Irish Man in Space
At 8:24 a.m. on Wednesday, June 5, Bryan Daniel O’Connor, became the first Irish citizen to ever travel in outer space. It was a smooth takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Colonel O’Connor, who was the commander of the 8-member crew on board, had been in space before, as pilot of the Atlantis space shuttle’s mission in November, 1985, but this was the first time that he has done it with an Irish passport. The second-generation Irish American received his dual citizenship just 19 days before the Columbia flight.
The 44-year old astronaut from California has already distinguished himself as a U.S. Marine test pilot, and his Atlantis mission in 1985, took place just a month before the disaster of the Challenger shuttle, which killed seven crew members.
O’Connor’s grandfather, Daniel O’Connor, emigrated to the United States from Kerry at the beginning of the century, and became the first fire chief in Omaha, Nebraska, before retiring in the late 1940’s.
The younger O’Connor has not yet been to Ireland, and his first glimpse of the country may be from the vantage point of 280 miles above the earth.
“I’m proud of my heritage,” said O’Connor in an interview with the Irish Times just before takeoff. “I always thought it would be a good idea to become an Irish citizen. My cousins in New York had all become Irish citizens and they had encouraged me to do the same thing. I finally decided to do it after a recent family reunion in Colorado. I don’t subscribe to any Irish newspapers or anything like that,” he added, “but I’m very interested in what happens there.”
The mission was a successful one, and NASA said that O’Connor and his crew accomplished some important research in biomedics and life sciences. O’Connor said that his next mission won’t be so far away—he’s already planning a trip to visit the relatives in Kerry.
Parade Suspended by AOH
The past two St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York City have seen more controversy than perhaps all of the 228 parades before them. The 1990 parade ended up in a New York State court, and this year’s one gave us the now-infamous sight of the parade marshals turning their backs on New York City’s Mayor David Dinkins as he marched up Fifth Avenue with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization.
Well, the man who was at the driver’s seat during that rocky ride, parade Chairman Francis Beirne, has been removed from power, for now, by the head of the New York State Ancient Order of Hibernians, Al O’Hagan.
O’Hagan did this by suspending Beirne’s membership with the AOH, which effectively suspends his membership with the parade committee, since the New York AOH holds the franchise to the parade.
The reason for the suspension does not stem directly from the fiasco surrounding the treatment of the Irish gay group in the parade, although AOH observers think that it was a definite factor. The reason given by O’Hagan was the continuing ballyhoo over the selection of the 1990 parade’s grand marshal, when a member of the AOH took the parade committee to court because of what was considered an unfair selection process. Because Beire refused to hand over the minutes to a key meeting from that time, he was suspended, along with one of his right-hand men, Tim Hartnett.
Veteran AOH-watchers say that Beire’s suspension will probably be short-lived, as he is one of the fiercest powerbrokers the AOH has ever seen. He has had the parade firmly in his control for many years now. There is no doubt, however, that the perpetual power-struggle within the organization will go on for a long, long time.
Congress Goes to Bat for Doherty
On June 5, an amicus brief was submitted to the United States Supreme Court by 132 members of Congress, supporting the political asylum plea from Joe Doherty, the Belfast man who has been fighting a U.S. government attempt to extradite him to Britain since 1982.
The appeal represents perhaps the largest amicus brief from Congress in many years, with 120 Representatives and 12 Senators signing.
Key names missing from the brief, however, were those of perhaps the two most widely-known Irish Americans in Congress, Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In a recent letter Boston’s Mayor Raymond Flynn urged Kennedy to sign the brief.
Flynn called it a bipartisan effort to ensure that the Supreme Court understood the legislative history of the Refugee Act. Flynn pointed out that Kennedy was in a great position to sign since he had been the leading figure behind the 1980 Refugee Act, which has provisions for political refugees such as Doherty.
After escaping from a prison in Northern Ireland, where he had been serving a life sentence for his part in an attempted IRA ambush that left one British soldier dead, Doherty began a new life in New York City. He was arrested in June, 1983 by federal agents and detained in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he has been ever since, despite never being charged with a crime in this country. His efforts against extradition have won repeatedly in the courts, but each time the government has overruled and kept him imprisoned.
Now Doherty’s case is to go before the Supreme Court.
The huge support from Congress, from both conservatives and liberals who are usually poles apart on most issues, is expected to help his case.
The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall.
North Violence Heats Up
The beginning of the summer saw an escalation of the carnage in Northern Ireland, with many casualties on both sides of the conflict.
The largest IRA bomb in the history of the “Troubles” rocked an Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR) base on May 31, killing three UDR soldiers, and a few days later, on June 3, three IRA members were shot dead in an ambush by the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) unit.
Witnesses said that as the three IRA men drove up the main street of the small village of Coagh in East Tyrone, an undercover unit of the SAS, without requesting that the car stop, blasted the car with over two hundred rounds of gunfire. The incident was first reported by the British Army as a shootout between the SAS and the men in the car, but they later changed this to say that the SAS ambush had preempted an IRA operation which the three men were travelling to.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary later said that two rifles were found at the scene.
The IRA issued a statement that the three men were members, which prompted praise from Loyalist community leaders. But many others condemned the attack as evidence of a British Army ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy towards known republican activists.
Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin, condemned the attack as “revenge killings” for the IRA attack just three days earlier.
That attack, in which a massive, 2,000 Ib. bomb in a truck was rolled down a hill into a UDR base in Glenanne, County Armagh, killed the three soldiers.
Sinead Heads Home for Dublin
After a controversial couple of months of living in Los Angeles, singing superstar Sinead O’Connor has returned to her native Dublin, much to the delight of her critics. During her time in Los Angeles, O’Connor won many MTV awards, Grammy awards and even a “Top 100 Irish American” award from this magazine.
A couple of months ago rap star M.C. Hammer told a reporter that he would pay for Sinead’s one-way airfare if she would just pack up and leave the country. (Hammer, along with Frank Sinatra, had been the loudest of Sinead’s critics because of the many controversies she has found herself in, such as when she asked that the U.S. National Anthem not be played before a concert of hers in New Jersey, and also when she openly denounced the Grammy Awards.)
Well, sure enough, when Sinead got back to Dublin she mailed Hammer a bill for the tickets for her and her son.
Hammer sent back a check.
Sinead also has a new single out, “My Special Child,” from which all of the profits would be donated to charities for the Kurdish refugees in Iraq.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the July/August 1991 issue of Irish America. ♦
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