My connection to Duncan Edwards, victim of the Munich Air Disaster of 1958, is centred on my mother’s memories of him but my understanding and subsequent representation of ‘my Duncan’ is a negotiation of family reminiscences and his depiction across a wider public network.
I cannot be simply considered as a family commemorator because I have consumed and in part created a ‘public Duncan’ beyond my family unit. I am influenced by the memories and accounts of others beyond my ancestral narratives. As a researcher this is a requirement for a thorough and comprehensive analysis, but it is also necessary to establish my own commemorative narrative. ‘My Duncan’ is defined through my own commemorative narrative, which is influenced by my family connections but also the wider commemorative network.
I was drawn into Duncan’s commemorative network only because of my ancestral link to him. I am not a big football fan, I don’t support Manchester United either. It is just my family connection that has compelled me to develop my research. My mother has not felt the need to publicly venerate her ancestor when many others appear to have done so. Her memories of Duncan are of his ordinary daily childhood life that made him real to me in a way that reverential accounts of his heroism and talent made him inaccessible. I have been granted a privileged perspective that suggests that I am more able to negotiate the ‘sacredness’ of Duncan with an authoritative objectivity.
Now being a second generation commemorator I preserve and restate the facts and first-hand accounts of Duncan, with a closeness that paradoxically allows for impartiality. My custodial role is to preserve first-hand ‘truths’ but also as a researcher I deconstruct these narratives through my own personal perspective.
Although first-generation commemorators may relate truthful ‘witnessed’ narratives, the role of the second generation commemorator is to install those truths within the commemorative network in a present day context for the future. I have to use my own methods of transmission and translation where I feel that I am both creating memories and preserving memories simultaneously. I have set myself the task of reinforcing the past within the present, whilst considering the past from the present day gaze.
My role of commemorator as researcher enables me to interrogate this phenomenon from a unique perspective. It is a complex activity fraught with difficult negotiations around subjectivity and objectivity.
I am a ‘commemorator as researcher’ and a ‘researcher as commemorator’. I acknowledge that this is a potentially a contradictory phenomenon, but one that can be explored from within the commemorative networks of Duncan Edwards, as a unique element of the research itself. My connection to Duncan has greatly influenced my identification with and affection for my adopted hometown of Dudley. This has been reinforced through my research that has necessitated frequent visits to the town but also through the persistent referencing of the town within the commemorative network. As a researcher I have to acknowledge that although my research is fundamentally a social and cultural analysis of Duncan’s commemorative network it is also a commemorative act in itself.
As I continue to create my graphic novel about Duncan’s commemoration, I realise that it will stand as an act of commemoration – like the flowers left on his grave or the pilgrimage to see his statue in Dudley. It is a personal response to loss coming from a place of love.
Rest in peace Dunc.
Background
21st February is the anniversary of Duncan Edwards' death from the injuries he sustained in the Munich Air Disaster on 6th February 1958. Duncan was 21 when he died and engaged to be married. He is buried in his hometown of Dudley.
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