In October 1993 Gerry Adams carried the coffin of IRA member Thomas Begley. The bomb the 22-year-old carried into a fish shop on the Loyalist Shankill Road, killed himself and nine innocent people.
The very public gesture kept the Republican movement intact at a time when Mr Adams was secretly trying to move from violence, towards a ceasefire, and politics.
The very deliberate decision helps to explain why he is feared, loathed and admired.
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He replaced Ruairi Ó'Brádaigh as Sinn Féin president in 1983. But there was a clue to his significance 11 years before.
As a 23-year-old internee, the British government released him and flew him to London for what were failed, secret negotiations with the IRA. A 21-year-old Martin McGuinness was also involved in those 1972 talks.
From the 1981 hunger strikes, as Sinn Féin grew, the influence of the McGuinness/Adams axis increased.
Mr Adams says he was never in the IRA. Mr McGuinness claimed he left it after his release from prison in 1974.
Throughout the Troubles decades, they were inextricably linked to its campaign of bombing and killing.
One of its darkest chapters is the abduction, murder and disappearing of people from within its own community.
In 2014 Mr Adams made himself available for questioning in connection with one of those victims, Jean McConville. The DPP decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution.
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Consistent with his complexity, Mr Adams would ultimately have a crucial role in disappearing the IRA.
A truth he did acknowledge in his Ard Fheis speech - the SDLP leader John Hume, was key to helping him shape the political settlement called the Good Friday Agreement.
He let his friend, Martin McGuinness, take centre-stage in the power-sharing administration formed with the DUP.
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In 2009 he told how his father had sexually abused family members. In 2013 he was a prosecution witness when his brother, Liam, was convicted of abusing his daughter and sentenced to 16 years in jail.
His decision to contest the 2011 Dáil election, increased Sinn Féin's profile and under his leadership it has grown. But his tenure in Dáil Éireann has often been uncomfortable.
He struggled on economic issues, on his dealings with the family of prison officer, Brian Stack who was killed by the IRA ... on how the republican movement dealt with Máiría Cahill and other abuse and bullying claims.
Mr Adams has moulded Sinn Féin into a formidable political force.
Other parties, south and north, see it as a rival and a threat.
Unlike him, that reality will not go away.
