Tag Archives: County Wexford

Praying and ‘knocking heads together’ to end Irish Civil War

The archbishop’s story that “moved hundreds to tears” might have been a wee bit of malarkey.

Archbishop George W. Mundelein, speaking at Chicago’s 1923 St. Patrick’s Day banquet, described a secret meeting between Éamon de Valera, leader of the republican faction opposed to the fledgling Irish Free State, and General Richard Mulcahy, chief of government forces during the Irish Civil War. The prelate said the two combatants embraced each other as they met at a Dublin retreat house, then got down on their knees together to pray the “Hail Mary” and this litany:

 “St. Patrick; apostle of Ireland, pray for us; St. Bridgit, patroness of Ireland, pray for; All ye holy men and women who died for Ireland, pray for us.”

The archbishop assured the Ancient Order of Hibernians and its Ladies Auxiliary that the two sides were “groping for some way out of their difficulty,” which he suggested could be ended if only some strong man had the courage to “knock their heads together” in common and united effort. His story “moved hundreds to tears,” according to the news account. He was “the only speaker at the celebration who had the courage to make reference to present day conditions in the Emerald Isle.” 

The next day’s Chicago Tribune reported the story on page 5 (see below), but without the head knocking quote.[1]Mundelein Tells How Foes In Erin Knelt Together”, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1923. The Associated Press wired its version of the story, with the quote, to other U.S. secular daily newspapers. The National Catholic Welfare Council news service distributed this version to Catholic weeklies, which published the story through the rest of March.[2]”Declares De Valera Knelt With Mulcahy”, The New York Times, March 19, 1923; “De Valera a And Mulcahy Reported Friends Again”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1923; … Continue reading A brief version of the story from Central News also appeared in the Irish Examiner,[3]Mulcahy & De Valera, American Archbishop’s Statement”, Irish Examiner, March 20, 1923. but the Free State government denied it the next day.[4]”Praying Story Denied”, Belfast News-Letter, March 21, 1923.

Archbishop Mundelein attributed the story to one of his recent visitors, “the only person who witnessed this meeting,” but did not name his source. His informant must have been Monsignor John Rogers, a County Wexford native and pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in San Francisco active in Irish republican affairs.[5]”Monsignor John Rogers Drops Dead At Funeral”, The Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

Undated photo.

A week before St. Patrick’s Day 1923, Monsignor Rogers cabled the Irish Independent to claim credit for the Sept. 8, 1922, meeting between De Valera and Mulcahy. In February 1923, Free State President William T. Cosgrave told the Independent that “a high church dignitary from another country” helped arrange the meeting, which did not yield a peace settlement.[6]”Monsignor Rogers’ Part”, Irish Independent, March 13, 1923.

De Valera’s personal papers at University College Dublin contain “correspondence between Monsignor John Rogers, Ernie O’Malley (Acting Assistant Chief of Staff), de Valera and Eamon Donnelly (‘Mr D’) on the organization of a meeting, through the auspices of Monsignor Rogers, between de Valera and General Richard Mulcahy and the issuing of a form of safe conduct for Mulcahy. Also includes a list of six propositions (8 September 1922, 1p) submitted by Monsignor Rogers to de Valera, as a ‘basis of action or agreement’ (3–8 September 1922 & February 1923, 14 items).” I have not reviewed this material, which is not available online.[7]Eamon de Valera Papers P150, UCD Archives finding guide page 535.

Monsignor Rogers, in an Oct. 8, 1922, letter to Joseph McGarrity of Philadelphia, wrote that he had dinned the previous evening in Chicago with Archbishop Edward Joseph Hanna of San Francisco and Archbishop Mundelein, whom he describe as “a true friend of De Valera.” McGarrity, who published the Irish Press from March 1918 until May 1922, was a key de Valera supporter before and after the Anglo-Irish Treaty split. The priest reported the Chicago archbishop had just read “the Chief’s last communication” with interest.

At the time, the American press was reporting the Free State army had intercepted multiple correspondence from de Valera. One letter said he had no influence over armed republicans. It also suggested that even if republicans could somehow “overthrow” the provisional government “they would themselves be ousted by the people at the next election.”[8]”De Valera Is Discouraged Over Affairs”, The Fresno (California) Morning Republican, Oct. 15, 1922.

Mundelein in 1924.

