Mairead Maguire (born 27 January 1944), also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly as Mairéad Corrigan, is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Early life (1944–1976) Maguire was born into a Roman Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the second of eight children – five sisters and two brothers. Her parents were Andrew and Margaret Corrigan. She attended St. Vincent's Primary School, a private Catholic school, until the age of 14, at which time her family could no longer pay for her schooling. After working for a time as a babysitter at a Catholic community centre, she was able to save enough money to enrol in a year of business classes at Miss Gordon's Commercial College, which led her at the age of 16 to a job as an accounting clerk with a local factory. She volunteered regularly with the Legion of Mary, spending her evenings and weekends working with children and visiting inmates at Long Kesh prison. When she was 21 she began working as a secretary for the Guinness brewery, where she remained employed until December 1976. Maguire told The Progressive in 2013 that her early Catholic heroes included Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers. Northern Ireland peace movement (1976–1980) Maguire became active with the Northern Ireland peace movement after three children of her sister, Anne Maguire, were run over and killed by a car driven by Danny Lennon, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) fugitive who had been fatally shot by British troops while trying to make a getaway. Danny Lennon had been released from prison in April 1976 after serving three years for suspected involvement in the IRA. On 10 August, Lennon and accomplice John Chillingworth were transporting an Armalite rifle through Andersonstown, Belfast, when British troops, claiming to have seen a rifle pointed at them, opened fire on the vehicle, instantly killing Lennon and critically wounding Chillingworth. The car Lennon drove went out of control and mounted a pavement on Finaghy Road North, colliding with Anne Maguire and three of her children who were out shopping. Joanne (8) and Andrew (6 weeks) died at the scene; John Maguire (2) succumbed