Stardust Inquests – Day 10 – Pen Portraits

Mahon, Donna – Theresa Fitzpatrick

 

Hello, please allow me to introduce my sister Donna. Her name was Donna Mahon.

Donna is not a number. She was a very live and a very lovely person. She was a lovely daughter to Michael and Patsy Mahon, and a loving sister to Theresa, Michael, Derek, Bernie, Leo, Paul, Carol and David. She was an aunt to Elaine and Pamela as well as being Pamela’s godmother. Donna idolised her two nieces. Donna lived in Edenmore all her life. She made her first holy communion in St Monica’s Church and confirmed there too. We her family believed she would get married there too. Donna Attended St Monica’s and St Eithne’s Girls’ School in Edenmore.

Donna began working in Derek Durken’s local newsagent, quickly becoming the supervisor. Donna loved her life, loved her role in the shop and loved the people. Donna was loved by her family and throughout the community. At 17 years of age, Donna has her whole life ahead of her, or so we (her family) thought. Donna was approximately 10 weeks shy of her 18th birthday. Donna and her friends had made plans to go to Santa Ponsa for her 18th birthday. Donna loved Santa Ponsa so much from being there the year before with Mam and Dad. Donna and her friends were all so excited to go away together.

On the 13th February 1981, I was in my parents’ house. At around 5pm I was sat on the sitting room floor with Donna, teaching her how to play dominos. Dad was sitting on the couch watching us while mam was at work in Cadbury’s. After showing Donna how to play, I began to hear laughter and screams. It was young Michael chasing Donna around the garden, messing with her.

Soon after, Donna came in and told us she needed to get ready to go out with her friends. Donna was going to the “Apartment”. Many years prior, I too used to go to the Apartment with my friends. It wasn’t a drinking place, more of a hanging-out place.

Our sister Bernie had plans to go to this dance called the Stardust. Donna was so excited to go to this dance. Donna left the venue called the “Apartment” and got a taxi to the Stardust later that evening.

From what we have been told, Donna was no length of time in the Stardust when thefire broke out. Our sister Bernie was carried out unconscious in a critical condition. While Bernie lay in hospital, her beloved sister Donna had died and was buried unknown to her.

Donna’s family and friends were all left traumatised. It took until the 16th of February for Donna to be identified. The Guards explained to us that the jewellery Donna had worn had melted in the fie. It was not until the Sunday evening that I remembered I gave Donna a bracelet. This bracelet was how she was identified.

 

We Donna’s family will never get to see Donna get married in St Monica’s Church, have he babies Donna dreamt about having in her future, have her 18th birthday in Santa Ponsa, look after her nieces and godchild Pamela.

Our whole world was turned upside down and our lives torn apart,. Apart from that one unthinkable night on the 14th of February 1981, Donna never went out without letting her family know in advance where she was going; be it work, to mass, the shops or to friends’ houses.

Donna was a great daughter, a loving sister, a loving aunt and Donna was also the best friend one could ever wish for.

Donna was known as the apple of my dad’s eye, as Mam would always say. I could stand up here and talk about how wonderful Donna was and how much shewas and still is loved. I could talk about this for ever. It broke all our hearts so much, especially our Mam and Dad’s, the day Donna died.

More than anything, now we Donna’s brothers Michael, Leo, Derek and Paul and we Donna’s sisters Theresa Bernie and Carol want answers. We want closure. Our brother David who sadly passed away, he never got the closure he too so longed for. The wait for proper inquests has gone on for too long, 41 years. We are all so tired. 48 men and women’s families need answers. Please – please – please, give us the closure we need and deserve. Allow our loved ones to finally be able to rest in peace.

We love you dearly Donna. Rest in Peace.

Lewis, Paula – Lewis, John

Paula was a good girl, a kind girl. The type of girl that handed up her wages to mum if mum was stuck. She loved music, ABBA, BCR, The Osmonds and reading her Mills and Boons paperback romantic novels. On Wednesday evenings, she would be in the kitchen with her friends Debbie and Sandra. Most likely talking about boys and their upcoming holiday to Malaga. Sadly, Sandra died that night also. My only hope is that they were a comfort to each other when the end came.

To say the death of our sister Paula was devasting is an understatement. The griefthat was visited on our family was horrendous. The loss of our beautiful Paula, ourbig sister, our second mother, my mas right hand woman and my dad’s pride andjoy. The grief and loss on the rest of our siblings, the sadness of our little sister whowas Paula’s roommate.