Archbishop Mundelein, 50 in 1923, was the American-born son of an Irish mother and a German father. He became archbishop in 1915. In 1921, he was listed on the national council of the American Committee for Relief in Ireland, and he also served on the executive committee of the committee’s Illinois delegation. The prelate’s 1923 St. Patrick’s Day “story”, by then six months old, clearly was intended to give hope to Irish American Catholics, who had become disgusted and disillusioned with the civil war. His description of the two combatants seeking the intercessions of familiar Irish saints probably was overly greened malarkey, but certainly suited the occasion and the church.

The civil war ended two months later. Archbishop Mundelein was elevated to cardinal the following year. The finding guide of his archive lists a 1927 Christmas letter from de Valera to the prelate and an undated photo of the two of them. The archbishop died in 1939, four years after Monsignor Rogers. A newspaper obituary described the San Francisco priest as “a personal friend” of de Valera.[9]”Rogers Drops Dead”, Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

You could say he once was in the room where it didn’t happen.

(See all the posts in my American Reporting of Irish Independence series.)

Chicago Tribune coverage of Archbishop George W. Mundelein’s St. Patrick’s Day address to the Ancient Order of Hibernians, left, and a photo of that day’s Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago. (See my 2019 photo essay of the Chicago church, including modern sanctuary.)

References

References
1 Mundelein Tells How Foes In Erin Knelt Together”, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1923.
2 ”Declares De Valera Knelt With Mulcahy”, The New York Times, March 19, 1923; “De Valera a And Mulcahy Reported Friends Again”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1923; “De Valera And Mulchy Meet And Pray Together For Peace And Protection In Ireland”, The Pittsburgh Catholic, March 29, 1923; “De Valera Meets And Prays With General Mulcahy”, The Catholic Advocate, Wichita, Kansas, March 31, 1923.
3 Mulcahy & De Valera, American Archbishop’s Statement”, Irish Examiner, March 20, 1923.
4 ”Praying Story Denied”, Belfast News-Letter, March 21, 1923.
5 ”Monsignor John Rogers Drops Dead At Funeral”, The Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.
6 ”Monsignor Rogers’ Part”, Irish Independent, March 13, 1923.
7 Eamon de Valera Papers P150, UCD Archives finding guide page 535.
8 ”De Valera Is Discouraged Over Affairs”, The Fresno (California) Morning Republican, Oct. 15, 1922.
9 ”Rogers Drops Dead”, Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

Guest post: Kennedy and Parnell, lost leaders

I am pleased to welcome back Dublin-based historian Felix M. Larkin, who has contributed an essay – entitled “Judging Kennedy” – to a new volume From whence I came: The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America, edited by Brian Murphy and Donnacha Ó Beacháin (Irish Academic Press). The 15 essays in the collection had their origin in papers given at the Kennedy Summer School, held annually in New Ross, Co. Wexford, since 2012 (though not in 2020, because of the pandemic). New Ross is the small port from whence John F. Kennedy’s great-grandfather left Ireland. The title of the volume is taken from Kennedy’s speech in nearby Wexford town during his June 1963 visit to Ireland. An adaptation of part of Larkin’s chapter follows below.

***

Charles Stewart Parnell

In reading, thinking and writing about Kennedy over many years, I have often been struck by the parallel between his death and that of the great nineteenth-century Irish constitutional nationalist leader, Charles Stewart Parnell. Though Parnell was not the victim of an assassin, he was hounded to his death by his enemies and the shadow that his death cast – memorably captured in the writings of James Joyce and W.B. Yeats – had an effect similar to that of Kennedy’s, albeit on a narrower canvas. Parnell and Kennedy have thus become part of the mythologies, as well as part of the history, of their respective countries. Parnell’s idealization by Joyce and Yeats is the Irish equivalent of the characterization of the Kennedy presidency as “Camelot on the Potomac”.

There are many other correspondences in the lives of these two remarkable men: 

  • both were young leaders – Parnell was 45 when he died, Kennedy was 46; 
  • whereas Kennedy had Irish ancestors, Parnell had an American mother;
  • Kennedy was a Catholic leader in a predominantly Protestant country, while Parnell was a Protestant leader in a predominantly Catholic country;
  • Parnell made a triumphant visit to the US in 1880, and Kennedy came to Ireland in June 1963; and
  • the sense of possibility in Kennedy’s vision of the “New Frontier” chimes with Parnell’s assertion that “no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation”.[1]
       

