15 lanterns released for Fiona Pender

Social media site Facebook turned Josephine Pender's tribute to her daughter Fiona, who disappeared 15 years ago this week, into quite an event. Josephine Pender last saw her daughter, who was seven and a half months pregnant at the time, on August 22, 1996, at her flat on Church Street in Tullamore. Her disappearance has still not been solved. Last Monday Fiona's grieving mother Josephine planned to release 15 lanterns - one to mark each year Fiona and her unborn child have been missing - as a tribute, along with her son John at the green behind their house in Tullamore's Connolly Park. One comment on Facebook later and the guest list grew considerably, however. "John put it up on Facebook and within a few minutes there were 40 people on," Josephine said yesterday (Thursday). After one neighbour said she'd love to be there at the lantern release Josephine said things "just snowballed". After some quick arrangements just under 60 of Fiona's friends and neighbours gathered to release the lanterns at 10pm last Monday night, with an addition sixteenth lantern released in memory of Fiona's paternal grandmother Betty who died last weekend. A couple of bottles of wine were added to the event, so anyone who wanted to toast Fiona could do so, and overall Josephine said she's "very happy" with how the anniversary of her daughter's disappearance was marked. Speaking after the commemorative event Josephine said she won't let up her efforts to find out what happened to her beloved daughter. "I'm still looking for her," she said. "We've been working tirelessly over the years doing our own bit." Josephine also recounted her own last memory of her daughter. "I can picture her standing at the door waving goodbye," Josephine said. "We'd been out shopping. We saw baby clothes so we got them. Fiona got her gripe water and her Sudocrem and whatever, and I had seen a little article that would be nice on the baby and I got it for her. We went back down to where she lived. My husband was due home so we just stayed a little while, then John gave her a kiss and I gave her a kiss goodbye and we crossed the road and we were waving at her. I can just see her little face in the doorway and that's my last vision of her. We were to meet up the next day but that didn't happen; she wasn't there." Now Josephine is renewing her appeal for anyone with information regarding her daughter's disappearance to come forward. "I want for the people out there who know what happened to Fiona and haven't said, for them to come forward, even at this late stage," she said. "It would bring a conclusion to all of this for Fiona and for myself and my son."