Brian Hobbs (21), from Whitehall, was the baby of the Hobbs family. With his charming and sociable nature, he was a perfect fit for his flourishing career in hospitality.
Introduction
Brian was born the youngest member of the family of Thomas and Marie Hobbs. The last of seven children.
Background
When my brother was born my Mam had not picked a name for him so when she brought him home and placed him in my arms, I was 14 years old, and she asked me what shall we call him? I just said Brian out of the blue for no reason. That day was the beginning of my role as Mammy Pat: that was what was to come further down the line. When Brian was a few months old he developed a strawberry naevus mark on his forehead which was quite swollen and large. Over the next year he was seen by a specialist about removing it, so he had a fringe to hide it. Subsequently he had it removed and so he was allowed to step out of the "wrapped in cotton wool" time.
About 18 months later, my mother was diagnosed with TB and was hospitalised for a year. I was pulled from school for that year to mind all the younger ones: Brian, Gerard, Ann, Peter, and John. Brian had forgotten Mam by the time she came home from hospital, as none of us could see her for that year. Hence me being called "Mammy Pat".
Brian continued into school like his brothers and sisters before him. Gardiner street Junior school and St Canice's Boys, and O Connell’s Secondary School for a year. My family had moved in 1971 to Yellow Road, Whitehall, and Brian attended St Aidan's Secondary school on Collins Ave. He went through school fine. He wasn’t very sporty: he leant more towards the academic side of things. He loved music and clothes. Around the time of his Inter Cert exams, he started getting restless, wanting to leave school. Mam and Dad insisted on him doing the Leaving Certificate or a course. Brian chose a course on catering with ANCO and he was accepted. He was accepted in Rockwell Hotel and Catering college in Co Tipperary. Brian took to this like a duck to water.
Brian spent two years there and excelled. He went on to win a Gold Medal for Ireland when he represented Ireland in his catering section on 'Wine Waiting’. During his time in Rockwell, the college placed students in catering places during their term breaks. Brian worked in the Barge restaurant on the river Barrow and the Great Southern Hotel in Galway to name just two. It was all experience for the students.
When he finished his two years, and having received the medal, he was sought after to join a catering team going to Zurich in Switzerland. At that time, the old Jurys hotel was sold, and moved to Dublin 4, but the contents of the James Joyce Bar were shipped to Zurich. And so, Brian began his career journey. Life was good for him.
Brian loved his work and made many friends and did some travelling to places like Paris, etc. He celebrated his 21st birthday in Zurich on 11th November 1980, with friends and parties. One of the gifts he received was a handmade leather belt with the letter ‘B’ as the buckle. Brian finished his year in Zurich in December 1980 and returned home to continue his career. In a very short time, he had secured a job in Sachs hotel in Donnybrook. He looked on that as a step up his ladder. Lots of testimonies from his Rockwell colleagues suggest that Brian was ambitious and was going places in the catering world.
With being back home, Brian caught up with all his friends and enjoyed life in the locality. He loved dancing and socialising. Brian had grown into a fine young man, good looking, full of charm, the chat, very confident and he loved clothes and to look well – in other words, he fancied himself.
While Brian settled very well into work and his social life, he found settling into home life with my parents harder. At this stage Dad was 73 years of age and Mam was 66 years of age. Brian had been away with college and Zurich for three years now. Bedtime and rising times were very different from Brian’s, especially with work and socialising hours. Brian decided that if he was having a late night, he would stay with my brother Gerard who was just above Brian in age, and they were also very close. Gerard was married and living on the South Circular Road.
Stardust Fire
On the night of the Stardust dance competition, Brian had friends taking part. His boss would not give him the time off, with it being St Valentine’s night in the hotel industry. His boss relented at the last minute and Brian took a taxi to the event.
None of us knew he was going. My Mum and Dad were in the Stardust complex that night in the Lantern Rooms. My dad was receiving a Trade Union medal for longterm service to the union and work with senior folk.
At the union dinner in The Lantern Rooms, the smell of smoke was mentioned and the lady who had collected my mam and dad said to them she would drop them home. The Lantern Rooms were cleared very quickly when it was discovered there was a fire in the adjoining "Stardust". Mam and Dad took the lift not knowing Brian was there. Mam remembered the smell and sight of smoke as they came out.
