Great Famine Voices New York State

Eileen Patricia McMahon at the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare on St. Patrick’s Day. Eileen loved Ireland – its beauty, its culture that combined smiles with tears, and its painful yet victorious history. Photo: Thomas J. Zogby/Twitter.

Great Famine Voices New York State is introduced by New York State Senator Timothy M. Kennedy. The film shares the stories of Irish-American New Yorkers and the descendants of Famine Emigrants from the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, the Irish Cultural Center of the Mohawk Valley in Utica, and the Erie Canal Museum and Le Moyne College in Syracuse, and the Buffalo Irish Center. They recall how their ancestors left Ireland during the Great Hunger and afterward to start new lives along the Erie Canal. It is dedicated to Eileen Patricia McMahon Zogby in whose name is an annual Irish lecture that has been established at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. Her discovery that her ancestors fell victim to the Great Hunger inspired her sense of social justice to learn lessons for today as part of her enduring legacy.

Click on the YouTube link below to view Great Famine Voices New York. You can also watch the video at any time on Great Famine Voices – Strokestown Park.

The video is dedicated to Eileen Patricia McMahon Zogby.

Eileen Patricia McMahon Zogby made her first visit to Ireland with her husband Jim – Founder and President of the Arab-American Institute – in the late 1980s. It would be her first trip to the nation from which her family hailed. Eileen researched her roots and carefully studied the nation’s history, particularly the Famine that struck the country in the 1840s, claiming an estimated one million lives and displacing two million more, including Eileen’s great-grandparents. Ireland would become part of her, and she would return almost annually for the rest of her life. The Legacy of Eileen (McMahon) Zogby ’67 (lemoyne.edu)