Keyes, who was scheduled to marry the next Saturday, was forced to postpone the ceremony. But on March 27 the valiant Donna Marie and husband-to-be Garry McGillion, 24, who was also seriously injured by the blast, walked down the aisle in front of 180 guests at Omagh's Sacred Heart Church. Their wedding, by now a worldwide news event, drew a crowd of hundreds.
"As we arrived they let out a huge cheer," recalls Donna Marie. "And that started the people inside the chapel cheering. It was incredible."
That the couple made it to the altar at all was nothing short of a miracle. Last August, Keyes had gone into Omagh's retail center to buy the last thing she needed for her wedding—shoes for the flower girl. She brought Garry with her, along with his sister Tracey and Tracey's 21-month-old daughter, Breda, for whom the shoes were intended. Then at 3:10 p.m., an explosion, set off by a radical splinter group from the Irish Republican Army, ripped through the crowded marketplace, killing 29 people and injuring 250 others. "I don't remember a bang, but I was forced to the ground," says Garry. "The smell of burnt flesh hovered above everything."
In an instant, people were screaming and buildings were reduced to rubble. Garry tried to rescue Breda, who had died at the scene, from her stroller despite burns on one-third of his body. Tracey was also terribly burned. Donna Marie, who suffered severe lung damage, was so badly scorched she was given a 20 percent chance for survival and remained in a coma for 6½ weeks.
Within hours she was airlifted to Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, where her face was reconstructed in multiple operations with skin grafts taken from the few places on her body that were not charred. "Going ahead with the wedding became a really important goal," she says now. "Whatever the bombers had done, they were not going to ruin my life."
Even today, much of Keyes's body is swathed in bandages, which have to be changed every other day, an excruciatingly painful process. For another 18 months she must also wear a clear plastic mask, pulled uncomfortably tight, up to 23 hours a day to protect her healing skin. "There was anger at first at what had happened to me," she says. "But then I realized that being angry wouldn't turn things back."
Keyes grew up in Omagh, a picturesque rural community of 46,000, 68 miles from Belfast. The second of three children born to electrician Malachy Keyes, 49, and his wife, Patricia, 47, a homemaker, she showed her doggedness early on by competing in physically demanding Irish dancing contests throughout the region. Later, she divided her time between a job as a sales assistant at Iceland Frozen Foods in Omagh and work with mentally disabled children.
McGillion, whom Keyes met eight years ago through friends, is also a fighter. He is, in fact, an ex-amateur boxer turned mechanic, and he was strong enough to leave Royal Victoria's burn unit after nine weeks. The couple now live in a contemporary three-bedroom brick house that is a short walk from town. They spend their energies on getting well enough to return to work. "I would not wish not working on anyone," says Garry. "It is so boring."
Both accept the fact that they have become symbols and are going to be stared at. Sometimes it's difficult when people on the street want to hug Donna Marie, forgetting, says her father, Malachy, "that 65 percent of her body is damaged."
The bomb, says Garry, is "part of our lives. We can't forget it." Nor do they want to. Always in favor of peace in Northern Ireland, the McGillions, who are Catholic, are more committed to ending the troubles than ever. "Before this happened," says Donna Marie, "I would simply have prayed for peace. But today I would fight for it."
Alec Foege
Tim Dawson in Omagh
- Contributors:
- Tim Dawson.
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