In memory of…

Sometimes I come across items  that suggest a story, or warrant more investigation. Alas,  my time is limited, and I have a huge store of images that are part of a never-to-be-finished ‘to-do’ list. One such item was an image at the shrine on Mám Éan (Maumeen). I’ve been there plenty of times, usually as part of a hike across the Maumturk mountains. Mám Éan is a mountain pass between the hills of Binn Ramhar (or Cnoc na hUilleann Thoir) and Binn Chaonaigh. There is a shrine to St. Patrick there – an open alter, a tiny chapel and the stations of the cross. A few days after Christmas, back in 2008, I went for a walk up to the shrine. The cloud hung low over the mountains on either side, and there was no-one else there. Behind the alter was a collection of rosary beads, cards and even messages chalked onto old slates – all little messages or momentos left by visitors. There was a card there – a laminated picture of a young US fireman. I suspected that it was someone who had perished in the 2001 World Trade Center atrocity, and when I got home, I googled his helmet number. I didn’t get any useful information, and I put it aside, to be looked at again, sometime in the future. Another visitor to the same grotto was Joe Kearney, a documentary maker who decided to investigate the story behind the picture in the grotto.

The result is a rather beautiful, if sad, programme about Joe Hunter [link here]- one of the many firemen who didn’t make it home that day in New York. And the connection to Mám Éan ? Joe’s mother grew up in the house nearest the gate to the grotto – a house I have probably passed many times myself.