It was a habit of mine to ring my Mam every morning and ring my brother Peter - who lived at home - every evening. Next morning, I rang Mam as usual, and we talked about the fire and how happy they were to be home safely and how they had enjoyed themselves in the earlier part of the evening. Mam mentioned that Brian had not come home but we both thought he had worked late and had an all-nighter as he sometimes did. We talked in general, and she said my brother Peter was working that day. He never worked on a Saturday, as Davys was normally closed on Saturday, but he was catching up on work. As the morning went on, I was listening to the radio and TV. I got an uneasy feeling for some reason, intuition maybe. But it was a sense of doom. I rang Mam again on the pretence of something or other and asked had Brian come home yet? She said no again. I felt uneasy. So, I rang Gerard and his wife Bernie said that Brian was not there, so I rang Peter in work with my concerns. Peter rang around some friends and rang Brian’s work which said that Brian had gone to the Stardust. And so, started the day that was to change our lives forever.
By late morning Peter, with my sister Ann and her husband Victor started the rounds of visiting all the hospitals. I stayed put at home close to the phone and awaited news as they continued their search. Having covered the hospitals to no avail it was suggested that they go to the morgue, so Peter, Ann and Victor joined the long queue outside the morgue. This account is what my late brother Peter related to me word for word on the night after the fire when we called over to my parent’s home.
There was a lot of Garda in the morgue and a nun inside the building. Each body, or what was left of each person, was laid out row by row on black bags with numbers on each. Brian was number 29. They spent a long time going up and down each row trying so hard to find Brian. Ann and Peter had stopped at what was left of someone with a piece of a leather belt with a buckle with the initial B, also a piece of a jacket. The Garda came over to them and asked did they recognise any items? They were looking for a body so were not sure. How could you be sure of anything in such a horrific scene. The Garda suggested to them to look around at what was there and maybe decide this was Brian. I can’t even imagine how Peter, Ann and Victor felt in such circumstances, but they got the courage and said, yes, this is Brian.
They had to sign some forms and then they came out into the daylight to allow the next family or person to go in and look for their son, daughter, brother, or sister. Peter rang me from the phone box outside to confirm that he had found Brian and arranged for me to contact all the other family members. Anthony was in London, John in Belfast, Gerard at home in Dublin.
Peter, Ann and Victor went home to Whitehall but decided not to tell Mam and Dad just yet. I think they had to digest it all themselves. It was one of the hardest things to ring my other brothers and tell them what had happened to Brian: he was the youngest, the kid, the baby.
Since then
I think I went into shock and started to arrange what we needed to do, without really processing what happened. I seemed to repeat the story so many times to family and friends. Anthony had to arrange flights and John had to come down from Belfast. Peter rang me at home later in the afternoon for myself and Denis to come over to Mam and Dad’s because all the names of those identified were coming up on the screen during the Nine o’clock RTÉ News.
When we arrived in my family home that evening, Peter, Ann, Victor Gerard, and his wife Bernie were there with Mam and Dad. I think she realised that something had happened. Peter said he had just spoken to the two of them but that it had not sunk in until the news started, and Brian’s name came up on the screen. What happened next, stays with me to this day.
My dad just started to wail and scream, "NO! NO! NO!". Mam just stayed in stunned silence staring at the screen as the names scrolled down. I think for the rest of us, it was just shock and so real and very hard to comprehend. I can’t remember much about the rest of the evening, but we went on home at some stage to collect our boys from a friend with a promise to come back again tomorrow. We lived on the southside of Dublin.
The next day was Sunday, I went over to Mam and Dad’s to start making arrangements with Peter for Brian’s funeral for as soon as my other brothers and families could come home. I remember so clearly sitting on Brian’s bed in the room he shared with Peter and Peter looking at me fairly distraught asking, "Did I do the right thing?". I was stunned and asked what he meant, and what he said next was heart-breaking. "Maybe it wasn’t Brian I identified, maybe he’s out there somewhere, maybe he is too scared to come home, maybe he has done a flit, is sleeping it off somewhere?".
Such was the pressure Peter felt and such were the harrowing circumstances he had found himself in. I tried to reassure him he did the right thing, while feeling within me the same doubt that Peter felt but couldn’t voice it or even think about it. We talked with Mam about the funeral as Dad was just too distraught to even talk about Brian. It was decided that Peter and I would go to the undertakers on Sunday afternoon and arrange for the funeral. We decided on a removal on Monday and funeral mass on Tuesday to allow for everyone to come home.
