Heartbroken Wirral dad says “heads must roll” for the Hillsborough disaster which took two of his sons

Sep 19 2012 by Helen Hunt, Birkenhead News

THE HEARTBROKEN dad of two sons killed at Hillsborough disaster welcomed the Independent Panel’s report and said it was a day his late wife had fought for.

Jim Traynor lost his 16-year-old son Kevin, who was working as a joiner, and Chris, 26, who had been married for less than two years.

Now aged 83, Mr Traynor from Birkenhead, said: “I don’t care whose head rolls as long as we get justice for the 96 that died, men, women and children.

“The pain will live with me forever. I will never get over it. It’s in my mind all the time and I will never forget it.”

He said that wife, Joan, who died almost three years ago, had been a tireless supporter of the campaign for justice and member of the Hillsborough Family Support Group.

He said she would be “over the moon” about the report which proved their suspicions of a cover-up correct – although, he said, it would never be able to erase the pain she endured.

He said losing the two sons had a devastating effect on all the family and recalled once seeing his wife sitting on the side of their bed, sobbing, clutching a photograph of one of the boys in her hand.

He said: “Joan never got over it. When the bodies got brought home the match tickets were still in their pocket. We’ve still got them, she put them in a drawer at the side of her bed.

“I heard her one day, crying out, upset, sitting on the side of the bed saying ‘my baby, my baby’. I walked out of the room again. She was just sitting there with a photograph in her hand.

“She would always go to the cemetery, every week.”

Mr Traynor, also a Liverpool fan, said Kevin had remarked about the safety of the grounds at Hillsborough as soon as it was announced that Liverpool would be playing there.

He said: “He actually said ‘oh no, mam, not again’ because he had been the year before and got crushed.”

The IP report had said as many as 41 victims could have survived that day if the emergency services had acted appropriately but Mr Traynor said he “did not want to know” if his sons were among those who could have been saved.

Recalling the last day he saw them alive, he said it had been a ‘nice, sunny day’ when he watched the boys’ friends pick them up.

He still struggles to understand why they did not come back.

He said: “I feel glad that this has come out [the cover-up]. It had to be a cover-up, didn’t it?

“Kevin and Chris wouldn’t cause trouble. They were good people. There was no hooliganism about them.

“They went to a football match, a day out, and that was it. And they all came back in boxes.”