Family aims to ensure late son's legacy lives on

A bereaved father who helped bring home the bodies of almost 2,500 people who died abroad is aiming to "copper-fasten" the future of the charity set up in his son's name.

Colin Bell and his wife Eithne founded the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust following the death of their son Kevin in a suspected hit-and-run in New York in 2013.

As he approaches his 73rd birthday, Colin Bell said they have hired staff to take over daily repatriation duties, but he will be still be "very much still involved" in the trust.

He explained that he and his wife were not stepping down, but they plan to take a "step back" from the 24-hour demands of their voluntary roles.

For the past 13 years, the couple have channelled their grief into helping people across the island of Ireland to bring loved ones home for family funerals.

In an interview with the Irish News, Colin Bell said they were moving away from the the day-to-day running of charity but would stay on as trustees.

"It's a privilege to be able to help families at the worst of times," he told BBC News NI.

"But... we haven't been able to have holidays as such because I was always on the end of a phone.

"And the phone could have rung at three o'clock in the morning and I would have answered it."

The pensioners, from Newry city, have the support of their other adult children who are also trustees of the trust, but demand for their services has become relentless.

"Because we've taken so many people home, people all over Ireland are aware of us. I think we've touched most parishes in Ireland, north and south," Bell said.

"At the moment we're doing over 30 repatriations a month and they could be from anywhere in the world."

He believes if the rate continues, the trust will reach the milestone figure of 2,500 repatriations by the end of May, and it is a good time to consider the future.

"Now, 13 years on, we want to cement the charity – make sure that it will continue after we're gone.

"We're not getting any younger and so we have now employed a director of operations and an operations officer and so that actually frees me up.

"I'm not 24/7 on the end of a phone because we've now got help and it means we can step back a bit and have a bit more time to ourselves."

But the retired teacher said he was definitely not retiring from the trust, insisting he will still be "coming to the office every day as usual".

The lasting impact the couple have had on grieving families is clear from the testimonies of those they have helped.

Among them is Laura McDermott, whose brother Joseph died in a crane accident on a building site in Australia in 2015.

"Words wouldn't even do it justice because we were in such a pit of grief, shock, trauma," she recalled.

"We wouldn't have even known what to do... how to organise getting my brother home from Australia. We wouldn't have even known how to start."

Neither the British nor Irish governments fund the cost of repatriating their citizens in the event of a death abroad, and those cost can be considerable.

McDermott explained that within hours of learning of her brother's death, her family received a phone call to say that KBRT was "paying for everything".

"To have that weight lifted off our shoulders was just incredible," she said.

Over the past 10 years, her family has held annual fundraisers on her brother's birthday, raising about £100,000 in total for the repatriation charity.

But the assistance the Bells provide is not just financial or logistical - McDermott recalled the couple's kindness when her family needed emotional support.

"We just wanted to talk to people who had been through what we were going through.

"And he [Colin Bell] said: 'No problem Laura, we'll come down to your house, we'll meet you and your mum and dad.'

"They hugged us, they looked at Joe's picture on the fireplace, they sat down, they had a cup of tea.

"They talked to us about what we were going through, what they had gone through a couple of years earlier."

McDermott said the compassion the couple bring, despite living with their own tragedy, makes them very special.

"They're going to meet these grief-stricken families and they must have to go through their own grief over and over again," she said.

However, Colin Bell said dealing with the bereaved is "what we signed up for so we're very, very happy to do it".

He appreciates meeting families who have benefited from the trust, and intends to continue meeting those who fundraise for them.

"If people are kind enough to raise money for us we like to thank the people, and I'm sure they like to be appreciated as well," he said.

The couple hopes the "restructuring" of the trust and hiring of staff will allow them to attend more fundraising events, which still require lots of travel and logistics.

"For example, I'll have five different cheque presentations in Kerry next weekend," Bell explained.

"And I'll be free to do that and I'll not be on the end of the phone as I normally would have been."

Bell added the structural changes are aimed at "copper-fastening the future" of the trust.

"We want to make sure in 20 years' time, in 40 years' time, that Kevin's legacy will still be going."