My siblings all younger had little idea what was happening, myself included. To seemy parents whole world fall apart, neither knowing what had just happened. Paulawent for a good night out and never came home. Watching my ma and da leftwondering if Paula was crying for them in her final moments.

The wait to identify Paula’s body, the funeral, the crying, the grief was unbearablebut had to be lived through. Then to add insult to the injury, the so-called experts tel us what our Paula was worth and what we should do to avoid getting involved in the legal system, that most of us would have known nothing about and that was beyond our reach as working class people anyway.

To feel Paula’s loss at every family event, to know what she missed out on, her own wedding and her own family. To try and explain as we get older of how much we lost is impossible. We have never had or never will have closure, that’s just a fancy word people use but we may still have justice.

All of Paula’s family miss her every day. She never got the chance to live her life. And finally may I thank the Stardust Relatives Committee, whom have for the past 40 years kept fighting to get this far. Many many thanks.

Wade, Paul – Tony Wade

Paul was my younger brother by three years. There were five boys, and our mother and father. Paul was a twin to his brother Liam. I’m three years older than the twins.

Paul was a very funny little lad. He was very outgoing. Of all of us, he was the most outgoing and the one with the most friends. He was a people-person. He was a great chatter and was really good at chatting to girls. We always went on holidays to Kilkee and very few people from Dublin go there: it’s mostly people from Cork and Limerick. On the second day of the holidays my mother would be in the kitchen and would turn around to see him with a fella from Cork who he’d already made fast friends with. He was a hard lad to dislike. We had our fights but you couldn’t stay mad at him for long. He was a good lad. If you met his twin brother, they are like chalk and cheese. They didn’t look like each other or behave like each other, they fought like cats and dogs. But if you fought one of them you fought the two of them because they’d have each other’s back. Paul got along very well with our mother. Even when Paul got into a bit of bother, you couldn’t stay mad at him.

The rest of us are so private and we really don’t go out much, but I just know Paul would have been the social focus of our family. He was only 17 when he died, so it’s really hard to remember him at times. If all my brothers were sitting here, then we’d share more memories but sometimes I can only remember a few instances. Paul pleaded with his Mam and Dad, that year, to let him leave school when he’d just turned 17. They told him he couldn’t leave school until he got a job. He got a job in a famous Clontarf pub called Harry Burns’s, as an apprentice barman, and then he jacked in the job after 2 weeks because he missed hanging about with his friends. He hadn’t a clue what he wanted to do, he was that young.

All the family were big into swimming. Every Sunday, in the Summer, Mam and Dad would take us to Howth and we’d be there from lunchtime to teatime. You’d see the tide come in and go out as you’d be there for hours. He would also partake in local football. In those days, you didn’t have a huge amount of facilities so you hung around with your mates all the time.

I was with Paul that night. Me and him and two girls from Derry. He had just startedg oing out with a girl called Susie Morgan from Derry. They’d only been going out for a number of weeks, so he was excited. I was going out with one of her friends, Finola. We were there as a double-date. That’s my last memory of him. The four of us went in together. As far as I know, when the fire started or at least when I became aware of it, there was a slow set on. Finola and I were dancing on the floor, but Paul and Susie were way back up in the seats. That is probably the reason I got out, because we were near the exit doors.

After the Stardust Fire I couldn’t find Paul and Susie but there were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and we lived a 5-minute walk from the Stardust, so I went with Finola down to the house to see if they turned up there. They didn’t. My mother was there, she had cancer at that stage and was lying asleep on the sofa. So we told her there had been a fire and we didn’t know where Paul and Susie were. I had a motorbike then so I hopped on the motorbike. We turned on radios and heard that lots of people were taken to hospital but we didn’t know people had died.

It was a very scary time. We drove off into Dublin going around the hospitals where we saw lots of people we knew around the hospitals with burns but we couldn’t find Paul or Susie.

Mam had no car or anything like that. She woke up our Dad and they stayed at home waiting for news. I think, even at that stage, we didn’t have a phone in the house so when anything happened then one person nearly always stayed in the house. I’d two other brothers who had motorbikes. So the three of us (Liam and Harry) were driving around Dublin checking all the wards of the hospitals. We walked through I don’t know many wards.

