3 July 1997 Edition
Remembering their lives
Dominating Derry City Cemetery like resilient flowers, Tricolours stood against the sky from Volunteers' graves last Sunday when the friends and relatives of Derry's fallen republicans converged again on the Republican Memorial to remember their lives and their sacrifice.
After the Spirit of Freedom Flute Band led marchers to the Derry Brigade's Cuchulainn Memorial, Waterside Councillor Lynn Fleming chaired the annual commemoration. A cumann banner depicting the first volunteers to fall in this campaign, Tommy McCool, Joe Coyle, and Tommy Carlin, stood beside the banner from the newest cumann named after the last volunteer to fall, Pól Kinsella. Relatives from volunteers whose 25th anniversary occurred this year took a prominent role. Gerard Starrs, brother of Vol John Starrs, read the Derry Brigade Roll of Honour. After a minute's silence, wreaths were laid and Aine Barton, niece of Vol Colm Keenan, read out a poem. Carol Carlin played a haunting lament on the fiddle.
The oration was given by former hunger striker Raymond McCartney. He focused on the human loss to family and friends, and reflected on how lives tragically cut short might have progressed, how friendships might have matured. He said:
``In 1972 Bloody Sunday robbed us of our innocence. In Bloody Sunday we got our reply: This state could not be reformed. Many of us, men and women, joined the IRA in response. Through the years many of us have buried our daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, but throughout have remained resolute. We have laid the foundation to see Sinn Fein not only the largest party in mid-Ulster and Belfast, but in Derry too. Our electoral successes today are the result of 27 years of unrelenting struggle.''
After the Spirit of Freedom Flute Band led marchers to the Derry Brigade's Cuchulainn Memorial, Waterside Councillor Lynn Fleming chaired the annual commemoration. A cumann banner depicting the first volunteers to fall in this campaign, Tommy McCool, Joe Coyle, and Tommy Carlin, stood beside the banner from the newest cumann named after the last volunteer to fall, Pól Kinsella. Relatives from volunteers whose 25th anniversary occurred this year took a prominent role. Gerard Starrs, brother of Vol John Starrs, read the Derry Brigade Roll of Honour. After a minute's silence, wreaths were laid and Aine Barton, niece of Vol Colm Keenan, read out a poem. Carol Carlin played a haunting lament on the fiddle.
The oration was given by former hunger striker Raymond McCartney. He focused on the human loss to family and friends, and reflected on how lives tragically cut short might have progressed, how friendships might have matured. He said:
``In 1972 Bloody Sunday robbed us of our innocence. In Bloody Sunday we got our reply: This state could not be reformed. Many of us, men and women, joined the IRA in response. Through the years many of us have buried our daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, but throughout have remained resolute. We have laid the foundation to see Sinn Fein not only the largest party in mid-Ulster and Belfast, but in Derry too. Our electoral successes today are the result of 27 years of unrelenting struggle.''