Aberfan disaster: Survivors mark 50 years since tragedy with memorial service
SUSAN Maybank’s dramatic rescue by policeman Victor Jones was captured in an iconic photograph flashed around the world.
Susan Robertson took her grandson to a memorial service to keep the memory for the new generation
Fifty years later and still living in the village that holds so many memories, she honoured her lost schoolmates in Aberfan yesterday.
Now a grandmother and known as Susan Robertson, she took her 10-year-old grandson Mackenzie Robertson to a memorial service to help keep the memory alive for a new generation.
Mackenzie was only a year older than Susan, then eight, was on that fateful day when he was given a school project on the 1966 disaster.
Susan's dramatic rescue by policeman Victor Jones was captured
Susan and Mackenzie laid a wreath in the Aberfan cemetery and shared tears
It brought home to him and his classmates how the tragedy struck and how his beloved grandmother was affected.
Since then he has watched documentaries, read books and created a scrapbook about the disaster and earlier this week he gave a talk about it to 100 schoolmates at Tir-y-berth Primary School in the neighbouring Rhymney Valley.
Mackenzie was only a year older than Susan on that day when he was given a project on the disaster
I'm overwhelmed at the way Mackenzie has taken such an interest in what happened
His grandmother, now 58, said: "I'm overwhelmed at the way Mackenzie has taken such an interest in what happened and so proud of him.
"It felt so right that he should come with me to the cemetery to lay a wreath because no-one should ever forget what happened that day."
Policeman Victor Jones pictured with nine-year-old Susan following the disaster
Susan and Mackenzie laid a wreath in the Aberfan cemetery and shared tears for the lost generation of children buried there, many of them Susan's playmates.
An entire generation was almost wiped out when 150,000 tonnes of coal waste slid down the hillside before smashing into Pantglas Junior School on October 21 1966.
A total of 116 children and 28 adults were killed in the disaster.