I don’t really know when it dawned on us. I suppose early morning you start hearing people had died and you start to think, God maybe they were some of the ones who died because they couldn’t find them. There were hundreds in hospital as well as the people who died.

Then we started figuring that he probably is dead. I remember me and one of my mates went into the morgue in Store Street in Dublin. You know that big Bus Áras?

Right opposite that. We went in and we saw one or two bodies but couldn’t recognise him. Because he was 17, he’d no tattoos and had perfect teeth. There were no dental records. He ended up being one of the 7 unidentified.

I don’t know when his death was confirmed but they would probably have told my parents that he was dead.

We were at the funeral for all the unidentified. They’d a funeral mass. From the time after the Stardust happened, we spent every second day going to funerals.

Sometimes one in the morning and one at lunchtime. If you didn’t know all of them, you knew a good few; and if you didn’t know them directly, then you knew their siblings etc. There was a huge turnout because there were seven of them and all the friends wanted to go. Not being allowed to have a headstone for seven years upset my mother big time. You had to wait until they were classified dead. Liam was contacted in 2007 to give a DNA sample, and then they had another funeral mass or something because my brother came back from England and my other brother came back from Australia. We were all out at the graveyard when he was re-interred. It was a bit surreal because we are standing there, me and all my brothers in our 40s then, but he is forever 17 and it was all those years later. The mother and the father were dead at that stage, but I know it had really upset my Dad that they couldn’t get him identified. My Mam and Dad are buried out in Sutton cemetery along the same row of graves.

It had an awful effect on the parents, definitely. My mother was a very religious woman who used to go to Mass every day. To be honest, she just went completely downhill after Paul died. It hit her so hard. She lost the will to put up any fight with the cancer and she stopped going to Mass: she kind of lost her faith. She got great solace from her faith with the cancer diagnosis, initially. It’s very wrong when the child dies before the parent. My Dad was gutted as well. He tried and tried to get answers. He wrote to politicians because he was very, very, annoyed. He went to all the meetings they would have had about it and attended the first tribunal. My Da wrote to TDs, andEuropean officials in Strasbourg. That’s the way he approached it. He tried to get answers and he went to his grave cursing what happened. It really upset my father.

My mother died in 1983 and only lasted 2 years after Paul died. My father didn’t dieuntil he was almost 85. They were both gone before Paul was officially identified. I thought about what things were like for us at the time, but life had to go on. We didn’t have big emotional displays: you just had to get on with things. We tried not to let it take over our lives. We weren’t the only ones, as there were families which suffered even more loss.

While we were gutted that our brother died, if you were around Artane and the Coolock area afterwards a lot of people had lost people. We were all late teens, early 20s, and you just went to the pubs with your mates, but when you would go into the pubs around Artane, people were crying all the time. Half the time you’d end up going into the city centre to get away from it all. After my brother, Paul, died, I cried once, a week later, in front of one of my mates. We didn’t have counsellors. We knew no better. You just got on with it. Especially boys. Therapists were for Americans on the TV.

I think Paul would have been a favourite uncle. The one that organised all the fun stuff. Especially family holidays. I’m not a big one for saying things like “today is Paul’s birthday” but you think of him at Christmas and when you’re on holiday. We go away on holiday together sometimes. He probably would have had kids of his own and he never got to meet his nephews and nieces. Two nieces and 5 nephews.He never got to meet them, and they never got to meet him. That’s when I would think about him. He was a great communicator.

I worked in the civil service all my life and I would say I worked in some offices for ten or fifteen years and they wouldn’t have known I’d a brother who died in the Stardust.

I’ve a 21 year old son, a 20-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. We don’t really talk about it hugely. We have some pictures of Paul around the house. You have totry to live on. Some people lost their own lives that night because their loved ones being killed in the Stardust has consumed them. I don’t know if we made a conscious effort to avoid that or not.

My family and I loved Paul and we really miss him.

Elaine Loughman Callan: Eamonn’s Sister

Let us have peace and truth finally.

This pen portrait is a reflection of Eamonn Loughman from the different perspective of the lives he touched in his brief time as a Son, brother, cousin.

Sadly, my parents passed as broken people and were never given the truth and justice for their precious sons death.

My brother Eamonn was born in 1962 he was the first born of Jack and Maureen Loughman. John came second in 1964 Eoin in 1966, Niamh in 1967, Elaine in 1969, Andrew in 1973 and Anne in 1977.

