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In Memoriam, Eamonn Quinn

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K. E. Dennis

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Oct 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/8/97

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Sometime in the early summer of 1982, in Tullamore - where
I'd been living since the midwinter of that year - I met
Eamonn Quinn.

Eamonn was from Downpatrick, a student @ the Ulster
Polytechnic, studying to become a community worker. Somehow
he'd landed in Tullamore, working for the Summer Project - a
day program for young children, sponsored by the local
council & the Junior Chamber. My friend Seamus Dooley, then
a reporter for the Tullamore & Midland Tribunes & an officer
of the JC, talked me into helping the Project as well.

So I got to know Eamonn that summer: a young lad of twenty
years, soft-spoken & a bit shy, but w/ a charming smile, a
fierce wit & a fondness for the craic…wildly popular w/ the
children, & the subject of some sly comment among the young
women of the town, always ready as they were to take note of
a young fella w/ a kind manner & a handsome face….

But Eamonn went back to Belfast & his studies @ the end of
that summer, bruising a heart or two in the process; & a few
weeks after, I too left Tullamore, returning to London to
write up my master's thesis before I could return to Ireland
the next spring.

And then Eamonn Quinn was murdered - shot to death in his
flat in Belfast sometime around 2:00 AM on October 8,
1982. One more tit-for-tat reprisal killing. One more
sacrifice to the insane logic of ethnic hatred.

This is the strange nature of memory…that for fifteen years
I have been haunted by the face of a young lad I barely
knew. That the morning of October 9, 1982 is as vivid to me
as if it had been last week.

…We arrive at the British Library; put down our bags and
books. Eric hands me the Guardian he’d been reading on the
bus. I’d seen the headline - the thirteenth murder in barely
a month; felt a sickening sense of familiarity, made some
dismayed remark. And so, because this is of Ireland, this
is what I turn to first.

And read your name.

I am standing in the Reading Room, trembling, as if a cold
wave has crashed against me, & then I am stammering the
words at Eric, the impossible words. I must get the Irish
papers. I must run. I am running. I am running up Charing
Cross Road, running toward the newsstand at the Leicester
Square tube station, the one I know takes the Irish Times,
out of breath but unable to slow to a walk, telling myself
over and over again, gasping it aloud at every corner where
traffic forces me to stop, “Quinn is a common name. Eamonn
is a common name....”

Fumbling for coins, grabbing the Times from the rack &
seeing then, there on the front page, the picture that
doesn't quite look like you, that for one crazed and hopeful
moment allows me to think it is someone else, until I see
“...from Downpatrick...,” & “..second-year student at the
Ulster Polytechnic...”

And then I am stumbling, clinging to a signpost, choking on
your name, on the blunt fact of your murder.

I choke on it still, Eamonn: whenever I hear someone speak
as if lives matter less than lines on a map or colors on a
flag…when I hear some cool explanation for murder as a means
to a goal….when the shameless lies are spoken about
brutality & genocide...when someone whispers an excuse for
bigotry & hatred, whatever the cause…. & it is like the
taste of blood in my mouth.

Eamonn Quinn would have been 35 this year.

The children he charmed in Tullamore all are now older than
he was when his life was stolen. Most, I'm sure, don't
remember him.

But I do.

K. E. Dennis den...@saturn.montclair.edu

::We had fed the heart on fantasies,
::The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
::More substance in our enmities
::Than in our love....
:: W. B. Yeats (1928)
::
:: Meditations in Time of Civil War:
:: VI - The Stare's Nest By My Window

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<HTML>
Sometime in the early summer of 1982, in Tullamore - where I'd been living
since the midwinter of that year - I met Eamonn Quinn.

Eamonn was from Downpatrick, a student @ the Ulster Polytechnic, studying
to become a community worker.  Somehow he'd landed in Tullamore, working
for the Summer Project - a day program for young children, sponsored by
the local council & the Junior Chamber.  My friend Seamus Dooley,
then a reporter for the Tullamore & Midland Tribunes & an officer
of the JC, talked me into helping the Project as well.

So I got to know Eamonn that summer:  a young lad of twenty years,
soft-spoken & a bit shy, but w/ a charming smile, a fierce wit &
a fondness for the craic…wildly popular w/ the children, & the subject
of some sly comment among the young women of the town, always ready as
they were to take note of a young fella w/ a kind manner & a handsome
face….

But Eamonn went back to Belfast & his studies @ the end of that
summer, bruising a heart or two in the process; & a few weeks after,
I too left Tullamore, returning to London to write up my master's thesis
before I could return to Ireland the next spring.

And then Eamonn Quinn was murdered - shot to death in his flat in Belfast
sometime around 2:00 AM on October 8, 1982.   One more tit-for-tat
reprisal killing.  One more sacrifice to the insane logic of ethnic
hatred.

This is the strange nature of memory…that for fifteen years I have been
haunted by the face of a young lad I barely knew. That the morning of October
9, 1982 is as vivid to me as if it had been last week.

…We arrive at the British Library; put down our bags and books. Eric
hands me the Guardian he’d been reading on the bus. I’d seen the headline
- the thirteenth murder in barely a month; felt a sickening sense of familiarity,
made some dismayed remark.  And so, because this is of Ireland, this
is what I turn to first.

And read your name.

I am standing in the Reading Room, trembling, as if a cold wave has
crashed against me, & then I am stammering the words at Eric, the impossible
words.  I must get the Irish papers. I must run. I am running. 
I am running up Charing Cross Road, running toward the newsstand at the
Leicester Square tube station, the one I know takes the Irish Times, out
of breath but unable to slow to a walk, telling myself over and over again,
gasping it aloud at every corner where traffic forces me to stop, “Quinn
is a common name.  Eamonn is a common name....”

Fumbling for coins, grabbing the Times from the rack & seeing then,
there on the front page, the picture that doesn't quite look like you,
that for one crazed and hopeful moment allows me to think it is someone
else, until I see “...from Downpatrick...,” & “..second-year student
at the Ulster Polytechnic...”

And then I am stumbling, clinging to a signpost, choking on your name,
on the blunt fact of your murder.

I choke on it still, Eamonn: whenever I hear someone speak as if lives
matter less than lines on a map or colors on a flag…when I hear some cool
explanation for murder as a means to a goal….when the shameless lies are
spoken about brutality & genocide...when someone whispers an excuse
for bigotry & hatred, whatever the cause….  & it is like the
taste of blood in my mouth.

Eamonn Quinn would have been 35 this year.

The children he charmed in Tullamore all are now older than he was when
his life was stolen.  Most, I'm sure, don't remember him.

But I do.

K. E. Dennis             
den...@saturn.montclair.edu

::We had fed the heart on fantasies,
 ::The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
 ::More substance in our enmities
 ::Than in our love....
 ::                       
W. B. Yeats  (1928)
 ::
 :: Meditations in Time of Civil War:
 :: VI - The Stare's Nest By My Window
  
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