'Dad was different when he returned from Aberfan'

Memories of the Aberfan disaster still cast a shadow over a Herefordshire family 60 years on, with a woman recalling how her father was "different" after helping at the scene.

Wednesday marked six decades since a colliery spoil tip collapsed onto the Welsh mining village, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and nearby homes and killing 144 people. Of those who died, 116 were children.

Lynne Hunter was seven years old and living in Ross-on-Wye when her father, Eric Owen, a police officer, was called to help with the rescue effort.

"Dad was part of a mobilisation unit, which worked with the civil defence and they were training when they were called to Aberfan," she recalled.

Hunter continued: "There were 150 officers called from across the Midlands, of which dad was one."

But when he returned home nine days later she vividly remembers a change in her father.

"Dad was gone for nine days. When dad came back he was different but I can't exactly explain why," she said.

She also recalls the atmosphere in her family's home in the days after the disaster.

"We knew about Aberfan before the news but I just remember a darkness descending over my home.

"Mum was talking in quiet whispers and it must have been coming up to half term because my grandmother was there too.

"She used to take me back to Wales so it was really poignant."

After her father died, Hunter wrote a eulogy in which she described Aberfan as "the biggest, saddest challenge of his career".

She said her father was part of the mobile unit sent to the village and was the officer who found the school register amid the devastation.

Among documents she later found was an extract written by her father about the experience.

It read: "This experience will live with me for the rest of my life."

Hunter believes the memories remained with him long after he left Aberfan.

"He didn't grieve in the way that the people who lost family and friends did because he didn't feel he was entitled to do that," she explained.

"That was their grief, so he chose out of respect and dignity not to talk about it and not to glorify it or act like a hero.

"I know without any shadow of doubt that my dad will have thought about that every day afterwards."

Describing her father, she added: "He was my hero."

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