By Devlin Smith, Contributing Editor/Staff,
www.interference.com
She’s a wife, mother, social crusader, environmental
activist, friend of supermodels and fashion plate. She’s the
stunning brunette with the million-watt smile charming world leaders,
soothing children and outshining the rich and famous, always impeccably
dressed and wearing amazing shoes. She’s Alison Hewson, and
she’s so much more than simply Bono’s wife.
Alison, known by pretty much everyone as Ali, was born
to Terry and Joy Stewart in Dublin on March 23, 1961. She grew up
on the city’s north side and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive
School where on her first day of school, Ali caught the attention
of Paul Hewson, soon to become Bono. The pair began dating when Ali
was 15 and Bono was 16. “It was November, actually 25 years
ago, I joined U2 and I started going out with Ali, so it was a good
month,” Bono recalled on “Larry King Live” in 2002.
Ali worked in motor insurance and with her father in his electrical
business after leaving Mount Temple. On Aug. 21, 1982, Bono and Ali
were married.
While her husband toured the world and made albums with
U2, Ali decided to pursue other studies at University College Dublin.
“I wanted that personal contact with people, the one-to-one,
the medical expertise, I still do,” Ali told the Irish Times
magazine in 2000. “But Bono’s life had taken off in one
direction and I realized that if I went into nursing I was going to
have to live in for four very intensive years. It would have been
too much on the relationship.”
Instead, Ali earned a social science degree with an
emphasis on political science and sociology. Two weeks before finals
Ali gave birth to daughter Jordan, born on May 10, 1989, her father’s
29th birthday. Infant Jordan and father Bono were there to watch Ali
receive her degree.
Ali planned on earning a Master’s degree in moral
and political ethics, but the birth of daughter Memphis Eve on July
7, 1991 put further schooling on hold. Instead of studying politics,
Ali’s next move was to become an activist.
After the Live Aid concerts in 1985, Ali and Bono traveled
to Ethiopia to see the situation there firsthand. “Ali and myself,
we went down there to do anything,” Bono told BP Fallon. The
couple worked at an orphanage for a month, writing songs and plays
to teach the children lessons about things like health and hygiene.
In 1986, Ali and Bono traveled through Nicaragua and El Salvador as
the countries dealt war and political upheaval.
In the ‘90s Ali began her work related to the
Sellafield nuclear plant, a British plant that sends waste water into
the Irish Sea, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. To protest the
building of THORP, a Sellafield site where nuclear waste from all
over the world would be collected, Ali organized a publicity stunt
where U2, with Greenpeace, donned radiation suits as they delivered
drums of contaminated mud from the Irish Sea.
In 1993, Ali went to Belarus to participate in the creation
of “Black Wind, White Land,” an award-winning documentary
that detailed life in Belarus in the years following the explosion
at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Ali’s experiences in Belarus
furthered her passion for the Sellafield cause. “Anyone who
lives 600 kilometers around a nuclear installation should be concerned.
If it happened at Chernobyl, it could happen anywhere,” Ali
told Hot Press. “And the point is that the fallout from the
Chernobyl explosion was carried on the wind, with 70 percent landing
on Belarus. That’s exactly what could happen in relation to
Ireland if there was an explosion in Sellafield.”
Since 1994 Ali has been patron of the Chernobyl Children’s
Project, an Irish charity that works with children affected by the
disaster by raising money for needed operations and sometimes even
finding adoptive parents. One child, the now 10-year-old Anna Gabriel
who was born in Belarus with deformities due to radiation exposure
suffered by her mother, was adopted by a couple in County Cork and
is Ali’s goddaughter.
To mark the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster
in 2002, Ali fronted a campaign to get households across Ireland to
send postcards to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles
and Norman Askew, chairman of British Nuclear Fuels, to shut Sellafield.
“Britain is experimenting with our lives and we’re not
even allowed in the debate,” Ali told The Guardian. The campaign
was an overwhelming success with 1.2 million of the 1.3 million households
in Ireland sending cards to the three officials. Ali hand-delivered
hers to Blair’s home.
Ali’s been the somewhat reluctant recipient of
many honors for her work. In 2002, she and Adi Roche, founder of the
Chernobyl Children’s project, were conferred with honorary Doctor
of Laws degrees from University of Ireland, Galway. The Irish Labour
Party approached Ali to run for president of Ireland in 2004, but
she declined. “For one thing I’m not sure I’m qualified,
and for another I’ve got four small kids to bring up first,”
Ali told the BBC. “On top of that, my husband says we couldn’t
possibly move into the president’s official mansion and set
up home in a smaller house.”.
