Warm tributes paid to ‘timeless’ community activist

IT seemed as if the entire village of Augher passed through the doors of Carmel Mulrine’s home and wakehouse last month, as she bid her farewell to family and friends after a life well lived and well loved. Carmel, a proud native of Augher, was someone who always returned home regularly to her ‘country’.

From a young age, she had a thirst to see the world which brought her to work in Scotland, Canada, and Bangladesh.

While Carmel travelled the world throughout her timeless 76 years, she married a man from Derry, Jim O’Neill, and made Derry City her adoptive home for over four decades.

Always travelling with curiosity and with a lens for social justice, Carmel put herself into positions where she could learn from many viewpoints and worldviews.

This approach saw her working alongside First Nations communities in British Colombia and working with women in Bangladesh to establish themselves as breadwinners.

Along the way, she had a beautiful ability to connect on a deeply personal level while at the same time managing to challenge and change the structures that were sustaining injustice and inequality wherever she went.

Carmel lived life to the full, and from those early days of volunteering across the globe, and she enjoyed many jobs and professions throughout her life.

However, her proudest job was that of mother and grandmother, a role she carried out alongside Jim, with enormous pride in raising daughters, Gráinne and Maeve, and pouring love into their much loved grandchildren, Darragh and Naia.

Carmel believed firmly in Children’s Rights, and always made sure children were front and centre of everything, whether it was a family party or a key decision being made within a community on behalf of children.

This conviction and belief in children’s own agency was informed by her own loving parents, Mick and Molly, by her own playful and mischievous spirit, and by a strong social justice outlook.

Gaelscoil na Daroige said, “Naíscoil and Gaelscoil na Daroige were beneficiaries of Carmel’s unquenchable thirst for equality when she helped the school source support and funds in the absence of recognition from the Department in the early days of the school.

“Carmel was a visionary who would see the problem and become the solution. Carmel never sought any recognition, and preferred to remain in the background.”

This thirst for justice informed many of the other roles Carmel worked in throughout her long and colourful career, including positions with Derry Children’s Commission, Derry Healthy Cities, National Federation of Youth Clubs, Family Planning Association and within the Community Work department at Magee.

She put herself into positions that enabled her to advocate for and promote the voices of those affected by the issues, with a particular interest in working with children, women and in the area of health.

According to Foyle Pride, “Carmel was a great champion of equality, social justice and empowerment of the community.

“Carmel worked until her last breath supporting groups within the community to take control of their own future.

“Carmel valued every person in a room; she always tried to help us look from a different angle to see how others were thinking, and never prioritised one voice over another.

“She was a tireless advocate for Pride and supported Maeve (her daughter) and our community at every pride.

“She was as likely to provide an amazing banana bread as she was a research document to underpin a call for fundamental change.

“Carmel always looked at the positive, she wanted a better world for all of us and created happiness and positivity in all she did.”

Carmel’s holistic approach to health manifested through her efforts in helping to establish Derry Well Woman, where she brought her unique view of a world which offered more than a clinical view of health, but advocated for a more holistic approach.

Derry Well Women said of her, “Carmel has given a lifelong commitment to the service of others in every capacity that I have known her to work. Her care for others was fundamental to her being. I have never known anyone quite like her to exhibit a profound interest in others.

“Not only to be interested in, but to act on it, in practical, supportive and spiritual ways.”

It was stated at Carmel’s Funeral Mass, “One title she would have been proud to associate herself with was disruptor. She wasn’t slow in challenging the system for the betterment of the ordinary person and she wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power, and she was fearless in doing so.”

Carmel has left a significant legacy behind her, leaving her mark on the people and places she met along her way in very personal, playful and political ways. She is survived by her husband Jim, two daughters Gráinne and Maeve, and her two grandchildren Darragh and Naia.

Carmel will be sadly missed by her brothers, sisters, brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, and her many, many friends across the world.