'Poignant remembrance' as Dromore comes to a standstill to mark 50 years since three family members were killed by the IRA
Dromore came to a standstill on Tuesday evening in a poignant commemoration marking 50 years since the deaths of the Herron family in an IRA atrocity.
Their family-owned drapery shop was bombed by paramilitaries on April 7, 1976. William Herron, 64, his 58-year-old wife Elizabeth and their youngest daughter, 26-year-old Noeline, were asleep in their home above the store at the time of the early hours blast.
Tuesday night saw a service of remembrance and a wreath-laying ceremony at the former site of their businesses, attended by a huge turnout of Orangemen.
A parade then made its way to the Co Down town’s Orange Hall, were wreaths were laid at a memorial plaque to the Herron family.
Among those marking the solemn anniversary and the impact the family’s shocking death continues to have in Dromore was deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. In a statement on social media, she said she believed it was important to remember “three people filled with love and humanity”.
She stated the event was “a poignant evening of remembrance” to mark “a horrible and horrifying terrorist attack that took the lives of three people who loved each other and who were much loved”.
Added the deputy First Minister: “We gathered on the 50th anniversary, joined by many members of the family.
The turnout was huge, and a poignant and fitting memorial as a demonstration of both the continued shared horror of the events but also of the love and the respect the family are held in.
“We must never forget, nor allow the past to be rewritten. Horrifying and wrong then, as it is now.”
Before Tuesday night’s commemoration, grieving members of the surviving Herron family said the murders “sent shockwaves across a community which had been relatively unscathed as a consequence of the terrorist campaign up until this point”.
The drapery shop, they said, did a roaring trade, leading William to move to larger premises on the corner of Bridge Street and the Square in Dromore. Among their lines, the store manufactured marching band uniforms and regalia, doing business with Orange and Black lodges across the province.
Stated the family: “Herrons was a name that was respected and William was also a proud member of the Loyal Orders himself.
“Meanwhile Elizabeth had many interests outside her role as a homemaker, from Meals on Wheels to the PWA and Artana WI. Noeline was the youngest sibling of five and was very much involved in the family business; she worked in the Dromore shop which sold household goods, curtain material, fabrics and so on.
“All three members of our family had a strong Christian faith; they were committed to supporting each other, at home, in business, through church and via social activities.
“As a family we do not want them to be remembered solely for how they died, we want their goodness and humanity to be their legacy. It was never anyone’s right to target a family-owned business for reasons motivated by sectarian and ethnic hatred of difference.
A man and two teenage sisters were jailed for the murders of the Herrons following a trial in 1981, though the women were released in 1985 after being given Royal Prerogatives of Mercy.