In the midst of all her work for Chernobyl Children’s
Project and Shut Sellafield, Ali gave birth to sons Elijah Bob Patricius
Guggi Q on Aug. 11, 1999, and John Abraham on May 20, 2001. Soon after
John’s birth, Ali jokingly assured the Irish press that she
and Bono would not be having more children.
With all that she’s done and will do, it’s
hard to categorize Ali Hewson. She’s not overly concerned with
labels, though, she just wants to make a difference. “I don’t
want to end my life feeling I’ve only looked after myself, that
everything I did was to protect myself,” she told the Irish
Times magazine. “I want when I die to believe that I’ve
achieved what I was supposed to achieve, that is to help other people
in whatever way I could.”
Update by Lies Rosema (webmaster)...
In the spring of 2005 with the help of Bono and designer
Rogan Gregory, Ali launched EDUN Apparel, a clothing line of high-end
organically made clothing. Edun apparel is available at select department
stores such as Selfridges, Barneys, and Saks. Their garments are manufactured
in ethically run factories in developing countries. “We are
really trying to establish a business model with Edun...We want to
prove that you can make a profit, while running a business in a responsible
way...I would prefer to know that the clothes I buy for my children
weren't made by someone else's children. I want to be able to buy
clothes for me and for my family, knowing that no one was exploited
en route, from concept to the finished product on the rails."
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Quotes by Ali
"Life's too serious to be taken seriously."
"At the end of the day, I don't really care what
people think, just so long as I feel strong enough about myself."
"I knew that if we really wanted to make a difference
with this company, that would be an important part. I didn't have
any other skills to be honest. I don't regret it. I just get a fright
when somebody recognises me in America - that's never happened before."
(on losing her anonymity in the US after the launch of EDUN apparel)
Quotes about Ali
"I couldn't emphasise enough how un-rockstar Ali
is. She's a very private person and she often jokes about how she
lost all of her privacy when she was introduced to me. Because she
had to sacrifice what she had of it. Until that time she was able
to go into supermarkets and nobody knew who she was. She still goes
into supermarkets, that hasn't changed, but the recognition factor
has changed. I just made the appeal to her that through her identifying
with this cause, that it would make a huge difference, that it would
literally save lives. And that we could never ever quantify in financial
terms the benefit of having Ali as a patron." - Adi Roche on
Ali's involvement with the Chernobyl Childrens Project
"The best thing about Bono is Ali. She is calm
and rational and able to see beyond individuals to policies."
- Eamon Dunphy
"He could often be found hanging out in our common
room because [Bono] was engaged in a vigorous,amorous pursuit of Alison
Stewart, one of the most beautiful and universally admired girls in
our year. Alison had thick, black hair, smooth, olive skin, dark,
warm eyes and deliciously curled lips. Being a hormonal charged 15
year old boy, I could not help but notice this things. She was also
smart, kind,good-humoured,strong-willed and, frankly, way out of my
league. Actually, at that stage, you felt you might have half a chance.
Alison had a sort of aura of impermiability about her. I never really
felt she belonged in the same world as an ungainly youth like me.
On principle, I was against older boys going out with girls in our
class, since their seniority and bullish air of experience seemed
to grant them unfair advantage, btu Alison and Paul seemed to fit.
He wooed her over the course of a long year, until, when you saw them
nestle intimately among the stark arrangement of chairs and lockers
in the common room, it became apparent they were an item." -
Neil McCormick
Bono: "I'd love to do a single with Ali. It would
be great to go into a studio with someone who doesn't knwo anything
about music but has got so much natural spirit and just try to see
if we can capture that on record!"
Neil: "How does Ali feel about that?"
Bono: "Oh, she doesn't know!", he laughed. "She won't
even sing in front of me. I'd have to sneak in and record her in the
bath".
" And I remember this girl who was so beautiful
and so completely unaware of it. I mean, she used to wear Wellington
boots and gabardine, and there was just no vanity. And I thought that
this was just the most attractive person I'd ever seen, a completely
unself-conscious beauty." - Bono
"See, the thing about us is that we like each other.
It's almost the biggest thing you can say." - Bono
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