Jack was an Irish Army man and travelled to Congo & Cyprus on a few occasions. Maureen was at home taking care of their children. Eamonn was the oldest of 4 children in 1968 when they lived in Kilcullen.

Eamons baby sister Niamh died of cot death in 1968. The whole family was devastated.

Eamonn went on to be the big brother of John and Eoin. He was a great comfort to his Mother Maureen. Elaine came along in 1969 and Eamonn doted on her. He also doted on his new younger brother Andrew and by the time Anne came along Eamonn was already acting like a proud young Father. He looked after us and protected us so much, he would help us get ready in the morning and round us up to the dinner table for all meals.

He kept an eye on us all and he would be giving out if we were playing up, he would tell us when we are being good and stopped the rest of his siblings fighting. I remember being out playing and Eamonn would go off playing on his bike with his friends but he would come back and check on us all the time.

One time I remember us all sitting at the table having dinner and me Eoin and John would be messing and giggling at the table. John and Eoin would be kicking each other under the table and Eamonn would be telling them to behave.

One night I remember so well was sitting in the little office my Dad had made under the stairs and everytime I closed the door John would switch off the light and I would come out crying. Eamonn would give out to him but he would keep doing it, Eamonn ran after him and told him to stop, he would then come over and comfort me and give me a hug and tell me “don’t mind me hes too giddy”. Eamonn also loved cars, he would go up to the stock car racing in Santry, sometimes he would bring us all with him. He would sometimes take us to the Cinema he would carry Anne on his shoulders and bring us into town for a film. One Sunday afternoon he took me to the Stardust, I think there was music on and he would let me play around with the other children but he would always be making sure I was ok.

In 1974 Eamonn’s brother John died. He was playing basketball with Eamonn, Eoin and their friends when he collapsed. Eamonn was devastated, when he would speak about John he was convinced that while John was lying on the ground dying he was trying to warn Eamonn about something but Eamonn could not make it out and this was very upsetting for him for years. I remember Eamonn used to love his records, we had a record player in the sitting room and he would listen to his music. I remember one night sitting with him and listening to Seasons in the sun and we spoke about John, Eamonn told me that it was a song John was now singing to us from heaven, we both cried. I remember one time when I was out playing with my friends and we went up to the Cornfields (now Beaumont hospital) Eamonn saw me getting over the wall and he followed me and ordered me to get out of there. He put me on the crossbar of his bike and took me home and told me never to go up there again.

I would often play in the garden with my little sister Anne. Eamonn would be coming home from work and we would run to him and he would pick us both up and give us a hug and a swing, he would then proudly carry his baby sister Anne into the house and play with her.

Eamonn would sometimes pick me up from school in the Cortina he and our Dad bought together. My friends would be envious of me getting my big brother to pick me up from school. When I was doing a show in the SFX with my tap dancing group, Eamonn would collect me and my friends some nights when he was off, I loved having a big brother to show off to people. I have so many memories of Eamonn but I should have a lot more.

On the night of the Stardust Fire my cousin Cathy and I were staying in her sister Carol’s house.

As my brother was unidentified they were all hoping and praying he would show up before they had to tell me the news.

I wrote below poem roughly one year after I lost my brother in the Stardust Fire, I was 13 years old. I have never shared these words beyond my immediate family, this could be considered as my original Pen Portrait of Eamonn Loughman.

I loved him oh I really did,

He treated me like his little kid, At night I always cry and cry, Oh why did he have to die?

He was so good and kind to me, But he would hurt nobody,

We loved each other all the time, He was a great brother of mine,

He went to a disco for Valentine s day, And on that night I was away,

I came home to tears and cries,

My favourite Uncle told me the news,

I could see the pain he was going through, I cried and cried and wanted to scream,

I was hoping it was only a dream, I will never get over this tragedy, Now I m just a misery,

All the time I want to cry, Sometimes I wish I would die,

Without him it is not the same, Now he is looking over me,

And I hope that he will always be.

Eoin Loughman – Brother

Eamonn was my older brother, I remember him always looking after us. He would always make sure me and my brother John behaved. He would often tell us to be good for Mam. Eamonn played with us and kept us in line I used to love when he would come home with a new record to play. I had a huge admiration for him because he was such a loving caring son and brother. He was a guy that loved his family and he loved going out with his friends.