John F. Kennedy

Parnell and Kennedy are good examples of the “lost leader” syndrome, great men cut down in their prime whose reputations are more enduring than those of their contemporaries who lived on to make a more substantial contribution to their country’s fortunes. As Stephen Collins, the Irish Times journalist, has suggested, lost leaders are remembered with such fascination and admiration precisely because they “have not had to govern for long, if at all, and so don’t get sucked into the messy compromises that are the inevitable fate of long-serving politicians entrusted with the thankless task of government”.[2]

Surprisingly, there is some evidence that Parnell may have influenced Kennedy’s style and mode of operation as a political leader. Robert Dallek records that Kennedy “was conversant with Irish leader Charles [Stewart] Parnell’s counsel: Get the advice of everybody whose advice is worth having – they are very few – and then do what you think best yourself”.[3] Moreover, Kennedy referred to Parnell in his speech to the Irish parliament during his visit to Ireland in 1963. He first mentioned the fact that he had in his office – the Oval Office – the sword of Commodore John Barry, the founder of the American navy, who was born in County Wexford. He then went on to note: 

Yesterday [27 June 1963] was the 117th anniversary of the birth of Charles Stewart Parnell, whose grandfather fought under Barry and whose mother was born in America, and who, at the age of 34, was invited to address the American Congress on the cause of Irish freedom. “I have seen since I have been in this country”, he said, “so many tokens of the good wishes of the American people towards Ireland”. And today, 83 years later, I can say to you that I have seen in this country so many tokens of good wishes of the Irish people towards America.[4

Kennedy’s grave, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.

Parnell’s grandfather and namesake was Admiral Charles Stewart, commander of the USS Constitution during the War of 1812, and Kennedy had on his desk in the Oval Office two bookends with brass replicas of cannons on the USS Constitution and on the walls flanking the fireplace in the office were pictures of the famous naval engagement between the Constitution and the British frigate Guerriere. A model of the Constitution was displayed on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, and when Kennedy met Krushchev in Vienna in June 1961, he presented the Soviet leader with another model of the ship – perhaps as a gentle reminder of the power of the U.S. Navy. 

Parnell’s grave, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

The USS Constitution (nicknamed ‘Old Ironsides’) is now a tourist attraction in Boston Harbor, in the city that was Kennedy’s political base from 1946 when he was first elected to the US House of Representatives. Admiral Charles Stewart’s magnificent desk is among the exhibits in Avondale House, the ancestral home of the Parnells in county Wicklow.

See Larkin’s “The Slow Death of the Freeman’s Journal”, October 2019, and other essays from our guest contributors. Consider offering a proposal through the provided form, or message me at @markaholan

[1]For Parnell’s speech in which these lines occur, see Pauric Travers, ‘The march of the nation: Parnell’s ne plus ultra speech’ in Pauric Travers and Donal McCartney (eds), Parnell reconsidered (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), pp. 179-96.

[2]Stephen Collins, ‘Romantic Ireland lives on in our fascination with the leaders who left us too young’, Irish Times, 3 August 2013.

[3]Robert Dallek, Camelot’s court: inside the Kennedy White House (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 35. Parnell’s words here are as recorded in William O’Brien, An olive branch in Ireland and its history (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 47. They were quoted by Conor Cruise O’Brien in his Parnell and his party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 145, n. 1.

[4] Speech to the joint session of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann, 28 June 1963.

Catching up with modern Ireland: July

This time last year my wife and I were enjoying a two-week holiday on both sides of the Irish border. Millions of other visitors did the same last summer. Now, tourism to Ireland is experiencing “an extraordinary collapse” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as detailed by the Central Statistics Office.

Visitors have declined by two thirds over the first six months of this year against the same period last year; while June arrivals plummeted 97 percent compared to June 2019.

“Decimated is how I’d describe the business,” Dublin-born Niall Leogue, owner of Caddie Tours near Washington, D.C., told The Irish Times. The 10 tours he had arranged for some 400 people have been cancelled.

“No one wants to travel at this point,” said Leogue, an acquaintance through  Irish Network-DC. “What this will come down to will be the confidence of the consumer. Without the consumer there is no travel.”

Those who do visit are testing Ireland’s famous welcome and creating a new threat: “Tourists, particularly American ones, who flout Ireland’s quarantine rule,” The New York Times reported. “They aren’t the only tourists ignoring the requirement that people arriving in Ireland isolate themselves for 14 days, but most of the public complaints involve Americans.”

