[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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