He used to drive up to Colaiste Dhulaigh to collect me from school and I would jump into the front seat and he would show off and do a bit of a wheel spin driving out just to make a noise and we both would love the attention from everyone. We would have a good laugh together about that. When my brother John died I was only 7. I was playing basketball with my two big brothers having a great time, delighted to be with my brothers and I was always picked for the good team because I had them there. When John dropped to the ground I did not know what was wrong with him and I remember Eamonn running straight to him and trying to help him, the rest of us were in shock but Eamonn was at his brothers side trying to help, but he could not help. John was trying to tell Eamonn something and Eamonn could not get over the fact that he did not know what John was trying to say. That did not sit well with Eamonn, he always spoke to me about not being able to help John and he was devastated about that. One time we were out on our bikes with all our friends having a great time. We decided we were going to cycle to a park to play football but not all of us had bikes, Eamonn would not let anyone give me a crossbar only him.

When I was a bit older I was working as a lounge boy in the A1 pub, when Eamonn was 18 he loved coming into the pub with his friends while I was working. He would make sure I always served me so he could give me good tips. Eamonn’s death had a devastating affect on me and my family. My parents had not got over the death of my other brother and baby sister when Eamonn was taken from us. My Mother suffered badly which had a huge effect on me and my siblings. She then suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1996 and she existed in a nursing home for 15 more years. It was more pain and suffering on her and our family including my poor Father. Mum then passed in 2011 and still had not got justice for the Stardust fire.

Anne Loughman: Sister

A memory from Anne his little sister who was only 2 years old when her big brother died I remember my Mam talking about Eamonn and telling me how much he loved me, I loved to listen to stories about him really remember much. She told me about when she came home from the hospital and Eamonn who was 16 at the time took me off her and sat holding onto me for hours.

Mam was so proud of her children, Eamonn was such a help to her all his life. I remember Eamonn always looking after me and playing with me. He would give me swings and throw me in the air and catch me. I never got to grow up with the love from my big brother, most of my memories are from the aftermath of the Stardust fire.

Andrew Loughman     Brother.

As I was a 7-year-old at the time my memories of my brother Eamonn are few but vivid, to me he was the older, 3-piece suit wearing, working, driving, man brother, he was an adult, sophisticated. He looked after me, played ball with me, he was a big Leeds Utd fan gave me crossers on his racer, I remember milling his box of Maltesers he had hidden under his pillow, he was not happy when he realised and I remember feeling bad about it at the time, which stuck with me. I remember him working shifts and I remember the Racer he used that was lit up like a Christmas tree, classic safety conscious man.

I remember his nickname Eao, I remember him painting his name on the shed wall, I remember his pal Dougie and they’d bring me up to the green to play football, I remember how deadly he thought he was because he was driving his and dads Ford Cortina, nobody in the area his age was driving. He was a cool dude a smart dressed man in my eyes. I was 7 and that is the perception I have of him even to this day as i think back, thats how i see him now and thats how I like to remember him, it was only in later life did I realise that he was just a kid, a kid with rest of his life ahead of him a kid who had suffered a tragedy by losing his little sister and another tragedy at 11 years old when our other brother John had died. A kid with his whole life ahead of him.

Sat 14th February 1981, I remember it well, that day and the aftermath of that day is still with me, the wails of despair and anguish from my mother haunt me to this day, the commotion in the house, I didn’t understand what the hell was going on, I can remember it as if I was invisible that day. It was a very lonely experience that day and the following days I was shipped off to a family friends house, they were strange to me and although they had 3 boys and the family were absolutely brilliant to me but It was a very lonely experience I remember having nightmares and not having any family around.

As a child growing up it was devastating to see your mother and fathers hearts broken, at the time when I was young I didn’t understand but it was very upsetting to see the drinking that occurred, I knew what was going to happen once they bought alcohol, I used to sneak in and pour some the alcohol from the vodka bottle down the sink , vodka and lemon that was their favourite, It could be terrible they would drink and blame each other on everything, it was heart-breaking, it wasn’t their fault, how they dealt with life after that day I don’t know, this was their third child they had lost. We all knew why they drank, especially my poor Mam, we never hated them for it, it just broke our hearts because we knew the love they had for us, my father worked hard and had 2 jobs, we never wanted for anything, their drinking caused arguments in the house between them and it was not a place of peace for us at times. My mother’s heart was broken, Eamonn was never identified at the time, which as a parent is horrifying to think, so she never really got closure, she hung on to the belief that he could be alive, she believed for years that he could have banged his head lost his memory and was out and about lost somewhere, she believed he was going to turn up one day. Imagine thinking like that, better to think that than the real reason he wasn’t there. 25 years she had to live with that, we couldn’t get a headstone for the grave. The original tribunal had basically put everyone attending under suspicion of arson. We never really spoke about it as a family as we had no help with it, it made us all victims for the rest of our lives.

