It was late June in 2015 when tourism lecturer Suzanne Richards arrived home after teaching a class. The house was quiet because the previous evening she had waved her teenage sons, Owen and Joel, off on holiday to Tunisia with her brother Adrian and her father, Pat. “I wasn’t allowed to go – it was a ‘jolly boys’ outing’ to celebrate the end of Owen’s GCSEs.”
That morning, she received a text from Adrian saying they were all sunbathing around the pool. The men had visited the four-star hotel twice before, so they were looking forward to relaxing there, having a few beers and talking about football.
Richards, 54, explains that, after having her two sons, she became a single parent. “My brother, who didn’t have children, stepped up and became a role model for his nephews, as did my dad.” The four became inseparable and spent every weekend together, united by their love of Only Fools and Horses, card games and their local team, Walsall FC.
“I was just about to make some lunch,” recalls Richards via a video call from her home in the West Midlands. “An unknown number flashed up on my phone. Normally I wouldn’t answer, but for some reason I did. And that was when I heard Owen screaming: ‘There’s a gunman and they’re all dead!’ He was so distressed that I initially couldn’t tell which son was speaking. Then we were cut off.”
She immediately called the number back but couldn’t get through. Messages started pinging from friends and family, asking if she had seen the news, hoping everyone was safe. “It felt like it all happened in the same moment. Owen’s phone call, the texts from friends, the news report flashing on my screen.
“I fell to the floor in utter shock. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t comprehend what had just been said to me. I didn’t believe it. Didn’t understand what he meant. Hoped that it wasn’t true. Just every emotion. A day I never want to relive.”
At 11.45am that day, on the beachfront at Sousse, 85 miles south of Tunis, 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui had taken a Kalashnikov hidden in a parasol and opened fire on sunbathers before entering the Hotel Imperial Marhaba via the pool area and firing at people there. Three members of the Richards family were among the 38 people killed.
Eventually, Richards tried to call her mother but couldn’t get through. “She only lives five minutes away, so I jumped in the car – I don’t know how on earth I drove. Then I had to break the terrible news that she had lost her husband, son and grandson. But even as I said the words, I was still living in hope that somehow we had got it wrong, or the news was wrong. Maybe an ambulance had got to them in time.”
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Richards’ expertise in tourism proved invaluable. She started her career as a travel agent when she was 16, later switching to lecturing to allow her to work around school holidays. “My biggest concern was for Owen. He was 16 and had just witnessed unimaginable horror. He was injured and out there all alone. I knew I had to get to him.”
Through her contacts, she quickly established that the hotel’s tour operator, Tui, was sending four rescue planes to Tunisia to evacuate British tourists. “They agreed to let me fly there, so my best friend and I went to East Midlands airport and flew out on an empty plane.” She arrived in the early hours of the morning with two jobs to do: find and comfort Owen, and locate the other three.
Reunited with Owen in hospital, after a hug she never wanted to end, she gave him the clothes she had brought with her. “At that point he was still in his swimming trunks. When he realised the others were dead, he fled the hotel with only what he had on.”
She then tried to locate Joel, Adrian and Pat’s bodies. “The scenes at Tunis morgue were chaotic. Nobody could speak English. I still have nightmares about it.” Richards’ family liaison officer hadn’t been permitted to fly out with her, so she had no one to help manage the situation.
“I think if they had been there, then perhaps I wouldn’t have had to see what I saw,” she says. “After several hours, my best friend and I were able to identify them.” She pauses. “I got through it by going on auto-pilot. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Back home, she witnessed an overwhelming outpouring of grief and support from the local community. Walsall FC’s ground was a sea of flowers, football tops, scarves and messages. Similar tributes were left at schools attended by the boys, outside Birmingham County Football Association and at the gates of Worcester University, where Joel, 19, had just completed his second year of a sports science degree. “All three of them were so well-known and loved.”
A joint funeral was held in West Bromwich three weeks after the attacks. “It’s all a bit of a blur,” Richards recalls. “But I know that there were more than 1,000 people who came to pay their respects, which was absolutely lovely. It was a very public funeral – don’t forget that we had also held a [national] minute’s silence to mourn those who were killed. But we got fantastic support from West Midlands police and [the charity] Victim Support, helping us cope with TV cameras and photographers everywhere. Losing three generations of the same family made this a very high-profile story.”
