SOME years will forever be remembered. 1976 was one.
Northern Ireland was caught up in a tsunami of sectarian killings. The Reavey and O'Dowd murders were followed quickly by the Kingsmill massacre and then the UVF bomb at the Hillcrest bar.
The infamous Shankill Butchers were still murderously active and the British Ambassador, Christopher Ewart Biggs, was murdered by the IRA in Dublin by a landmine.
It was a sweltering summer but one of political upheaval too.
One incident from 1976 is burned into my brain.
Three innocent children died when a car driven by an IRA fugitive swerved into them after the driver was fatally shot by soldiers.
The children were Joanne (8), John (2) and baby Andrew Maguire, just six weeks old.
I was just 12 years of age but my mind could still process how children became collateral damage in battles waged by grown-ups.
I was also aware of those teenage children recruited into the conflict through the Fianna wing of the IRA. Today such recruitment would be considered a war crime.
Official records show that the first child to die as a result of the Troubles was nine-year-old Patrick Rooney.
Tragically, a further 186 children would follow.
No side had a monopoly on such loss. Sorrow shared transcends even the steep walls of sectarianism.
The loss of a child through violence is particularly poignant. Whilst the bullet stops, the pain travels on in the hearts of surviving parents.
July 1998 was another hot summer. Hot in temperature and boiling with political strife. David Trimble and the late Seamus Mallon were First and deputy First Ministers.
Mallon asked me to go Stormont to help with media. The Drumcree protests were like a bubbling cauldron of hate.
Loyalists attempted a coup in Northern Ireland by illegally blocking roads. They wrecked havoc on security forces, businesses and Catholics.
Premises were burned down, homes attacked and over 2,000 police and army were drafted into Portadown.
Within Stormont there was a sense of being under siege. There was also much sleeplessness.
Mallon, precipitative as ever, said there would be a loss of life as the organisers of the Drumcree protests were clearly losing a grip on shadowy extremes within loyalism.
And the inevitable did happen. Devastating news came through that three young children had died in a petrol bomb attack on a house in county Antrim.
It was even more horrifying when it was revealed they were three brothers, Richard (10), Mark (9) and Jason Quinn (8).
The event sent shock waves throughout a divided community. Collectively people caught a breath and came back from the brink.
But at what cost? I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. Children again paid the ultimate price for adult intransigence.
Last week's media footage of kids rioting brought back in full Technicolor the scourge and horror of violence.
It also demonstrated the all too fertile ground which exists for luring and manipulating disadvantaged youths into a sectarian hate-fest about which they know little.
Those rioting are the children of a hard negotiated peace. Any sectarianism or hatred for the other side was poured into them by adults who should know better.
The mainly loyalist youths involved in recent violence against the police, within their own community and across the political divide are not primarily concerned about Brexit, the NI Protocol or sea borders.
They are angry. But it's not an anger easily channelled into political activism. Nor is it an anger to be excused by babbling sociological codswallop.
Those who encourage street agitation own the consequences. Of course, the usual wind up and walk away merchants within unionism lit this touchpaper.
Unsurprisingly they are struggling to extinguish the fire and the police are not shock absorbers for political failure.
Today's child rioters can soon become tomorrow's paramilitaries. Why fight so hard for peace only to let it slip from the grasp of this generation?
