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Pupils present proceeds of charity drive to Omagh Fund
by Ray Ryan

THE Omagh bombing has helped nurture a sense of loving care among pupils in a Co. Cork school where one of the victims began her education.
Maire Ni Eactigearn is the ink-written name on the fading pages of an old register at Lismire National School, where she spent eight years as a pupil before embarking on further studies.
Mary Ahern, as she was known locally, and her sister Joan, trained as nurses and married two Grimes brothers. Jim and Brian, both farmers from near Omagh. Co. Tyrone. Mary Grimes was 65 on August 15 last, the Feast of the Assumption. Along with her daughter Avril Monaghan (30) a mother-of-four, who was expecting twins, and her 18-month-old granddaughter, Maura, she went into Omagh to do some shopping.
But the car bomb killed them all, left their families North and South in shock and forged links of sorrow between Lismire, where Mrs Grimes attended Mass during a visit two weeks earlier, and Beragh, her adopted Tyrone community, where she was laid to rest. An estimated 100 people from her native north Cork travelled North for the funerals. Now five months after the bombing, the blackest day lives on in the memory of the Lismire people, but it is now being challenged into a positive and caring effort. Lismire Development Association, headed by Bryan O'Connor, chairman; Coleman Jones, treasurer, and Marion Heffernan. honorary secretary, are raising money for the Omagh Fund.
Pointing out that the five deaths from one local family devastated the Lismire community, the association said it was making a once-off appeal to show solidarity with the injured. Box player Liam O'Connor will play at a fund-raising dance in the Duhallow Park Hotel tomorrow night. Two
tickets for a gala tribute to John B Keane in Tralee on February 12 will be auctioned. A Manchester United jersey, signed by the players, will also be auctioned on County Sound 103 FM today, but perhaps the most moving of all gestures was by the 11 sixth-class pupils at Lismire School.
Principal John Casey said each Christmas the class hold a bring and buy sale for some charity, Without any prompting, the children decided to present this year's total of £150 to the Omagh Fund, a clear hint that the sense of caring which was so much a feature of Mary Grimes' own life continues to flourish in her old school.

Courtesy of Irish Examiner