Sean Murray: Stardust families have reclaimed their loved ones from the darkness

In telling the world about their lost loved ones, the families of the Stardust victims have brought those who lost their lives back into the light, writes Sean Murray

Relatives of those killed in the Stardust fire gather at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.

How on earth do you get over something like that?

Like thinking your daughter was babysitting that night only to find out she’d gone to that place instead.

Or letting your daughter skip the family wedding abroad to stay home to go dancing with her friends.

Or knowing your brother had managed to get out but went back inside anyway because he heard a girl screaming for help.

Of knowing the last time you’d seen them was a normal day. Where you ironed his shirt for him. Listened to music on the landing. Had a fight where you said something you didn’t mean.

All of the pen portraits that opened the fresh Stardust inquest were unique in their own way. Long. Short. Some delved into inner family life. Some talked about the work their loved ones had taken up and the music they listened to. Some mentioned their nicknames, their boyfriend or girlfriend, their favourite football team.

Some described going to the morgue, to get the worst news they could’ve scarcely imagined ever getting. Some described their devastation at not being able to see their child again, a closed coffin at their funeral to “remember them as they were”. Some described how insufficient they felt previous investigations into the fire had been.

But what they all had in common was that clear dividing line in so many lives.

For parents. For siblings. For children. For friends.

There was before the Stardust. And after the Stardust.

Nothing was the same as it was before. The void left by those 48 young people who perished in that terrible fire is on a scale that is really unimaginable to most people living in Ireland in 2023

Those who spoke for each and every one of those who died over the past month should be commended — for their courage and fortitude in standing up to bear the tale of their decades-long pain and grief to the nation, and for the dignity with which they did so, giving a voice to the 48 who have so often just appeared to many as photos in a collage or names on a page.

They created vivid impressions about what life was like, what the family home was like, what their beloved sibling or child was like. And what it was like to have them taken away.

Each day, tears would flow across the courtroom as the details poured out.

To pick just one or two feels like a disservice to the others, but these are just some examples that give an idea of what was heard.

 Siobhan Kearney (who spoke for her brother Liam Dunne), Alison Keane (who spoke for sister Jacqueline Croker), and Susan Behan (who spoke for brother Johnny Colgan).

Johnny Colgan was a handsome fella. People were drawn to the natural charmer like a metal is drawn to a magnet, according to his sister Susan Behan. His party piece was the “Hucklebuck” while Susan’s was “Big Spender”, and she could still see Johnny standing at Nanny Colgan’s fireplace singing away earnestly and tapping his foot to the beat.

He liked a pint with the lads and playing football. “But he had a side that very few people saw, a kindness, a gentleness," his sister Susan said. “When walked into a room it lit up. He instantly filled the room with love. It radiated from him.” The 21-year-old had gone to work with his dad as a painter-decorator. His father’s last memory of Johnny was seeing him with his wages and warning him not to stay out late because he had football training in the morning. His sister remembered seeing him the day before, and how excited he was to become an uncle.

But after Johnny left the house to go to the Stardust nightclub where the big disco dancing competition was on, his family would never be the same again.

Neither would dozens of other families.

Derek, Lorraine, and Richard McDonnell hold a picture of Lorraine's 16-year-old sister Teresa outside the inquest. 

Richard McDonnell said his family “lost everything that night” when 16-year-old Teresa went out and never came home.

He recalled his mother’s “howling screams” when gardaí called to the house with some of Teresa’s belongings and how it “ripped through our whole family”.

Within a year of the fire, their father was “wrecked with cancer — not from life habits but from seeing his daughter lying in a body bag and being identified by her eternity ring she had got from my mother, a miraculous medal and brown scapulars”.

Their mother’s pain was visible on her face, Richard said, and her “heartbreaking, never-ending sobs filled our home”.

“The hearts of our mother and father were shattered that night, their souls stripped bare,” he said.

Parents who’d leave the light on, or not be able to fall asleep until their child had come home, were never the same again. So many described how the Stardust ripped through their home.

 Families of the victims of the Stardust tragedy:  Maurice Frazer who lost his sister Thelma, Christine Keegan & her daughter Antoinette Keegan (Christine lost her daughters Martina, 16, and Mary, 19), Eugene Kelly who lost his brother Robert Kelly, Patricia Kennedy who lost her Daughter Mary (Maire) Kennedy who was 17, Bridget McDermott with daughter Louise McDermott daughter (Bridget lost 2 sons, William 22, George, 18, and a daughter, Marcella.

The McDermotts lost three children in the fire — Willie, Georgie and Marcella. Their father, an off-duty fireman, was forever wracked with guilt. Their mother sobbed at the sight of the coffin at the funerals, asking “why did he take three?”. It was like an earthquake tearing up the foundations of a home life.

“How do you wake up from a nightmare like this?” their sister Selena asked.

One by one, families took to the podium in the Rotunda’s Pillar Room and bared their souls.

Ordinary families. Forever haunted by one night. Of the decisions that led to it.

 Always wondering if they could’ve done something differently. Could they have stopped them going that night? Could they have gotten out? Did they think of us while it was happening? Would they have kids now?

It all comes back to that question, how on earth do you get over something like that?

There is no definitive answer to this. But finding answers, at last, to what happened in the Stardust that night at these inquests could go a long way for families desperately in need of closure.

And, as the last few weeks have shown, these pen portraits have been an essential prelude to the Irish State finally examining this in depth again. Because the victims have been put at the centre.

Their real, full lives that they lived and could’ve lived. Giving them their voice back that the Stardust had taken away from them. When they were identified by a number on a body bag. A piece of clothing. Or jewellery.

And it left the feeling that conducting a full, thorough examination into how they lost their lives in such a tragedy now, even all these years on, is the least the State can do.

As the late Marie Kennedy’s sister Michelle put it: “Marie has been lost in the smoke and devastation of the Stardust for too long. The decades-long fight for answers has taken far too much from us already. So today we are taking her back and remembering her life.

“We are reclaiming her from the darkness and despair and bringing her back into the sunlight where she belongs.”