Fr Des advised everyone he met to record their story, for their family to look back on or to be deposited in a community archive.
He kept his own diary’s both written and recorded.
At night he would retire to his bedroom at the top of his three story house, smoke 2 Gauloises French cigarettes, and record the events of that day on an old reel to reel recorder. The recordeings document who he met that day and e
vents within the community.
This extract from August 1971 was recorded just a few days after the Ballymurphy Massacre.
In it he describes visiting the field where Fr Hugh Mullan died and seeing children lay flowers at the spot. At the end he wishes that a memorial could be built to all the people who died, a centre for reconciliation that would bring people together.
What’s amazing about it is Des was thinking then of a memorial to all who died in a centre for reconciliation, he didn’t get the support for it at the time but trough the good work of the Black Mountain Shared Space Project that vision will now become a reality. They starting building a 6.5 million cross community centre for reconciliation on that site.