UNITED IN SORROW
United in sorrow
By Michael O'Toole in Omagh
THE church bells rang out loud and clear across a heartbroken town yesterday, calling out people to pray for their dead.
If this had been a normal Sunday, the familiar peal of the church bells would merely have been urging people to come to their weekly church service -but yesterday was no ordinary Sunday and Omagh is no ordinary town.
The bells were calling people out not to celebrate Mass but to remember brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.
The doleful duet of the two bells could be heard for miles.
When one bell struck it quickly received a response from the other church tower at the other end of the town - a sound that for the last year has been synonymous with sorrow.
The clangs were the only sound to break the silence high above the heads of the 10,000 people, Catholic and Protestant, who came together on a cloudy Sunday afternoon to be united in a grief that will never go away.
One year ago the life of each one of those 10,000 people was changed forever by a combination of fertilizer and Semtex.
Many of those assembled in Omagh's Market Street were there exactly one year earlier when 29 lives and those of those two unborn babies were cut short by the huge Real IRA bomb blast that devastated the town and its people.
This was their day: a day to reclaim their town, to remember their dead and to start to rebuild their shattered life.
One year to the day since the bomb and at exactly 3.09pm, the partial silence became complete.
A few seconds earlier a drummer and uilleann piper had been playing a tattoo and a mournful lament in memory of the dead, but at the exact time when a year earlier Omagh was blown apart there was nothing but silence.
Some of the crowd in this short minute bowed their heads, others closed their eyes and others quietly wept as the town became united to mark the first anniversary of the beginning of a living nightmare.
And then, just like the bells a few minutes earlier, the names of townlands and villages in Omagh's hinterland where the bomb's shockwaves were experienced most strongly rang out around the town - in a litany of sorrow.
Beragh, Seskinore, Eskra, Cappagh, Sixmilecross and Killyclogher - they were all touched by evil that fateful day, a day no-one will forget.
But at least, yesterday was the end of the beginning.
The town has been in the public eye and its people have been grieving under television cameras and microphones for 365 days - yesterday was probably the end of open grieving and the start of something more private.
And as the town was packed for the special commemoration service in memory of the dead and 350 injured it was not only local accents which boomed down Market Street from the specially built stage at the front of the old courthouse - the whole world was offering its support.
A Spanish Embassy official, Augustin Gervas, told the huge crowd that the thoughts of the people of Spain - a country also coming to terms with its loss from the Real IRA atrocity - were with them on this sad day.
And from a few miles across the border in Donegal the people of Buncrana, still grieving at their the loss of three young children, sent a simple message to the throng - "The hearts of the people of Buncrana are with you". It was a simple sentence but it meant so much.
For the next 60 minutes the huge, sombre crowd assembled in the heart of Omagh prayed for the past but also for the future.
They heard pleas for peace but they also turned their prayers to those who will never see that elusive peace.
A local clergyman, the Rev Ian Mairs, told them: "The world has sat and wept with us for the happy children and the babies who held our hands.
"For the devoted husbands and caring fathers, for the treasured wives and loving mothers, for the teenagers full of hope and promise, for the fine sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and for the unborn little ones we never saw.
"For those who died and those for whom life will never be the same again."
When the commemoration service had finished some people stood quietly chatting, others walked away and some stood still in numbed, desperate silence.
But after perhaps 15 minutes, Market Street was quiet once more and the public grieving was over - the people went home to remember their dead and injured quietly behind closed doors and in dignity.
By Michael O'Toole in Omagh
THE church bells rang out loud and clear across a heartbroken town yesterday, calling out people to pray for their dead.
If this had been a normal Sunday, the familiar peal of the church bells would merely have been urging people to come to their weekly church service -but yesterday was no ordinary Sunday and Omagh is no ordinary town.
The bells were calling people out not to celebrate Mass but to remember brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.
The doleful duet of the two bells could be heard for miles.
When one bell struck it quickly received a response from the other church tower at the other end of the town - a sound that for the last year has been synonymous with sorrow.
The clangs were the only sound to break the silence high above the heads of the 10,000 people, Catholic and Protestant, who came together on a cloudy Sunday afternoon to be united in a grief that will never go away.
One year ago the life of each one of those 10,000 people was changed forever by a combination of fertilizer and Semtex.
Many of those assembled in Omagh's Market Street were there exactly one year earlier when 29 lives and those of those two unborn babies were cut short by the huge Real IRA bomb blast that devastated the town and its people.
This was their day: a day to reclaim their town, to remember their dead and to start to rebuild their shattered life.
One year to the day since the bomb and at exactly 3.09pm, the partial silence became complete.
A few seconds earlier a drummer and uilleann piper had been playing a tattoo and a mournful lament in memory of the dead, but at the exact time when a year earlier Omagh was blown apart there was nothing but silence.
Some of the crowd in this short minute bowed their heads, others closed their eyes and others quietly wept as the town became united to mark the first anniversary of the beginning of a living nightmare.
And then, just like the bells a few minutes earlier, the names of townlands and villages in Omagh's hinterland where the bomb's shockwaves were experienced most strongly rang out around the town - in a litany of sorrow.
Beragh, Seskinore, Eskra, Cappagh, Sixmilecross and Killyclogher - they were all touched by evil that fateful day, a day no-one will forget.
But at least, yesterday was the end of the beginning.
The town has been in the public eye and its people have been grieving under television cameras and microphones for 365 days - yesterday was probably the end of open grieving and the start of something more private.
And as the town was packed for the special commemoration service in memory of the dead and 350 injured it was not only local accents which boomed down Market Street from the specially built stage at the front of the old courthouse - the whole world was offering its support.
A Spanish Embassy official, Augustin Gervas, told the huge crowd that the thoughts of the people of Spain - a country also coming to terms with its loss from the Real IRA atrocity - were with them on this sad day.
And from a few miles across the border in Donegal the people of Buncrana, still grieving at their the loss of three young children, sent a simple message to the throng - "The hearts of the people of Buncrana are with you". It was a simple sentence but it meant so much.
For the next 60 minutes the huge, sombre crowd assembled in the heart of Omagh prayed for the past but also for the future.
They heard pleas for peace but they also turned their prayers to those who will never see that elusive peace.
A local clergyman, the Rev Ian Mairs, told them: "The world has sat and wept with us for the happy children and the babies who held our hands.
"For the devoted husbands and caring fathers, for the treasured wives and loving mothers, for the teenagers full of hope and promise, for the fine sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and for the unborn little ones we never saw.
"For those who died and those for whom life will never be the same again."
When the commemoration service had finished some people stood quietly chatting, others walked away and some stood still in numbed, desperate silence.
But after perhaps 15 minutes, Market Street was quiet once more and the public grieving was over - the people went home to remember their dead and injured quietly behind closed doors and in dignity.
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0319
Published Date: 16-Aug-99
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