Windows of Hope stained glass window unveiling at scoil Iosagain in Buncrana
Left to right: Paul Fleming the mayor of Derry, Jeanette Ward, Community worker, Lee Tedstone the Buncrana Mayor, Bernie and Patricia who unveiled the window, Paddy McGowan the chair of Omagh District Council and Joe Coyle from Alpha Studios who made the work of art.
4 comments:
As the person who organised the first Memorial Service in 1997 [25th Anniversary] for the victims of the 3 bombs that exploded in Claudy, Co. Londonderry on the 31st July 1972 and who as Chair of the Claudy Rural Development Association commissioned the drawings of potential memorials, one of which was unvelied in 2002, I find it repugnant that an IRA murderer, now the Mayor of Londonderry,Paul Fleming, was invited not only to the unveiling of the window in Buncrana but to the unveiling in Claudy on the 29th August. Fleming's organisation, the IRA murdered the 9 people in Claudy that fateful 1972 Monday morning and have neither admitted it nor apologised for it and no one has yet been charged with the nine murders and the multiple victims who suffered injuries that day...some of them sadly now deceased.
For Jeanette Warke to tell the families of the deceased a couple of weeks before the Claudy unveiling that 'old Fleming won't be invited' and then to issue a formal invitation to him, so a total lack of sensitivity to those bereaved families and Fleming's arrival at the event shows a total disregard for common decency. Most of the families thought he was the Mayor of Buncrana, as Warke had told them Fleming wouldn't be invited and one person, whose Father was killed in the bombings was pulled into have a photograph taken next to Fleming, totally unaware of his IRA murdering past and is now distraught at being mislead by Jeanette Warke. She is a total disgrace for doing this to the families and I would say that her days of gaining publicity and kudos for herself on the backs of the Claudy and Omagh families are now over. I trust they will cut all ties with her....she is interested in self not them and hasn't a political brain in her head....had she, Fleming wouldn't have been near Claudy....
'A spokesperson for Derry City Council said the Window of Hope project, which was managed by the Shared City Project with funding from the Community Relations Council, to create and design four identical stained glass windows in memory of those killed in the Omagh and Claudy bombs. The windows were created with the help of the victims families and were launched at three ceremonies in Buncrana, Omagh and Claudy. Representatives from the relevant Councils, churches, funding bodies, support groups and community organisations were invited to attend the launches.
The Mayor, as the Council's civic leader, was representing Derry City Council at the event.' Londonderry Sentinel
Fleming as the city's civil leader wouldn't have been there, had he not have received a formal invitation...the question still remains, why did a Council officer mislead the grieving families? She didn't have him in the Fountain to present the certificates to the Summer Scheme participants....the deputy mayor, Maurice Devenney, minus his chain, presented them.
Billy & Merle Eakin who engaged with Mrs. Warke on this project but sadly died prior to the unveiling of the windows must have turned in their graves at the thought of Fleming glad-handing guests at the ceremony that was in memory of their daughter and the other eight victims of the Claudy bombings of 1972.
That insensitive invite plus the lack of invites to many of those who were injured, some of whom are still suffering both physically and mentally, showed that the organiser didn't have a great knowledge of the subject matter she got involved in.
Perhaps before adding another memorial in Claudy, she should have fixed the wall behind the memorial in the market place and did something with the plaques, which seven years after their installation haven't yet being properly imbedded into the wall.
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