There has been widespread sadness following the death of Mrs. Phoebe Doreen McDonnell, nee Campbell, born July 8, 1919 passed away on Easter Monday, April 10, 2023, in the London Borough of Croydon. She had lived for many years on Grasmere Road in Purley, Surrey.

Born ‘down below’ in the Campbell House in the townland of Derrykeeghan, she was the youngest child of William Hall and Phoebe Doreen (Coffey). She first attended the Derrykeeghan School and upon its closing Derryhillagh School.

After graduating from ‘the Model’ and passing the Civil Service Exam, she joined her sister Lily in London where both fully participated in the war effort. Her husband, John, died in 1972.

Known as Doreen, she was the last of the Hall Campbell family, preceded in death by David, Margaret Frances, James, Isabel Olive, Edith Muriel, Lily, and William Arthur.

Until 2004, she returned to Derrykeeghan each summer and often at Christmas and Easter especially when her mother was alive. Visits to Bundoran with its bracing breezes was a summer highlight.

In the evening she and Lily would often take a walk out to the road and turn left up the Mill Brae - “keep to the right and you can’t go wrong,” “now, can you see Devenish” - as far as the old school where it is said she taught on Sundays for the Garvary Parish.

In her later years and retirement, she enjoyed trips to Switzerland, Paris, the Lake District and Scotland and visited Lily and her family in Chicago. She toured Illinois, California, Kentucky and Hawaii, as well as the Canadian Rockies and Niagara Falls. She always remembered washing her hands in the mighty Mississippi, the Father of Waters, and seeing the young Blue Grass thoroughbreds.

Doreen’s ashes will be interred at the Greenlawn Memorial Cemetery in Warlingham, Surrey.

Her selected hymn was ‘Abide with Me’ and music at the service included ‘Fare Thee Well Enniskillen’.