WE all love to reminisce, whether that be about good times or bad and the beautifully crafted Project Children - Defusing the Troubles, shown this week on the BBC, was a poignant reminder of the childhoods many of us lived and thankfully survived.
It followed the vision of New York police officer and bomb disposal officer Denis Mulcahy who had a love for Ireland, having originally come from Cork.
That love led him to found Project Children, an organisation that helped change the lives of thousands of youngsters by simply taking them out of Northern Ireland and sending them on a six week holiday to America each year.
I never went on the American trips, despite having eight children and therefore plenty to spare to the States my mother wouldn't let us go, she was convinced some terrible event would befall us, which was ironic given the terrible events we dodged on the streets of west Belfast each and every day.
And so I was always jealous of all the school friends I knew who did go to America each summer, some of whom still have contact with their 'host' families to this day.
Denis Mulcahy was someone I'd heard of before the BBC documentary, a friend of the Clinton administration he has been involved in various conflict resolution initiatives involving Ireland and America over the years.
What I didn't know is that he takes no salary from Project Children, despite the massive amount of work that must go into it, and that he's been nominated for two Nobel peace awards but never quite made the final cut, and that's a shame.
For since 1975 he has help organise summer holidays for more than 23,000 children from Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant and all from areas most affected by the Troubles.
During the 1970s and 80s this provided a much needed break from the bleakness of their own lives.
In some cases it may very well have saved their lives, in others it provided respite but failed to change the path of their life and ultimately their death.
Sitting in 2016 where cross community projects with integrated and now shared education are an accepted part of life here in the north, it's easy to underestimate the innovation of the Project Children vision over 30-years-ago when they started with just six children.
But there really was nothing like it at the time and for many there was no inter-community mixing of any kind.
When I started my first Saturday job in Belfast city centre at 15 I met a girl from the Shore Road who told me I was the first Catholic she'd ever spoken to, she was 17 at the time.
And that wouldn't have been at all unusual.
Many of the children featured in the documentary were exactly the same, and yet two boys, one Catholic one Protestant, went on to study in America and were best men at each other's weddings.
Many returned to America as soon as they were old enough to do so independently and have made successful lives for themselves inspired by their long hot carefree summers as children.
And that was one of the controversial aspects of taking children out of their environment, however bleak it was, exporting a problem permanently rather than addressing the causes of conflict.
The heartbreaking murder of Ardoyne teenager Seamus Morris (no relation) who had enjoyed his summer so much he talked of moving to America but was shot dead in a sectarian attack before he got the chance, an example of why some felt leaving was the only option.
Watching archive footage of the riots and bombings that were common place in mine and many other people's childhoods and you can see why that was considered the only option for many.
That is why so many left never to return.
And wouldn't you think that now we have what in comparison is relative peace that things would have changed and opportunities would be plenty in a post peace process north.
Yet we're still watching young people leave in record numbers for America, Canada and Australia.
In parts of Ireland north and south there are small towns where almost no young people live, entire Gaelic teams no longer exist because their players have all left to find work.
How awful that we came through so much and yet can't offer our young people a future, the best option is still a plane journey somewhere else.
Project Children was a wonderful initiative and very much of its time, but we really need a project young people to ensure that there's a future here and leaving is not the only option.
