Corkman Finbarr Archer on dedication to graves of Air India disaster victims

Corkman Finbarr Archer talks to Helen O’Callaghan about his decades-long dedication to the grave of an Indian mother and daughter lost in the Air India disaster – and muses about what inspired him, and how it gives him solace to think Annu and Rena Alexandra’s names won’t be forgotten. 

Well-known Cork figure, Finbarr Archer, pictured outside Cork City Hall, is best known today as the chauffeur to the Lord Mayor, a role in which his warmth and good humour have made him a familiar and respected presence around the city.  Picture: Chani Anderson

June 23, 1985, I was in Ballincollig on my day off when I heard about the Air India crash. I was working for a city undertaker and, when I went back into the city, my boss said we needed to go up to the airport... an emergency plan had been put in place.

All the emergency services had kicked in and they were starting to bring in the victims. They were transferred to a temporary mortuary in the airport, and then to the mortuary at CUH — it was Cork Regional Hospital then.

It was so sad, so sad to think of those poor people who had got killed. So many lives lost, 329 people lost their lives on flight 182. I was tasked with documenting details of the 132 bodies recovered. A coordination room was set up in Jury’s Hotel, and in the Regional Hospital. The families started arriving in the following days to try to identify their loved ones.

It was a very dramatic, very sensitive time. You were thinking of the victims, of their families… I don’t know, to be honest, what was going through my mind, I was just focused on what I had to do. Nothing would ever prepare you for something like that, an air disaster. It was unreal — in a lifetime you couldn’t ever imagine seeing something like that.

Annu Alexandra and her daughter Rena are the only two victims buried in Ireland, in St Michael’s Cemetery, Blackrock. Only on the day they were buried did I realise there was no family there for them. Families had come to all the rest. There was no one here for them, no one to visit. When they were being buried, I decided, ‘I’ll look after the grave.’

I didn’t want them to be in a lonely place, be forgotten, far away from their own family. That’s why I’ve done it for the last 40 years, so that they weren’t just left, alone… Annu’s husband and son were never found — the family was travelling together from Montreal to Delhi.

I go to their grave every two to three weeks. I clean the headstone, maintain the grave, tend it, I pray.

I knew nothing about them. I got on to different places, searching for relatives of the Alexandra family. It went out in newspapers, it went worldwide. Nothing ever came.

I do have a feeling of peace, knowing they’re not left alone. And they have Cork people thinking of them.

In June 1985, Finbarr Archer was working as an undertaker when he was stationed at the makeshift morgue in Cork following the Air India Flight 182 disaster. In the aftermath, he personally arranged the burial of two unclaimed victims and has continued to tend their graves at St. Michael’s Cemetery in Blackrock ever since. Picture: Chani Anderson.

Every year on June 23, I hold a commemoration ceremony and prayer service at the grave. Representatives of the Defence Forces, the army and navy, the emergency services, come. I’ve had the Barrack Street Band playing The Last Post, and a piper plays the pipes from the cemetery entrance to the graveside, and he plays The Lament at the graveside.

The Indian community and some local Cork people come, as well as the lord mayor of Cork — altogether about 60 to 65 people. 

After this year’s commemoration, Cork City Hall got an email from a woman who had just heard on Canadian TV about this commemoration service for a mother and daughter. 

She had been a friend of Rena’s when she was small — Rena was 10 when she died. She’d never known what had happened to Rena and her family, never known they were on that flight. 

Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Fergal Dennehy and Finbarr Archer at the memorial ceremony in St Michael's cemetery, Blackrock, Cork for those who died in Air India Flight 182 disaster when it came down off the Cork Coast in 1985. Picture: David Creedon

She thanked me for looking after the grave, she hopes to come to Cork. That was the first contact, after 40 years. It was amazing to hear from her, someone who knew Rena as a friend when she was a little girl. On Rena’s side at least, she has a friend now who will remember when they were growing up.

I think of all the family, Rena being 10 — I think of girls at 10, full of life and happiness. I’m sure Annu was a beautiful mother and wife.

They’re not buried in the same grave — father and son with mother and daughter — but they’re together somewhere. We’ll all meet our loved ones some day, I do believe that. I received the Shamrock Lotus Award from an Indian cultural group this September, it was for kindness and humanity. I was honoured and humbled to receive it. 

Piper Pat McCarthy of the National Ambulance Service leads the procession for the memorial ceremony at St Michael's cemetery, Blackrock, Cork for those who died in Air India Flight 182 disaster when it came down off the Cork Coast in 1985.- Picture: David Creedon

I was saying ‘Do I deserve it? Surely there’s someone more deserving?’ My family were thrilled, my wife Mary — we married in 1984, the year before the Air India crash — we have a son and daughter.

Annu and Rena have almost become like family too. I have conversations with them, at the grave, in my own little way. I say ‘Hello,’ and ‘How are you today?’ I bring different flowers, whatever ones are in season, and I put them in planters. And before I leave, I say: ‘May you be given a bed in Heaven.’ 

It has given me happiness to look after the graves of these people I never met, to keep their names alive. They won’t be forgotten by me, or by others who know where the grave is.

• The Cork Sarbojonin Durgotsab (CSD) — a group celebrating members of the Indian community who have made Cork their home — presented Finbarr Archer with the first Shamrock Lotus Award for his “extraordinary compassion, humanity, and service to society”, in recognition of his “gentle care and remembrance for the family of Annu Alexander”.
• The CSD said it hopes it will be a reminder that “kindness knows no borders and remembrance has no end”.