for kick-off at the Ireland v Italy match being televised live from Giants Stadium in New Jersey. My brother and I had considered going to the pub to watch the first-round match, but daddy convinced us to stay home, have a few tins of Harp, maybe a half ‘un of Whiskey and watch from the comfort of the living room. So we stayed at home and watched on telly – in joyous disbelief –  as Ireland went up 1-0 against Italy at Giants Stadium. When the lads in green scored a goal, we roared with pride even as we were afraid to look, not unlike Boston Red Sox fans prior to the 2004 World Series.

The second half of the match was well underway when two men, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into a tiny packed pub, The Heights Bar, in the village of Loughinisland, County Down. With an AK47 and a Czech made rifle, they shot madly and indiscriminately at the sixteen men gathered around the bar watching Ireland beat Italy. They killed six of them. According to witnesses, the two gunmen laughed as they made their getaway. The first killed, Barney Green, was in his eighties, someone’s grandfather, and as I recall from the stories that later poured from that heartbroken village, he had put on his best suit to mark Ireland’s making it to the World Cup.

It chills me still to think of Barney Green struck down with such savagery in the very moment as that jubilant Irish squad burst out of an American football stadium, awash in green, buoyed by the chanting of 60,000 supporters, anticipating champagne and a night of revelry, only to be silenced and sickened by the hideous dispatch from a country pub back home. Surely that would be the last time we would hear of such horror. No. It would not. Omagh was just up the road.


For many Northern Ireland families, mine included, the youngest generation had known only a country in conflict. But in 1998, my daughter would witness a new country, a country at peace. The people – including my parents who had voted for the first time in their lives – wanted it, and said ‘yes’ to the question  “Do you support the Agreement reached at the multi-party talks on Northern Ireland and set out in Command Paper 3883?” It was a resounding yes from the people, in anticipation of the brand new day Northern Ireland deserved.

When my mother’s 60th birthday arrived that year, I telephoned in the morning with love and good wishes and a promise that I would arrange a trip home soon. Yes, she had received the flowers I’d sent, and she was looking forward to going out for dinner with daddy that evening. On their way to a favorite restaurant, he took a detour for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie, where delighted shrieks of “Surprise!”exploded from the well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars were parked on another lane, far out of sight. One of my cousins assumed the role of This is Your Life host, Eamonn Andrews, complete with the big red book and related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled.  When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she suggested calling me so I could at least be part of the celebration by phone. Naturally, I was unavailable, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us delighting in the fact that my mother was oblivious to all the subterfuge.

Naturally, ma was disappointed when the phone went to voicemail, but she was quickly distracted by the doorbell ringing. Thinking it was yet another cousin or a friend with a birthday present, she opened the door, where, looking up at her from a nest of pink blankets, was her beautiful baby granddaughter. A perfectly executed surprise, planned down to the very last minute, it was one my mother would cherish always, a jewel in a box.

At about the same time, another plan was coming to fruition, a diabolical scheme, that would just a week later, rip asunder the tiny market town of Omagh in the neighboring county of Tyrone, devastating families from as near as Donegal and as far away as Madrid, Spain, and reminding us all that Northern Ireland’s Troubles were far from over.

I don’t know all the details. I’m afraid of them.

It frightens me to consider the machinations of minds that could craft a plan to load a nondescript red car, plate number MDZ 5211, with 500 pounds of explosives, park it in the middle of a busy shopping area, and place two phone calls to the local television station, one to the Coleraine Samaritans, with a warning 40 minutes before the bomb inside it exploded. There was confusion as the police evacuated the shoppers – mostly mothers and children on back-to-school shopping sprees. Thinking they were moving them away from the Court House to safety, the police moved people to the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb was about to be detonated.

I wonder if they felt that familiar relief, the kind you know from past experiences of bomb-scares and hoaxes, if they felt they were out of harm’s way and just in time, believing that it would all be alright. Maybe they told themselves it was just a bomb scare, like old times, and not to be taken very seriously, but they would of course cooperate with authorities so they could get back to their Saturday afternoon shopping, seeking out bargains for backpacks and books, new uniforms and lunch-boxes, full of the promise that accompanies the start of a new school year.

omagh_imminent

Spaniard Gonzalo Cavedo and child posing by the car carrying the bomb that killed 29 people, many of whom are in the picture, including the photographer. Mr. Cavedo and the child survived. (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

Mere seconds after this photo was taken with a camera later retrieved from the rubble, the 500 pound bomb inside the red car exploded, blowing the vehicle to bits. Like a butcher’s knife, the blast cut through the row of little shops. I recall the harrowing accounts of witnesses, unable to unsee blood flowing in the gutters and pieces of people in the street, unable to put words to the savagery, the carnage before them. Little Omagh was a killing field.

omagh-1776660

We weren’t listening to the radio that afternoon, so we didn’t hear the news. My brother, his girlfriend, and my baby girl were driving around the North Antrim coast, listening to CDs of Neil Young and Paul Brady, occasionally breaking into song as we took in the wild scenery around us. We stopped occasionally so Sophie could see up close the horses and cows peering at us over gates on country roads. It was a beautiful, windy Irish day, and we were happy. 

