Joe Fitzpatrick remained a son, never making it to the point in life when he would become a father. That had been denied him by a loyalist assassin in a small neighbourhood that was by February 1975 no stranger to loyalist violence. From the April evening when Scruff Millen died from a hail of bullets half a century ago, the Lower Ormeau quickly gained an unsolicited reputation as a murder mile. Virtually every step of a journey through the area doubles up as a vantage point from which to view the location of where another took their last step. So few streets, so many deaths. We had just arrived back at the junction of the Ormeau Road and Essex Street from a disco in the Ravenhill Road and heard the shots that claimed Scruff’s life. The plague had arrived.
Growing up in the area could be exciting for a teenager. But what excited us terrified our parents. When their children went out the door, mothers and fathers could only wait in anxious hope that when the knock came to the door it would be that of their child returning, rather than that of another to inform them that their child would not be returning.
On the chilly February morning that Joe left his home for the last time, it is very possible that his father Dan was not so anxious. The IRA had called a ceasefire that had come into effect the previous day. There was hope, perhaps, that loyalists too might ease up. It was not to be. The plague was as virulent as ever. Joe with a brush, a loyalist with a gun, he stood no chance. The streets he cleaned, forever more marked with his blood.
On many occasions I have thought about Joe’s final walk from his home in Cooke Street to Cooke Place, a few yards down the street towards the river. Joe didn’t walk as much as he padded. Laid back, with an almost feline-like gait, he embodied what it was that made cool cats. At 19 he was two years older than me, a lot at that age, a step above in the teenage hierarchy. He always seemed so knowledgeable, advanced for his years, philosophical long before we ever knew what philosophy meant. Today when I look at my son who is 18, the grim realization kicks in of just how young Joe was. By the criterion of today, he wasn’t long out of childhood, barely into adulthood.
Growing up in the area could be exciting for a teenager. But what excited us terrified our parents. When their children went out the door, mothers and fathers could only wait in anxious hope that when the knock came to the door it would be that of their child returning, rather than that of another to inform them that their child would not be returning.
On the chilly February morning that Joe left his home for the last time, it is very possible that his father Dan was not so anxious. The IRA had called a ceasefire that had come into effect the previous day. There was hope, perhaps, that loyalists too might ease up. It was not to be. The plague was as virulent as ever. Joe with a brush, a loyalist with a gun, he stood no chance. The streets he cleaned, forever more marked with his blood.
On many occasions I have thought about Joe’s final walk from his home in Cooke Street to Cooke Place, a few yards down the street towards the river. Joe didn’t walk as much as he padded. Laid back, with an almost feline-like gait, he embodied what it was that made cool cats. At 19 he was two years older than me, a lot at that age, a step above in the teenage hierarchy. He always seemed so knowledgeable, advanced for his years, philosophical long before we ever knew what philosophy meant. Today when I look at my son who is 18, the grim realization kicks in of just how young Joe was. By the criterion of today, he wasn’t long out of childhood, barely into adulthood.
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| Bridie & Gerry Joe's two remaining sisters |
I met him through the late Sean McDaid, who was the same age as Joe. They were good friends and dressed the way we wanted to dress, and eventually would. Trendsetters with Crombie coats.
I was a young republican prisoner in Magilligan when Joe’s short life ended. His death enraged me. My response to all of it enraged and bereaved others. Causes that might be worth dying for are rarely worth killing for. Joe didn’t die for a cause. He was killed for someone else’s cause. The most unfair and unequal of exchanges.
Drawing from the words of the writer Philip Gourevitch, Joe Fitzpatrick died not because he was guilty of anything but because he was born a this rather than a that; born into a society that treated him as a child of a lesser god. It is sometimes said that the worst time to have a son is eighteen years before a war. His father Dan would have painfully grasped the terrible significance of that.
It is so heartening that Joe is being remembered by the community in which he lived and died. A teenager then, had he lived he would be in touching distance of seventy now. In not too many years there will be no one left alive with a living memory of Joe. But his community through its commemorative plaque has immortalised him.
I was a young republican prisoner in Magilligan when Joe’s short life ended. His death enraged me. My response to all of it enraged and bereaved others. Causes that might be worth dying for are rarely worth killing for. Joe didn’t die for a cause. He was killed for someone else’s cause. The most unfair and unequal of exchanges.
Drawing from the words of the writer Philip Gourevitch, Joe Fitzpatrick died not because he was guilty of anything but because he was born a this rather than a that; born into a society that treated him as a child of a lesser god. It is sometimes said that the worst time to have a son is eighteen years before a war. His father Dan would have painfully grasped the terrible significance of that.
It is so heartening that Joe is being remembered by the community in which he lived and died. A teenager then, had he lived he would be in touching distance of seventy now. In not too many years there will be no one left alive with a living memory of Joe. But his community through its commemorative plaque has immortalised him.