We as a family were always very close to our Auntie Elsie, Uncle Tommy and our cousins in the James family. We went on holidays together, days out, sleep overs, we did so much together we were like one big family. They were with us all the way and helped look after us during the aftermath.

Carol Barr: Cousin & Friend.

A memory from Carol James (cousin and very close friend)

I don’t remember a time when Eamonn and his family were not in my life, our families were so close. Our Mams were sisters and best friends. We spent wonderful weekends with our cousins in Kilcullen and then when the Loughman s moved to Artane my parents moved house to just up the road. We all grew up together and laughed at everything. We had holidays, parties, days out together. We cried together during the dreadful sad times that Eamonn and his family went through. I got married when I was 20 years old in 1979 and Eamonn was at my wedding and gave us beautiful Waterford crystal glasses for a present. That was a big deal back then he was a teenager working away, having fun and he was so generous and thoughtful. I last saw Eamonn just before the Stardust. I was in his house and he held my 5 month old baby in his arms and was so gentle and loving with him. Eamonn was only starting to live his life and he never got to have all the wonderful adventures he should have, meet the love of his life, be a great dad, share his family’s goof time and hard times and they needed him so much. We loved Eamonn and losing him was devastating. Losing him changed my life.

Aileen James: Cousin & Friend.

A memory from Aileen James (cousin and very close friend)            Eamonn and all his family were a big part of my life. We were cousins and great friends. One winter’s eveing me, Mo and Eamonn went to mass in Ardlea Church, we must have been told to go. Anyway it was a freezing night and I had a bobble hat on and didnt know it was inside out. I sat down and Eamonn copped that it was inside out and he told Mo. He was bursting with giggles and that started Mo off. The two of them were giggling and I asked them what they were laughing at and they wouldn’t tell me. They moved seats to get away from me but I followed them and kept asking what they were laughing at. They were in fits and eventually had to tell me. I burst out laughing and Eamonn was trying to keep his laugh in. The lady behind him kept poking him with her umbrella to make him stop and it made him worse. We never forgot that night and always had a good laugh when we talked about it. He was a giddy gentle loving person who should be with us today. I miss him so much. I will never forget the night after the Stardust and I stayed in Eamonn’s house with my man to help look after Aunty Maureen and the family. I remember checking on Eoin who was sleeping on the sofa bed in the front room. He woke during the night and he didn’t know was there, he was sobbing for Eamonn and saying he couldn’t be the big brother that he needed to be. He wanted his big brother back. I just can’t understand how the Loughman family managed their lives after the Stardust. Eamonn was such a loving caring considerate funny person. I still miss him so much.

Maureen James: Eamonn’s Cousin & Friend.

Memory from Maureen James (Mo) (Cousin and very close friend) Two things I will never forget about Eamonn were his deep laugh and the fact that he sang the same note over no matter what the actual tune was. He was so funny. He was the kindest most considerate person and so protective of all of his family. The day after his little brother John died he told me he was worried that John wouldn’t go to heaven because he had pinched a pack of cigarettes from Uncle Jimmy’s shop a few weeks before so the two of us went around to the Ardlea church and put the money in for them on John’s behalf. Eamonn had the biggest heart and I miss him and John and I always will.

Jacinta Galvin – Eamonn’s Cousin & Friend

A memory from Jacinta Galvin (close cousin) I remember going down to Kilcullen on my first communion day. I remember the windows in the house were really deep and I would sit on them with Eamonn and John. The river ran behind the house and I wasnt allowed down because of my white shoes. Eamonn and John would have a great time playing together and messing with all of us. I remember how upset Eamonn was when his brother passed away, it was so awful to see him cry. Eamonn was a beautiful person and I will never forget him or John.

Closing Comments: Elaine

I hope this pen reflection portrays Eamonn as a person as he was to us all. A person we all loved and impacted our lives in such a positive way, his memory should not be encapsulated as a statistic. The loss of Eamonn has left an enduring sadness in all our lives. I would like to finish this pen portrait a poem, written by Eamon as a child.