We had no reason to believe anything was wrong, until, heading home at dusk, we were stopped at a police checkpoint and told to take a detour. Instantly we knew. It had happened again. My parents were at home, stunned by the same old story on the news and they were worried sick. They had no idea where we were and paced the floor until their driveway was lit up again with the headlights of my brother’s car.

There was no peace. 

Another atrocity. Another day on the calendar for the people of Northern Ireland that would leave us wondering how we would ever recover from the maddening, wrenching anguish that visited us once again. My country is so tiny – I’ve been told it fits into one third of the state of Kansas – that I imagine everyone knew someone who knew someone maimed or killed in the largest mass murder in its history.  A relative of an Antrim barman had been killed in the Omagh bombing, and I remember wondering what I could possibly say to him by way of condolence, knowing there are no adequate words.

Like so many others, I had dared to believe that peace had come to the country I had left but still loved. I should have remembered what I know can never be forgotten from The Isle of Innisfree –  that “peace comes dropping slow.”

Nothing had changed, and everything changed at 3:10PM in Omagh when the bomb exploded, injuring over 300 and killing 29 people and unborn twins. Until this past week, there has been – and little reason to believe that there would be – justice. No one has been convicted. 

The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”

May we never forget them or the thousands of families still seeking justice and information about what happened to their loved ones during The Troubles. May we stand with them and protect their path to the truth, to justice, and to peace. They need us more than ever – especially now – as the British government is also advancing its wretched “legacy” legislation that would grant immunity from prosecution to those who cooperate in investigations of unsolved killings from the three decades of the Troubles. “We can’t bring anybody back from the dead,” said Monica McWilliams told the New York Times this week “But it’s a very timely announcement, given that there’s so much angst surrounding the legacy legislation.” It is.

Bear in mind these dead.

“Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto” by John Hewitt

So I say only: Bear in mind

Those men and lads killed in the streets;

But do not differentiate between

Those deliberately gunned down

And those caught by unaddressed bullets:

Such distinctions are not relevant . . .

Bear in mind the skipping child hit

By the anonymous ricochet . . .

And the garrulous neighbours at the bar

When the bomb exploded near them;

The gesticulating deaf-mute stilled

by the soldier’s rifle in the town square

And the policeman dismembered by the booby trap

in the car . . .

Patriotism has to do with keeping

the country in good heart, the community

ordered by justice and mercy;

these will enlist loyalty and courage often,

and sacrifice, sometimes even martyrdom.

Bear these eventualities in mind also;

they will concern you forever:

but, at this moment, bear in mind these dead.

13920888_10210319570086764_6748659015835251386_n

James Barker (12) from Buncrana

Fernando Blasco Baselga(12) from Madrid

Geraldine Breslin (43) from Omagh

Deborah Anne Cartwright (20) from Omagh

Gareth Conway (18) from Carrickmore

Breda Devine (20 months) from Donemana

Oran Doherty (8) from Buncrana

Aidan Gallagher (21) from Omagh

Esther Gibson (36) from Beragh

Mary Grimes (65) from Beragh

Olive Hawkes (60) from Omagh

Julia Hughes (21) Omagh

Brenda Logue (17) from Omagh

Anne McCombe (45) from Omagh

Brian McCrory(54) from Omagh

Samantha McFarland (17) Omagh

Seán McGrath (61) from Omagh

Sean McLaughlin (12) from Buncrana

Jolene Marlow (17) Omagh

Avril Monaghan (30) from Augher

Maura Monaghan (18 months) from Augher

Alan Radford (16) Omagh

Rocio Abad Ramos (23) from Madrid

Elizabeth Rush (57) Omagh

Veda Short (46) from Omagh

Philomena Skelton (39) from Durmquin

Frederick White (60) from Omagh

Bryan White (26) from Omagh

Lorraine Wilson (15) Omagh

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Yvonne hails from Antrim, Northern Ireland, and has lived in the desert southwest of the United States for almost thirty years. Married, with a daughter who is navigating her path through the "teen tunnel," and a haughty cat, Atticus, she has spent the better part of the last three decades in the classroom as a student, teacher, and administrator. Her mid-life crisis came as a sneaky Stage II invasive breast cancer diagnosis which subsequently sent her to the blogosphere where she found a virtual home away from home . . .
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