John Kelly: The Affects

A person from Derry who I would like to introduce is John Kelly. Mr. Kelly is an education director at the Free Derry museum but before I go into the now I would like to talk about his childhood. He grew up on the bogside in Creggan. Although a poor neighborhood, he described Creggan as a good place to bring up children because there were so many of them with such big families and all the children would play together. He grew up in a family of 14. He had nine sisters, two brothers, and both of his parents were present in his life. Mr. Kelly grew up in a devout Catholic household where he and his family attended mass every week and his mother would attend mass every single day! He said his family was a fair family in which, “If one person got a pair of socks one week, another would get a pair of socks the next week, and so on.” Like many families in Derry, the Kelly family lived off of welfare because of the serious lack of available jobs but as Mr. Kelly said, “it was tight, but it was lovely.” Further on in life, Mr. Kelly married at the age of 20 to his beautiful wife. When he was 23, he attended the Bloody Sunday march where over 16 thousand people marched against the internment of over 300 people who were to be jailed without trial for being assumed as IRA soldiers. Michael Kelly, his brother, was shot and killed on this day. His and his family’s lives would never be the same. After the incident, he and his family came together to mourn, and to take care of his mother who took Michael’s death the hardest. Now, Mr. Kelly works in the Free Derry Museum where he educates visitors about the gruesome details of the troubles and Bloody Sunday on a daily basis. Mr. Kelly is also working with the Apprentice Boy’s siege museum to hopefully educate younger students on both sides of the story in Derry and have a more peaceful future. He said, “We are looking forward to the future, but we don’t know what the future is.” This statement is strong because right now, and the near future, is going to be a tumultuous time for Northern Ireland, and the people living here can only hope that peace is on everyone’s minds.