The U.S. Embassy in Ireland warns Americans to be prepared for the Irish government to enforce new “travel restrictions with little or no advance notice.” Its July 28 alert continues:

The Irish government continues to advise against all non-essential foreign travel, and requires visitors arriving in Ireland, with limited exceptions, to restrict their movements and fill in a COVID-19 Passenger Locator Form indicating where they will self-isolate for 14 days. Failure to complete the form and providing false or misleading information is an offense under Irish law, with a fine of up to €2,500 (nearly $3,000) and/or imprisonment of up to six months.

Other news in July:

  • A Guardian editorial enthused: “Step by step, Ireland’s old nationalist politics, shaped by Britain in so many ways, have moved on. Ireland is prospering by doing things more rationally and in ways that are firmly rooted in the state’s membership of multilateral institutions.”
  • Archaeologists have discovered evidence of extensive activity at Navan Fort—a circular earthwork near Armagh city in Northern Ireland—including a vast Iron Age temple complex and residences perhaps occupied by the kings of Ulster.
  • The Irish government has provided €66,561 in funding to keep open the acclaimed Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), which documents the Troubles. The comprehensive resource at Ulster University’s Magee campus in Derry still needs additional support to avoid future problems.
  • A Hong Kong property tycoon has proposed building a new city, called Nextpolis, between Dublin and Belfast, for up to 50,000 refugees of the troubled Asian financial hub.
  • Loftus Hall in County Wexford, said to the most haunted house in Ireland, is for sale, which has generated a wave of media reports.
  • Amazon announced it would add 1,000 jobs in Ireland, bringing its workforce in the country to 5,000.
  • First the pandemic cancelled St. Patrick’s Day parades, now it’s claiming Irish America summer events including the Pittsburgh Irish Festival, Milwaukee Irish Fest, and Great American Irish Festival (Utica, N.Y.), and businesses such as Fado Irish Pub in Washington, D.C., and the Irish Walk store in Alexandria, Va.
  • The Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha will be hosted July 31 at Dublin’s Croke Park, home of the 136-year-old Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and symbol of an Irish identity that was nationalist and Catholic. The open stadium is being used to meet social distancing requirements. And in this case, the Irish welcome appears to be fully intact.
  • See previous monthly roundups and our annual “Best of the Blog.”

No masks: Galway city, August 2019.

JFK, Ireland, and the Sixth Floor Museum

U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 55 years ago 22 November. In May, I visited the scene of that historic crime, now The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

The scene of the crime. Assassin shot from far right window, square, not arched. Sixth floor is one floor below top row of windows.

A museum about any murder would be a sad place. This one is particularly depressing (though well designed), since it also represented a huge loss of American innocence and idealism. In my opinion, it also marked the end of an Irish-American century that began with massive immigration of the Great Famine.

The museum doesn’t display much about JFK’s Irish heritage or his June 1963 homecoming. One video display quickly flashes the day after the assassination front page of The Irish Press, which contained a statement from Irish President Éamon de Valera:

During his recent visit here we came to regard the President as one of ourselves … We were proud of him as being of our race.”

Four oral histories held by the museum do contain Irish connections in interviews with:

  • Peter Rice, an Army presidential helicopter pilot who accompanied Kennedy on the 1963 trip to Ireland.

  • Rosian Zerner, who was in Dublin, Ireland, at the time of the assassination.

  • Eamon Kennedy, an Ireland native and photographer at the Dallas Times Herald during the assassination.

  • Dr. Peadar Cremin, who as a 14-year-old boy witnessed JFK in Ireland.

Kennedy was flawed, I know, and it’s easy to slip into sentimentality about him. But my stop at the Dallas museum seemed inevitable and necessary, the completion of a history trail on both sides of the Atlantic.

I have visited the Kennedy Homestead in County Wexford, where JFK made his triumphant June 1963 homecoming, five months before the murder, and seen the Kennedy tributes in Galway, his last stop in Ireland. I have been inside the Dáil Éireann chamber, where he gave a memorable speech.

When I lived in Boston, I explored the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, but skipped the boyhood home tour.

I have attended Mass at Holy Trinity, St. Stephen Martyr, and St. Matthew’s churches in Washington, D.C., where he worshiped in the Roman Catholic faith. Kennedy’s former presence is recognized at all three churches, most notably St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where a marble plaque is imposed in the floor in front of the sanctuary. This is the spot where Kennedy’s casket was stationed during his funeral Mass.

