Like Lincoln, John Hume belongs to the ages

By a stroke of luck it was either the day of the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement or the following day when the results were in.

My brother and I were visiting our parents in Derry and we all went for a meal in a restaurant in Fahan, halfway between Derry and Buncrana. The owner was a close friend of John Hume, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and basically everybody important, and le tout Derry dined at his restaurant.

We were sitting in the waiting room for a table (you waited for your table outside the dining room).

Mr Hume was there waiting for his wife, Pat, with a life’s work completed look on his face. I’ll never forget it.

My father, a doctor, knew Mr Hume as occasionally he would visit my father in connection with a constituent who had fallen foul of the RUC or the British army (Mr Hume didn’t know much about medical cards or that kind of thing. Constituents would come into his surgery and say “is Pat in?” if they wanted to talk about things like that).

My father spoke to Mr Hume briefly so my brother and I took the opportunity to introduce ourselves and congratulate him on the GFA.

We left it at that as he was definitely in switched off mode, as he was fully entitled to be.

Now, like Lincoln, John Hume belongs to the ages.

Michael Clarke, Dublin

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