I never saw her again... I want to know who she is

December 1969... Don Browne, aged 10, with Derry Development Commission vice-chairman Stephen McGonagle and the little girl he is anxious to track down.

The “powers that were” would have genuinely thought they were doing a good turn, writes Eamonn Baker.

They brought a couple of “orphans” down to switch on the lights of the city’s Christmas tree at Guildhall Square.

One was a girl from the children’s home in Mourne Drive, in the Waterside, and the other was a boy from the St Joseph’s Boys’ Home at Termonbacca.

It was an outing. They received a selection box, a toy and, then, were returned to their respective homes.

It was December 1969. They were photographed for the ‘Derry Journal’ standing alongside the recently appointed vice chair of the Development Commission, Stephen McGonagle. It was probably hoped that the children would be delighted with their outing, their picture and their “fifteen minutes of fame”.

The boy was Don Browne, now aged 62. In 1969, he was ten-years-old. From high up on the hill at Termonbacca , he could see his own home in Southend Park. But for reasons not clear to him then or now he was housed in Termonbacca - a “home boy”, sometimes to be mocked and slagged for this during his primary school days at the Long Tower.

Years later, in Long Kesh, reading the ‘Derry Journal’, in a nostalgia piece featuring photos from down the years, Don came across that old black and white picture of himself, the little girl, the kindly grown up, with the Creggan bus in the background.

Years later, he was able to get a copy of that picture, him to the left, the little girl to the right, that civic dignitary in the middle.

Behind this trio sits the Creggan bus, 8844 AZ, which used to leave from its stop by Magazine Gate, long before Guildhall Square was pedestrianised.

Don has written a poem in which the reader can feel his sadness at being brought on this quick outing to the Guildhall, feted for a short while and, then, whisked back to Termonbacca, high on the hill, far away from the bright city centre Christmas tree lights, far away from Southend Park.

And who was the little girl? How might he find her? Perhaps by writing this poem and sending it to the same Derry Journal which published this photo back in December 1969.

○ Eamonn Baker can be contacted at [email protected]