Helen remembered on 7/7 anniversary

TRIBUTES were this week paid to and memories shared of an Annandale woman killed 20 years ago in the 7/7 bombings.

Helen Jones was 28 when she died as she travelled to work in London as a chartered accountant.

She had grown up in Templand with mum Liz Staffell, and attended Lockerbie Academy, achieving all As in her Highers.

Aberdeen University was her next stop, where she secured a first-class honours degree in divinity.

A gap year followed with the Glasgow City Mission, working with drug addicts, prostitutes and the homeless. She also went on an exchange to Denver in the USA.

Helen had plans to join the Church of Scotland ministry, but wanted some “real life” experience first so trained as a chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Glasgow, then moved to London in 2001 to work for for Phoenix Equity Partners. She had bought a flat only two weeks before she died in the explosion on the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground.

It’s believed that Helen was the only Scot killed in the 7 July bombings.

After her death, The Helen Jones Appeal Fund was launched by the Scottish Trust for Education and Research with assistance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland to provide grants for young people in Dumfries and Galloway who wish to become accountants. It ran for ten years.

To mark the 20th anniversary, the Royal Family led memorial services in London on Monday.

Meanwhile, Lockerbie Academy remembered the former pupil and said thought were with her family.

Some of her colleagues at Phoenix also paid tribute, with equity advisor Steve Darrington posting on Linkedin: “I am remembering the great Helen Jones, my colleague and friend at Phoenix Equity Partners who lost her life on the Russell Square tube 20 years ago. Gone but never forgotten.”