Madam, - I write to echo the opinion expressed by at least two contributors to your columns in recent days: that a memorial should be erected to Jean McConville, the widowed mother of 10 children who was abducted, shot and buried in secret by the Provisional IRA.
My understanding is that this woman knelt and said a prayer beside a mortally wounded British soldier. In doing this, she would have known that she was risking danger and hostility (though she might have had difficulty in imagining the severity of the "punishment" that she actually faced).
Either way, she was surely a martyr in the plainest sense - risking her life to carry out a simple Christian duty, and paying the ultimate penalty as a result.
As Mary Raftery wrote on January 20th, a public memorial to Jean McConville is needed "as a permanent reminder to counter those who persist in their selective and dangerous views of past crimes".
I believe that a plaque or statue should be erected in her honour. There are several suitable sites: in our capital city; at the site where her remains were found; or at some place with which she was associated in life. The most powerful site, perhaps, would be at the spot where she said the prayer that sealed her fate.
I pledge a contribution, and am confident that there would be no lack of subscribers. - Yours, etc.,
DANIEL KELLY, Whitebeam Road, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.