WE HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU AND WE WON'T FORGET YOU
We haven't forgotten you and we won't forget you'
By IAN STARRETT
THE words would have brought tears from the hardest stone.
For Amanda Doherty, whose bright-eyed, impish eight-year-old brother, Oran, perished in the carnage that was Omagh, standing on a platform in front of 7,000 people crammed into Buncrana's Main Street it was all the harder.
Pretty Amanda swallowed hard and stifled a flood of tears that had been welling in her eyes as she told the tearful throng:
"You entered our lives, Oran, and stayed for just a short, precious time."
She said that Oran had brought joy and laughter to the lives of the Doherty family.
Little Oran, his Buncrana pals Shaun McLaughlin and James Barker, Spanish schoolboy Fernando Blasco and his youth leader Rocio Abad, all died in the Real IRA atrocity.
Yesterday afternoon holiday-makers, including visiting Spanish, joined locals who still grieve and always will the tragic innocent young losses exactly a year on from the day they left the seaside resort on a day-trip and never returned to the shores of Lough Swilly again.
There were more tears from the gathered thousands when Gerry Toye, uncle of Shaun McLaughlin, addressed them:
"Shaun's name and smile will leave us never while those who killed him may have to perish forever."
And Victor Barker, whose son James was killed a year after coming from England with the rest of the family to seek a better quality of life for them all, said that the year James had spent in Buncrana was a year of happiness and fulfilment.
Fr Shane Bradley, who had conducted the funeral service of the three Omagh schoolboys last August, expressed concern that someone may still be sheltering the Omagh bombers.
Fr Bradley said that they were saying to the bereaved Buncrana families, by their presence at yesterday's first anniversary service, that "we haven't forgotten you and we won't forget you".
"We are also saying that to the people in Spain and in Omagh," he said.
At 3.10pm everyone stood in silent remembrance to the 29 dead.
Young children played a prominent part in the platform proceedings - they took part in a short drama entitled Remembrance and sang - on a day when a seaside resort was flooded with the tears that have endlessly flowed since the warped bombers destroyed so many peoples lives for ever.
By IAN STARRETT
THE words would have brought tears from the hardest stone.
For Amanda Doherty, whose bright-eyed, impish eight-year-old brother, Oran, perished in the carnage that was Omagh, standing on a platform in front of 7,000 people crammed into Buncrana's Main Street it was all the harder.
Pretty Amanda swallowed hard and stifled a flood of tears that had been welling in her eyes as she told the tearful throng:
"You entered our lives, Oran, and stayed for just a short, precious time."
She said that Oran had brought joy and laughter to the lives of the Doherty family.
Little Oran, his Buncrana pals Shaun McLaughlin and James Barker, Spanish schoolboy Fernando Blasco and his youth leader Rocio Abad, all died in the Real IRA atrocity.
Yesterday afternoon holiday-makers, including visiting Spanish, joined locals who still grieve and always will the tragic innocent young losses exactly a year on from the day they left the seaside resort on a day-trip and never returned to the shores of Lough Swilly again.
There were more tears from the gathered thousands when Gerry Toye, uncle of Shaun McLaughlin, addressed them:
"Shaun's name and smile will leave us never while those who killed him may have to perish forever."
And Victor Barker, whose son James was killed a year after coming from England with the rest of the family to seek a better quality of life for them all, said that the year James had spent in Buncrana was a year of happiness and fulfilment.
Fr Shane Bradley, who had conducted the funeral service of the three Omagh schoolboys last August, expressed concern that someone may still be sheltering the Omagh bombers.
Fr Bradley said that they were saying to the bereaved Buncrana families, by their presence at yesterday's first anniversary service, that "we haven't forgotten you and we won't forget you".
"We are also saying that to the people in Spain and in Omagh," he said.
At 3.10pm everyone stood in silent remembrance to the 29 dead.
Young children played a prominent part in the platform proceedings - they took part in a short drama entitled Remembrance and sang - on a day when a seaside resort was flooded with the tears that have endlessly flowed since the warped bombers destroyed so many peoples lives for ever.
Further Information
Publisher: NEWS LETTER
Ref: NL/234
Published Date: 16-Aug-99
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