TRIBUTES have been paid to a mother-of-17 who had more than 200 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Helena Valliday, the matriarch of the well known Valliday family, was laid to rest in Belfast’s City Cemetery following Requiem Mass in St Peter’s Cathedral yesterday, on what would have been her 68th wedding anniversary.
Mrs Valliday, who was known as Lena, she died peacefully aged 87 last Thursday surrounded by children and grandchildren.
Mrs Valliday’s 11-year-old son Kevin died after being caught up in a booby trap bomb in the Divis Flats area in September 1982.
The bomb, which detonated on a walkway of the sprawling flats complex, also claimed the life of 14-year-old Stephen Bennett and a 20-year-old soldier, Kevin Waller. The INLA admitted responsibility for the attack, which caused outrage.
Two hundred people marched from Divis to the IRSP offices on the Falls Road in protest.
Three more of Mrs Valliday’s sons also died in tragic circumstances.
In 2009 she spoke to The Irish News after dissident republicans threatened two of her sons.
In 2017 she again spoke out following the death of her great-granddaughter Chloe Hutchings (16) from a suspected drugs overdose. Chloe had lived with her in her west Belfast home, where the door was always open to visiting family and friends.
Dozens of tributes to the formidable great-grandmother were published in The Irish News over the past few days. Mrs Valliday’s daughter Catherine said her mother had “the patience of a saint and a heart of pure gold”.
“She would always lend a helping hand, if there was something she could do. Friends can come, friends can go but there was no friend like my mummy,” she said.