It was that public interest that helped Richards and Owen move forward after such a seismic loss. “People wanted to do something but they didn’t know what, so they sent money or they did fundraisers. So money was coming in to us from everywhere. Thank goodness our postman knows where we live because some of it was just addressed to the Richards Family, Walsall, or to Joel, Walsall FC.”
Richards felt “uncomfortable” about receiving the donations and decided that they needed to channel the money towards others who had lost loved ones to violence. “I set up Smile for Joel as a registered charity with Victim Support because losing someone to murder is so different to losing a person from an illness. It is deliberate, sudden and traumatic. And it’s really hard. So Owen and I wanted to give money to other families to use for something that would be a treat or make their lives easier. It could be anything – a holiday or a garden revamp, new bunk beds or a laptop.”
The name of the charity came from the funeral, when some of Joel’s friends were giving out wristbands with “Smile Like Joel” (he was known for his cheeky grin) printed on them, together with his motto “together we achieve more”. “It just took off from there really. We changed the name slightly and I designed a logo.”
A Facebook group was set up and the charity was launched with a fun run in the local park the following September that raised £27,000. Then things snowballed. Supporters were encouraged to raise awareness by taking selfies wearing the wristbands at tourist sites around the world – a nod to Joel’s love of travel. A series of further fundraisers were organised, featuring items from Joel’s bucket list, including climbing the O2 dome and a parachute jump.
To date, the charity has helped more than 1,000 family members and raised more than £500,000. It also works with the Foreign Office and the travel industry to highlight holiday safety, especially the issue of hotel security.
In June this year, Richards was awarded an MBE for her charity work. “I didn’t know anything about it! This envelope came through the door marked ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ and I thought: oh no, a speeding ticket! It’s a great honour and I share it with Owen, because we set this up together.”
Although they had counselling, Richards says both she and Owen believe that you have to learn to manage loss yourself. For her, it is the charity that has kept her going. “It’s my medicine. It allows me to talk about Joel, my brother and my dad every single day; keeping their memory alive is so important. It makes me feel connected to them. And paying it forward by helping other families that have been affected like we have also helps. It’s such a lovely thing, being able to tell people; yes you can have that holiday in Cornwall, and yes, your daughter can go back to the dance classes she had to stop because you had to stop working after what happened.”
What also helps her are the plentiful family photos. “We were very blessed that we spent a lot of time together. Dinner every Sunday, holidays to Mallorca and Lanzarote. One year we all went to Miami and got stuck there when a volcano in Iceland decided to erupt. Me and the boys celebrated by having a two-week delay in Florida. It’s those times now that I look back on and cherish. It’s hard to think that I’m never going to get any new photographs – but thank God I have so many memories.”
She tries to live life to the full. “It’s a cliche maybe, but I’ve realised that life is short and you only get one chance at it.” Still, she says, “I do ask myself every day: why did it happen? What has [the shooter] gained from doing that apart from ripping 38 families apart? I don’t get it and I never will get it. I have also realised that time doesn’t heal you. All that time does is give you the strength to manage it better. The hardest part of grief is not losing them – it is learning to live without them.”
On the day we speak, it would have been her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. But her mother died in 2018. “She really struggled. She was in her 70s and had lost her only son, her grandson and her husband. It made her so ill that three years later I had to bury her in the same grave.”
Despite what happened, Owen, who is now 24, hasn’t been put off travelling and is currently in Australia. “I want him to do it. But for me, it is quite lonely. Today we should be celebrating as a family. I have one son on the other side of the world and the other three are up in heaven.”
Richards was brought up Roman Catholic but says she would rather not be drawn on her spiritual beliefs. “I live for the fact that I’m going to see them again. If I knew that I wasn’t going to see them again, that would be a struggle, so I choose to live with the fact that I will. I really hope that they are watching us and everything we are doing.”
We are saying our goodbyes when Richards asks me a question. “This article is about how we survive. What are you going to say about me? How do you think I have survived?” I mumble something incoherent about the Smile for Joel charity being at the heart of the matter.
She cuts in. “No, no, I must correct you. I survived, and I get through what happened on a daily basis for one reason: it’s because Owen survived. It could have been worse. I could have lost all four of them. Owen surviving gave me the strength to carry on. How would I have coped if I had lost all of them? Maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