Most movingly, I have stood at the eternal flame next JFK’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Now, too, the Philip Johnson-design cenotaph in Dallas.

John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza, Dallas.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth

John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy was born 29 May 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, near Boston, a year after the Easter Rising and a month after the U.S. entered World War I.

In 1960, Kennedy was elected president of the United States. He was not the first Irish American to win the nation’s highest office, but he was the first Catholic. Three years later, JFK made a triumphant return to Ireland, land of his ancestors. Five months after, he was assassinated in the U.S.

The end of May brings the official opening of numerous centennial celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth.  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., have partnered for a series of events and initiatives, including the “JFK 100: Milestones & Mementos” exhibition.

Here are some other links to JFK-related content, starting with my own work on the blog:

Here are other external links of interest:

John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Boston (boyhood home)

The Kennedy Homestead,  Wexford, Ireland (ancestral home)

John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. (centennial celebration)

Official White House biography

University of Virginia Miller Center (essays, etc.)

RTÉ Archives and The Irish Times (coverage of the 1963 Ireland visit)

 

JFK’s triumphant return to County Wexford, Ireland, land of his ancestors.

Remembering JFK … 2 … Eternal flame(s)

Shortly after being assassinated on 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with an eternal flame. A group of 26 Irish Defense Forces cadets, who traveled to America with Irish President Éamon de Valera, performed a silent drill at the grave site, part of a tribute to Kennedy’s Irish ancestry.

Three years later, in March 1967, Kennedy’s body was re-interred a few feet away with a new flame at the spot now visited by millions of tourists. In June 2013, during celebrations of JFK’s visit to Ireland 50 years earlier, a light from the Arlington flame was carried across the Atlantic and incorporated into the Emigrant Flame memorial a the New Ross quayside, County Wexford.

I was touched to visit both JFK’s grave and the Irish memorial this year.

jfkflamestone

jfkgroup1

emigrantflame

Ireland, America and the Fourth of July

The town of New Ross, County Wexford, is celebrating its fifth 4th of July Irish America Fest with a reading of the Declaration of Independence, raising of U.S. and Irish flags and a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party. The festival also includes live music bands, plenty of food vendors and a giant fireworks display over the River Barrow.

New Ross, of course, is the location of the Kennedy Homestead, which describes itself as “a state of the art interpretative exhibit which explores the circumstances of Patrick Kennedy’s departure from Ireland in 1848 and pieces together the story of the most famous Irish–American family through the 20th century to the present day.”

So, given the American holiday and Ireland’s ongoing centennial commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising, I’m reprising here one of the posts from my earlier blog series on U.S.-Irish relations. Enjoy.

***

The Spirit of 1776 and Troubles in the North

We know that America played a key role in Ireland’s strike for independence in 1916. How about Ireland’s contribution to American independence in 1776?

On St. Patrick’s Day 1976, President Gerald Ford expressed “the appreciation of the American people to the people of Ireland” for their participation in the founding and growth of the United States. He voiced these to Taoiseach Liam M. Cosgrave in morning welcoming remarks and an evening state dinner toast.

Ford said:

Throughout our history–beginning with the many Irish-Americans who fought for freedom in 1776 and the 11 who signed the Declaration of Independence–men and women from your country have brought Irish courage, Irish energy, Irish strength, Irish devotion, and Irish genius to the United States of America.

I’m not sure what 11 signers Ford had in mind. Most other sources put the figure at nine men, with four born in Ireland.

Cosgrave said:

We are indeed greatly honored to have been invited here during your Bicentennial Year, a year which highlights the remarkable achievements of this truly great Nation. We are proud that throughout American history the Irish people have been closely identified with your endeavors.

He noted that in 1928, his father, W. T. Cosgrave, then head of the Irish government, visited the U.S. accompanied by his Minister for Defense Desmond Fitzgerald. His son, Foreign Minister Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald, joined the 1976 delegation to Washington.

Liam Cosgrave pins a shamrock to the lapel of Gerald Ford.

Liam Cosgrave pins a shamrock to the lapel of Gerald Ford.

Between the morning remarks and the evening dinner, Cosgrave and Fitzgerald met privately in the Oval Office with Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other officials.  (Here’s the Memorandum of Conversation, with handwritten notes.) They talked about trade, but also discussed the situation in Northern Ireland, which erupted into sectarian violence four years earlier. (That very day, four Catholic civilians were killed by a bomb planted by the Ulster Volunteer Force in Dungannon, County Tyrone.)

