[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3655-S3656]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I assure my colleagues, the distinguished
managers of the bill and my good friends, that I will not hold the
floor long. I noted that nobody else was speaking just at the moment.
Mr. President, a couple of weeks ago I went on Senate business to the
Republic of Ireland in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom over a
3- or 4-day weekend as one who has been involved in the international
fund for Ireland. It was at a time just prior to the publication of the
framework Document of Peace between the Republic of Ireland and the
United Kingdom. Our distinguished former colleague, Senator George
Mitchell, was also there representing the President of the United
States. He and I had various meetings in Dublin and elsewhere. I have
discussed those before.
But I thought of this earlier this week. I picked up the New York
Times and saw under a heading ``Belfast Journal'' a very, very moving
article by James F. Clarity. I will speak to that in just a moment.
What I noticed were rather hopeful signs as I drove from Dublin to
Belfast and went into Northern Ireland leaving the Republic of Ireland.
The gates and barriers and bomb detectors, police and military that you
normally see across the border were absent. In fact, you could see the
marks on the ground where the speed bumps had been removed. And you did
not see the all-pervasive military patrols, at least in the daylight
hours throughout Belfast.
In Belfast, I met with both Protestant and Catholic groups. They
talked of their fears, their concerns, and their hopes. Then on Sunday
I met with some mothers who spoke to me--it really makes no difference
which faith is involved here because I heard the same thing from all
mothers I spoke with--that for the first time since the troubles began
they were able to walk with their children on the streets and not have
to worry about car bombs. For the first time they did not have to worry
about the knock in the middle of the night of somebody telling them
their husband will be killed or witness such a killing in front of the
rest of the family.
The presence of armed authorities on the streets of Belfast were
greatly diminished, in contrast with the Republic of Ireland where the
occasional police officer you might see goes unarmed. These were the
hopeful signs. The ``War Widow's'' journal is so moving.
I ask unanimous consent that I might put the whole article in the
Record at this point.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
A War Widow's Thoughts at Peace's Dawning
(By James F. Clarity)
Belfast, Northern Ireland.--Pauline Hegney, the mother of
four young children whose husband was slain three and a half
years ago by Protestant paramilitaries on a Belfast street,
prays every day that the Government peace effort will work
and that there will be no more killings here in the name of
patriotism.
She is among the tens of thousands of survivors of the
3,172 Protestants and Roman Catholics who have been killed in
sectarian warfare here since 1969. She speaks with a soft
Ulster lilt and there is passion in her voice, but no hatred.
Her husband, Karl, an unemployed house painter, was gunned
down in the street on his way home from a pub. Both his widow
and the police say he had no involvement in the Irish
Republican Army. The police told her they had an idea who the
killers were, but no proof, she said. No one has been
arrested.
She was left with their four young children and a job at
the Europa Hotel in the city center, as head of the banquet
dining room staff. But the I.R.A. viewed the hotel as a major
economic target and bombed it frequently. The bombings often
shut it down, putting her out of work, sometimes for months.
The I.R.A. declares that it is fighting for Northern
Ireland's Catholics. Mrs. Hegney, who is Catholic, said she
prays for them, and for the Protestant guerrillas too.
She told her children that ``a sick man'' had killed their
father and that he was now in heaven with Granny, his mother.
Her daughter, Julie-Anne, said that at first she hated Granny
for taking him away and that she saw her father return to her
room one night. She said she wanted to die and go to heaven
with him. Lately Julie-Anne, who is not 8, says only, ``I
wish I could see him, mummy, for one wee minute.''
Mrs. Hegney joined a group of Catholic and Protestant
widows of guerrilla war victims, and they exchange their
feelings and problems.
But the cease-fires that have raised the hopes for peace
and for a normal life for most people in Northern Ireland
also left her and the other widows feeling depressed, she
said.
``During the trouble, we were all in it together,'' she
said. ``Everyone in Belfast was affected. But when the peace
came, I felt isolated. Other people can get on with their
lives. We can't.''
Last October, as reports spread that the Protestant
guerrillas, following the lead of the I.R.A., were going to
call their own cease-fire, she hoped it would not be on Oct.
13, the third anniversary of her husband's killing, but it
was announced on that day.
``It didn't feel right,'' she said. ``I was praying for
peace, but I didn't want it on that day.'' Now, she said, she
faces the prospect of seeing representatives of the
guerrillas become celebrated personalities as they approach
formal negotiations with the British and Irish Governments
and the other political parties in the North.
