[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3678-S3679]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       PEACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as we approach St. Patrick's Day 1995, 
Irish eyes are smiling as perhaps never before in the quarter century 
of violence that has wracked Northern Ireland. In celebrating the 
remarkable progress made toward peace during the past year, we are also 
mindful of the responsibility that all of us who care about Northern 
Ireland have to the people there who have suffered so much from the 
violence. We must do all we can to make certain that a lasting peace is 
achieved.
  Last Monday, the New York Times carried an eloquent and very poignant 
article by James Clarity about Pauline Hegney, a Catholic mother in 
Belfast. Her husband, the father of her four children, was killed by 
Protestant paramilitaries more than 3 years ago. She is one of the 
countless survivors of the violence who, rather than harboring hatred, 
feverently hopes that no one else--Protestant or Catholic--will suffer 
her fate.
  Clearly the people of Northern Ireland want the current cease-fire to 
continue and peace talks to begin. All of us share that hope as well.
  Mrs. Hegney wrote an extremely moving account of the death of her 
husband, and Mr. Clarity quotes at length from her words in his 
article.I believe that his story and her words will be of interest to 
all of us, and I ask unanimous consent that the article by James 
Clarity may be printed in the Record. I also ask unanimous consent that 
a poem by W.H. Auden, which speaks to all such loss, may be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 6, 1995]
               A War Widow's Thoughts at Peace's Downing

                         (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 now 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 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 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. 
     [[Page S3679]] 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 say 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.''
                                                                    ____


                             Funeral Blues

                            (By W.H. Auden)

     Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
     Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
     Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,
     Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

     Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
     Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
     Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
     Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

     He was my North, my South, my East and West,
     My working week and my Sunday rest,
     My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
     I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

     The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
     Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
     Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
     For nothing now can ever come to any good.
     

                          ____________________