Cosgrave worried about money being sent to Ulster. “Much of it goes under the shelter of humanitarian aid,” he said. “They [the record doesn’t identify who] are starting terrorist attacks again and seem to be focusing on trains. We have been able to cut down their supply of explosives, which has helped.”

FitzGerald suggested putting something in a communique “about not sending money to Ireland … would help coming from you.” But after an unrecorded and “inclusive” discussion, Cosgrave decided that “it might be counterproductive to make much of it.”

The notes suggest that Ford promised to do more “after the election is out of the way.” He lost to Jimmy Carter eight months later.

UPDATES: ‘Blood,’ ‘Snow’ and the Irish Proclamation

I want to update three blogs from earlier this year. Links are provided to the original post. It’s also a good time for me to say, “Thanks for reading!”

Thanks for repairing ‘Deed of Blood’

In May, I wrote about finding the missing passages of a 19th century political pamphlet, “A Deed of Blood,” which had been cut from the text of a copy I borrowed from the University of Notre Dame. I received a nice note from Therese C. Bauters, supervisor of Interlibrary Lending Services, at ND’s Hesburgh Library:

I received your return of “Deed of Blood” and thank you for your good will in sending us the missing pages (cut out).  Why anyone would ruin material is always beyond my understanding. The Notre Dame Libraries appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending the information to complete this title.  We will have it prepared and bound together.

Cover of the 1888 pamphlet.

Cover of the 1888 pamphlet.

More on ‘Alfred D. Snow’ crew list

In March, I wrote about the wreck of the ship “Alfred D. Snow” near the Wexford coast in 1888, based on my review of U.S. consulate in Ireland records at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The Cork consulate’s documentation included a list of the 28 missing crew. Later reporting contains several discrepancies in the men’s names, including the lone Irishman aboard the ill-fated ship. I reached out to John Power, author of “A Maritime History of County Wexford.”

“The receiver of wrecks in Wexford at the time was William Coghlan and the Lloyds agent was Jasper Welsh. The two were very intelligent in collecting information because they visited every shipwreck around the Wexford coast [in those] days. They would have supplied the report to the local People newspaper.

Power sent me a clipping from the newspaper, published three weeks after the tragedy, with “the correct list of the crew,” including “Michl. O’Sullivan, a native of Ireland, aged 38.” The crew list in the consulate’s records, which is undated, shows the Irishman as “Thos Lloyd” (or Floyd) of “Ireland England.”

Crew1

Crew list from 'Alfred D. Snow' at U.S. consulate office in Cork, 1888.

Crew list from ‘Alfred D. Snow’ at U.S. consulate office in Cork, 1888. The Irishman is the last name on the bottom image.

Irish American Partnership and ‘Proclamation Day’

In January, I heard former Irish President Mary Robinson speak at the fourth annual Nollaig na mBan breakfast in Washington, D.C.  The event is sponsored by The Irish American Partnership, which distributed copies of the 1916 Irish Proclamation to the guests. As part of the nation’s centennial commemoration, the Irish government and national school system encouraged students to “write a proclamation for a new generation.”

In its “1916 Commemoration Report,” released in April, the Partnership reports that $12,000 was raised at the breakfast for Ireland’s first presidential library, appropriately honoring the Republic’s first woman president–Robinson. It also reproduces two of the student proclamations, one from the Tarbert National School in North Kerry. This  is six miles from where my maternal grandmother lived until her emigration four years before the Easter Rising. The Tarbert students wrote, in part:

…we shall undertake the responsibility to keep our rivers, lakes and coastline unpolluted. … We wish to promote and preserve the Irish language throughout all the counties of Ireland. We treasure our history and culture, our myths and legends, our poets and musicians, our Irish dancing and Gaelic games.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson gave the keynote speech at the fourth annual Nollaig na mBan hosted by the Irish American Partnership. The event celebrates Irish and Irish-American female leaders and the positive impact they have worldwide.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson gave the keynote speech at the fourth annual Nollaig na mBan hosted by the Irish American Partnership. The event raised $12,000 for her presidential library.

 

 

JFK’s birth cenntennial: Between Duganstown and Dallas

Daniel Donoghue and Father William O’Keeffe witnessed the triumph of Duganstown; but they each died before the tragedy of Dallas.