``I don't like the idea that after they've killed so many
people, they'll be sitting down to say what the future will
be, when people like these destroyed my children's future.
But if it stops people being murdered, I've no objection.''
Her children still miss their father. Karl Jr., who is 14,
wants to be a lawyer. She said she asked him if he would
defend someone he knew to be guilty of a ``terrible crime.''
Karl said: ``Would you serve him if he came into
[[Page S3656]] the Europa. You do what you're paid to do.''
She shrugged.
``I'll get through it,'' she said. ``I'm a struggler. I've
begun to write about it.''
In her account of the night her husband was killed, she
wrote: ``We never know what's to come for us, though, do we?
I put the boys to bed when their daddy went out. I went into
the kitchen and had a little laugh to myself when I saw the
saucepans sitting on the cooker. One was full of potatoes and
the other one had sprouts in it all ready for the Sunday. He
also had the roast cooked. I thought how organized my Karl
is.
``A very curt male voice came on the phone saying he was a
police officer and asked if I could make my way to the police
station as my husband was in the hospital seriously ill. I
lost my mind at that moment and I don't think I have actually
found it all again.
``The nightmare for me had only just begun. I went to see
Karl lying in that operating theater where he had died with
the doctors fighting to save his life. He lay there still and
cold, no life left in the body of the man who had taken the
core of me, loved me and made my life worth living. I thought
how could he leave me? What would I do without him? How was I
going to live without him?
``I held Karl's hand and it was like holding the hand of a
wax dummy. It felt so strange. I didn't cry. I just asked him
to give me strength to get through the next few hours. I went
and sat at the top of the stairs waiting for the first of the
children to waken. I knew this would be our 5-year-old
daughter, Julie-Anne. She was wearing her little pink and
green pajamas and she still had her hair in pigtails from the
day before. She was just so beautiful.
``What I was going to tell her was going to rob her of her
little innocent childhood. She came over to me with her wee
arms out and said, `Where's my daddy?' I sat her down on my
knee and told her that her daddy had gone up to heaven to see
his own mummy, her granny Nancy. `When's he coming back?' she
said. I explained to her that some sick man had shot her
daddy and that he had died and would not be coming back. She
had to blame somebody, God love her, so she started crying
and said she hated her granny.
``I told our three little boys what had happened to their
lovely daddy. None of them spoke. Karl and Michael began to
cry. Mario just sat there. I think he was in deep shock. I
put my arms around all four of them and all but Mario cried
sorely for what we had lost.''
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, let me read something from the journal of a
mother who lost her husband 3\1/2\ years ago. She wrote in her account:
We never know what's to come for us, though, do we? I put
the boys to bed when their daddy went out. I went into the
kitchen and had a little laugh to myself when I saw the
saucepans sitting on the cooker. One was full of potatoes and
the other one had sprouts in it all ready for the Sunday. He
also had the roast cooked. I thought how organized my Karl
is.
A very curt male voice came on the phone saying he was a
police officer and asked if I could make my way to the police
station as my husband was in the hospital seriously ill. I
lost my mind at that moment and I don't think I have actually
found it all again.
She went on to say how when she arrived her husband was there but no
longer alive, and speaks of her 5-year-old daughter awakening in the
morning. She said:
What I was going to tell her was going to rob her of her
little innocent childhood. She came over to me with her wee
arms out and said, ``Where's my daddy?''
Mr. President, there is more to it, of course, and it will be in the
Record. But it is a tale that I have heard from mothers and widows
throughout Northern Ireland.
And really to that 5-year-old daughter, and those other children, it
makes no difference whether the killer was Protestant or Catholic,
whether they were unionists or loyalists in their allegiances, the fact
is, of course, the children have lost their father. Those who are left
in the family find their lives unalterably altered, their hopes and
dreams are dashed.
I only hope, Mr. President, the peace we now see--a still somewhat
tenuous peace--in Northern Ireland might hold and that all the parties
involved, all the parties involved, might make an effort to make the
peace lasting; that those who feel that they have to hold to past
prejudices or to some rigors of diplomacy that may have made sense in a
different age will now come together and start showing the kind of
flexibility and willingness to talk to all parties, and all parties can
sit down and talk together.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The absence of a quorum has been suggested.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
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