NOREEN HILL, who cared for her unconscious husband Ronnie at home for nine of the 13 years he survived after being injured in the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing, has died of cancer.
She had suffered breast cancer before the bomb. She spent every night by her husband's bedside for four years while he was in hospital, and then with help from her family opened a nursing home in Holywood, Co Down, so that he could be nursed within his family.
Ronnie Hill died just before his 69th birthday in December 2000. The duration of his coma gave the couple a poignant celebrity, with photographers repeatedly picturing them together and interviewers asking Noreen's opinion as the conflict ended.
Nobody has ever faced trial for the Enniskillen bombing.
An unguarded, direct woman, she always said her Christian faith had helped her eschew bitterness. After the Omagh bombing she urged the bereaved and injured not to be bitter, for their own sake.
Noreen Hill was born in Kilkeel, and met her husband at a church social when he arrived from his home in Bray, Co Wicklow to teach in Mourne Grange Preparatory School. Soon afterwards the couple trained as missionaries, and spent a total of six years in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
When they returned in the mid-1960s, Noreen looked after their four children while Ronnie taught in counties Tyrone, Down and Fermanagh, where he became principal of Enniskillen High School.
On Remembrance Day, November 1987, he took his usual Bible class for teenagers close to the War Memorial before letting them out in time for the service.
Noreen had been very ill during chemotherapy and stayed at home to start her Christmas baking. The IRA's 40lb bomb exploded before the service began, injuring more than 60 and killing 11 people, all Protestant and all civilians except one police reservist.
Ronnie Hill was the delayed 12th fatality. In their home, less than a mile from the cenotaph, Noreen heard the explosion.
"I cried out. I remember wailing in the kitchen. I knew Ronnie had been hurt. I knew he was lying injured somewhere."
He was an impeccable dresser: rescuers saw one of his black-gloved hands sticking out of the rubble. He had a fractured skull, broken jaw and fractured pelvis but was conscious for two days before slipping into a coma.
In their years in the nursing home, Noreen read the Bible to him because it seemed to comfort him. She was convinced he occasionally understood her. She relayed television news to him and did her own running commentary on Test cricket matches.
She always insisted it was only natural that she would devote herself to caring for her husband. "We loved each other . . . We made vows to each other in front of God, 31 years before he was hurt in Enniskillen. And I simply did my best."
She is survived by her children Keith, Averil, Marilyn, Siobhán and by her grandchildren.
(Elizabeth) Noreen Hill, born Kilkeel March 25th, 1935; died April 2nd, 2008