The 99th anniversary of the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (29 May 2016) begins a countdown to next year’s centennial celebration. Fishamble, an Irish theater company, recently debuted six “tiny plays” inspired by Kennedy’s life at the Washington, D.C. performing arts center named in his honor, part of a year-long series of tributes. More remembrances will surely be scheduled in other places, including Boston and in Ireland.

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the 35th president of the United States was the youngest man (43) and first Irish Catholic elected to the nation’s highest office. There are many aspects of Kennedy’s life worth exploring, but I’ve become interested in his last five months, the period from his triumphant “homecoming” to Ireland, 26-29 June 1963, the first visit by a U.S. president while in office, to his assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

President John F. Kennedy, left, speaks at welcoming ceremony in Duganstown, New Ross, Ireland. Image from JFK Presidential Library & Museum.

Kennedy described the 1963 visit as “the best four days of my life.” It wasn’t his first trip to Ireland, but it was the most historic and symbolic, including his address to the Dail, and return to his ancestral homestead at Dunganstown, New Ross, County Wexford. Four months later, 15 October 1963, Kennedy welcomed Irish Taoiseach Sean Lemass to the White House. The host told his guest that in several days of traveling in America he would see “more Irish men and Irish woman who were either born in Ireland or bear Irish blood than you would see in several years in Ireland.”

I was intrigued by the interval between Kennedy’s visit and his death, so I went looking for Irish and Irish Americans who died between 30 June 1963 (after his trip) and 21 November 1963 (before his assassination.) It is a somewhat arbitrary way of selecting a cohort. Yet the magnitude of the two events, I believe, makes for interesting parameters to explore Kennedy, the Irish and Irish America. They are not “Kennedy’s Children,” but rather his big brothers and sisters, his cousins and colleagues. The first two people I found were Daniel Donoghue and Fr. William O’Keeffe.

Donoghue, a retired Metropolitan (Washington) Police lieutenant, was typical of the people Kennedy was referring to in his greeting to Lemass, though he had recently departed from their ranks, dead of a heart attack at 65 on 18 September 1963. The County Kerry native immigrated to America in 1915, when he was 17, according to an obituary in The Washington Post. He served on the police force until 1953, then moved to the Maryland suburbs, where he remained active in the Retired Metropolitan Police Association. In the 1920s, Donoghue was a charter member of St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood. He belonged to the Holy Name Society.

Donoghue was a likely Kennedy voter in 1960 and certainly had paid close attention to the president’s visit to Ireland. It is unclear whether the former cop ever got himself back to Ireland. He left a year before the Rising, but was old enough to have followed Ireland’s struggle for independence, bloody civil war and partition as he established his life in America. He also would have lived through the humiliating defeat of Al Smith, the first Irish-Catholic presidential candidate, in 1928. 

To me, Donoghue is part of a “greatest generation” of Irish and Irish Americans who lived through the country’s revolutionary period and transformation from Irish Free State to Republic of Ireland. In America, their adult lives spanned from Smith’s defeat to Kennedy’s election and trip to Ireland. They died before the tragedy in Dallas and outbreak of The Troubles.

As Irish Catholics, this generation witnessed the peak ascendance of their church and its schools, hospitals and other institutions in America and their own acceptance as adherents of the faith by nearly all aspects of U.S. society. They died before the changes of Vatican II, the decline of European ethnic-religious identity and the revelations of church scandals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Father O’Keeffe was another member of this cohort. Spiritual director at Clonliffe College in Dublin, he died 27 August 1963, at age 56, during an extended visit to America.

He was born in 1907 at Kanturk, County Cork, and ordained in 1932 from Maynooth College, a member of the Vincentian Fathers. He was a language expert who taught in Belgium and Italy, as well as in Ireland. His skills brought the attention of the British Government during World War II, according to his obituary in the Post.

“Working under complete secrecy, he spent the war years broadcasting coded messages to the anti-Nazi underground in occupied France, Denmark and the Low Countries,” the Post said. “It was reported that he had been in occupied Europe on missions with the various undergrounds.”

Fr. O’Keeffe “was visiting childhood friends” in Glen Cove, New York, on Long Island, when he was struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage, the obit said. Surely they had talked about Kennedy’s visit to Ireland earlier that summer, and may have heard about plans for Lemass’ trip to America.

I intend to pursue more such stories over the coming year and would welcome the input of my readers. The lives of people with direct connections to JFK would make for even better stories, but that’s not a requirement. Let me hear from you.