We went down to the funeral home in Ballybough to make arrangements. It was our first time to ever do this. As the funeral director went through the details, we had decided on St Fintan’s in Sutton. One of the questions was would Brian be wearing a habit. In those days that was the norm. Peter answered very sharply, "No, we have nothing to put in it," but I said yes, as I knew my mother would ask that question when we got home. Sure enough, when we got home mam asked what colour habit, when she looked at the receipt. When I said blue, she was pleased as she said it would match his eyes.
Mam and Dad wanted to see Brian at the removal, but I had to tell them that the coffin was closed as Brian’s face was very badly bruised. Mam accepted this as much as she could - she was quite a practical woman. My Dad did not accept it. He really wanted to see Brian. Such lies I told at that time to both my parents, while keeping it together for everyone else.
Most of the next few days are a blur as so many people called and phoned, and we were all exhausted. We also had the press and TV crews outside our door. At times it felt like it was someone else’s funeral. On Monday morning, I answered the door to Mr Haughey who called to see us. As I opened the door to him, he turned around and waved at all the press and TV crews: it was like a photo-shoot for him. My father was pleased to see him, but I had to get all my brothers out into the back garden, as there was plenty of muttering starting about him being in our home. He promised he would do everything he could for us, and that he would find out how all this happened and said if we needed him to just call. We did not need him at all.
Ours was the first funeral of all the Stardust victims, as far as I know. Outside the church and inside there were hundreds of people: family, relatives, friends, some of Brian’s work colleagues flew in from Zurich, and also friends and staff from Rockwell College attended. On the morning of the funeral, my Dad would not leave the house and refused to go to the funeral until he saw Brian. It took some time and some cajoling him, but we got there in the end. In the church there was lots of Government people - for what reason I don’t know - but press and TV ensured they were seen there. The ceremony passed in a blur as so many people came up to us all. The cemetery was the hardest part for us all. My Dad was inconsolable. Mam was just very stunned and shocked by the magnitude of it all, as were all the rest of us. I said earlier it seemed like someone else’s funeral not ours. At times, I would have loved the funeral done again for the family. Over the next few days everyone went back to their lives in as much as we could for the time.
Within the next few weeks, a tribunal was organised to look into what happened that night. In the meantime, my brother Peter, sister Ann and brother-in-law Victor, John Keegan, Vincent Hogan, Jimmy Kiernan, and some other family members formed the "Stardust Relatives Committee" to represent the families and to get to the bottom of what happened and why, and how our loved ones had died.
Over the next few weeks my mother was convinced Brian would walk through the door. My Mam and Dad went to Galway for the weekend the following Easter for a break. While there, she was looking for Brian because that was where he had worked in the Great Southern Hotel. While there, she told me, she tapped two boys on the shoulder, thinking they were Brian, until they turned around.
My father had the beginning of dementia. Just after Brian’s death he was assessed by Dr Ivor Browne who diagnosed the fast onset due to unresolved grief for not having seen Brian’s body and not being able to grieve properly.
For all of the rest of the family, life went on but had changed forever. The dynamics of our lives and family would never been the same again. My mam and dad lost their child and we lost our youngest brother, the kid, the baby in such awful circumstances. There was a sadness about us all that was to stay with us and cause a huge chasm in most of my family members. This manifested itself in alcohol abuse, mental health issues and, finally, early death for some.
Conclusion
I am the last left of seven children, and it is very hard. Brian had a great future ahead of him. Having done so well in Rockwell and Zurich. He was ambitious and going places in his chosen career, and all that was taken from him and my family. Brian became just a number. In the following years we discovered he had become a dad. His girlfriend in the Summer of 1979 had become pregnant and his son was born in 1980. With Brian’s tragic death, and the circumstances around it, we did not know about this until many years had passed and, by then, it was too late for my parents to welcome a grandchild. Brian would never live to be a dad to his son and a Grandad to his son’s two sons - so a whole generation was lost. Also, for us, a brother, an uncle to our children, a cousin to nephews and nieces.
It is important for me to find a certain closure for all my family, some answers and finally, justice. Remembering today the Hobbs Family members who are not with us anymore: Thomas, Marie, Anthony, John, Peter, Ann, Gerard and of course Brian. R.I.P.
