In a week in which the end of the Troubles was proclaimed, Vera McVeigh died without burying her son, who was 'disappeared' by the IRA in 1975, writes Susan McKay
Vera McVeigh, who died last Monday, kept two pictures on the wall of her kitchen in Donaghmore, Co Tyrone. One was of Padre Pio. The other was of her youngest son, Columba. He's striking a pose, doffing his white top hat, a rakish smile on his young boy's face. The photograph was taken by his older brother, Eugene, at a youth club talent show in Co Tyrone in the early 1970s. He was "disappeared" by the IRA in 1975. He was 19.
Vera was 82. She died from a massive stroke, having been unwell for several months. Her death struck a poignant note in a week which saw the restoration of power-sharing at Stormont, the tone set by images of Martin McGuinness and the Rev Ian Paisley smiling from ear to ear. There had been no peace for Vera, no smiles to mark the end of a long, hard journey. She was buried yesterday under a gravestone that bears the names of her late husband, Paddy, and of Columba. But Columba's body is not there. Her last three decades were haunted by his absence, and she died with her yearning to bury his body in the family grave unfulfilled.
Eugene McVeigh, a BBC cameraman, said his mother was "an ordinary working-class woman caught up in an extraordinary situation". Among the first to offer condolences were McGuinness and Rev Paisley. Local politicians praised her courage and fortitude in the face of personal tragedy.
She was born in 1925, the last child in a large Catholic family, on a small farm in Co Tyrone. Her father had died several months earlier, and her early life was hard. She left school early to work in the fields. The area was mixed, and Vera's memories of her girlhood included going to 12th of July parades and dancing to The Sash.
All her brothers and sisters emigrated. She got a job as a barmaid and met and married Paddy, a weaver at the linen mill at Castlecaulfield. They had four children: Eugene, Oliver, Columba and Dympna. When the children were young, Vera worked part-time in a local laundry. It was an ordinary family, trying to keep its head down as the Troubles raged.
WE NOW KNOW that in November 1975 the IRA abducted Columba from the rented house he shared off the South Circular Road in Dublin, or from a nearby pub. It shot him and dumped his body on the border between Monaghan and Tyrone. IRA sources told the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains that his body was in Brackagh Bog. Despite extensive searches, the last in 2003, it has never been recovered.
But for 23 years after he went missing, Vera did not know this. She and Paddy sat in their small council house, and waited for Columba to come home. Every day when the postman put letters through the door, Vera rushed to see if one of them had his familiar handwriting on it. She watched cars that passed, waiting for them to stop at her gate.
The couple didn't go on holidays, in case he returned when they were away. They bought birthday presents for him, and Christmas presents, and kept them for the day he'd arrive on the doorstep. Columba's dog, a setter called Dusty, sat on the footpath outside watching for him. Vera cried hard tears when the dog died. After a few years, she began to fantasise that Columba would turn up with his children. When people asked her how many grandchildren she had, she'd say she had nine that she knew of, and maybe more.
I interviewed Vera last year for a book I am writing. It was the last substantial interview she gave. Her health was failing. She had already had a series of minor strokes, and her family had to take the decision to put her into a nursing home a few months later.
When she spoke to me, she was full of grief, had almost given up hope that Columba's body would be found, and she was extremely angry. "I'm as sorry now as the day he disappeared," she said. "He was the apple of my eye." She told me about Paddy's death in 1997. "My husband really died of a broken heart," she said. "He never talked about Columba. No. He'd have walked out of the house sooner." A year after Paddy's death, Vera opened up a Sunday newspaper and read that the IRA had taken Columba and murdered and dumped him. "Twenty-three and a half years of all hell let loose and then this," she said. She was bitter about the killers. She was bitter about local republicans who must have known about or even been involved in the murder, but who had observed her anguish over the years and said nothing.
She was bitter about those who subsequently refused to respond to her pleas for information about the whereabouts of Columba's body, even though to do so would not lead to risk of prosecution. "In God's own time he'll deal with them," she said. "And I hope they'll be trailing in bogholes and gutters and that they don't get away handy." She rejected the IRA's 2003 apology to the families of the "disappeared".
Members of the family have their suspicions about some of those who may have been involved. One local IRA man used to serve Communion to Vera, who was a daily Mass-goer. A couple of years ago, a priest contacted the family wanting to know whether Vera would pray for an IRA man who, they gathered, was dying. They were appalled.
Two months after Columba disappeared, the IRA abducted a 19-year-old neighbour of the McVeighs. Kieran McCann was taken at gunpoint from a garage where he was working in another Tyrone village. He was shot in the head and his body dumped nearby. The IRA put it about that he had given information to the RUC - but it is widely suspected that he was murdered because his father had been in the British army.
Vera was also bitter about the fact that in all the years after Columba was reported missing, neither gardaí nor RUC officers came to talk to her and her husband. Eugene McVeigh feels that while it was the IRA who murdered his younger brother, others let him down, a view shared by the late Mgr Denis Faul, who described Columba as a young and innocent victim of "the whole sick society". Columba had left school early and worked in a local hatchery until the IRA blew it up. He was arrested in 1974 by the RUC on what the family believe were trumped-up charges of possession of ammunition. He spent a short time on remand at Crumlin Road prison. He moved to Dublin soon after his release, and got casual work. Eugene thinks his parents probably encouraged him to get away from the North.
After the truth about Columba's disappearance came out, the IRA rumour machine put it about that he, too, had been killed because he was an informer, the implication being that he had done a deal with the RUC after his arrest. "The RUC probably did try to use Columba to get information about the local IRA, even though this was putting him at risk," said Eugene. "But anyone who ever met Columba would know he wasn't involved, and knew nothing. He'd whistle republican tunes and swagger about a bit, but he was a very innocent, almost simple, sort of fellow." He pointed out that Columba was abducted, murdered and dumped in the Republic. "There was no sanctuary for him there," he said. Vera was disgusted at the IRA rumours. "The only thing Columba was interested in was lassies," she said.
MGR FAUL, WHO championed the cause of the "disappeared", was her friend. "He was my help," she said. "He and I would be on the one way of thinking." After the search of Brackagh Bog was abandoned, he offered to consecrate the ground, but Vera declined. If his body was found, a priest would be sent for, she told me. He was in heaven anyway, she said, and she would soon be joining him. "I'll take my chances with St Peter," she said.
Eugene had accompanied his mother to one of the searches. "It was harrowing and weird to see her there in that desolate place," he said. He said the whole family had been traumatised by Columba's disappearance, but his mother had borne the brunt of it. "Her life was destroyed. It affected her relationships with all the rest of us," he said. "It was sometimes hard to live with her anger." After Mgr Faul's death from cancer last winter, it emerged that he had asked the Rev Ian Paisley to take up Vera's case and continue to press the IRA to give her the information she needed. Dr Paisley met Vera last November and appealed to those who could help her to do so.
After her death, her son Oliver vowed he would take up his mother's quest. "I just hope the people who refused to come forward to help are proud of themselves," he said.
'Disappeared' lost and found
The IRA admitted "disappearing" nine people and provided information in 1999 to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains about the locations where some of their bodies had been buried.
Eamon Molloy'sbody was left in a coffin in a graveyard in Co Louth. The bodies of John McCloryand Brian McKinneywere found in a bog in Co Monaghan. Jean McConville'sbody was found in 2003 in a different location to the one named. Columba McVeigh, Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, Brendan McGrawand Danny McIlhonehave not been found.
The families of Charlie Armstrongand Gerard Evansbelieve they are among the "disappeared", but the IRA has not admitted responsibility. The body of Capt Robert Nairachas never been found.