Irish America
Irish America
Pete Hamill writes on JFK Somewhere in the shadowy land between myth and history lies the domicile of John F. Kennedy. The first United States president of Irish-Catholic descent, Kennedy was a man of many faces: war hero, orator, lover, creator, and visionary. He had it all, and it was all taken away, but in the end he gained immortality. That day I was in Ireland, in the … [Read more...] about Our Jack
As the 1996 Olympic Games begin in Atlanta, Georgia, we look at some of the Irish Olympians since the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, one hundred years ago. 1896, Athens, Greece James Brendan Connolly - John Pius Boland - Thomas Burke James Brendan Connolly became the first Olympic champion of the modern era when he won the Gold for the U.S. in the … [Read more...] about One Hundred Years of Irish Olympians: Days of Glory
Two hours passed before she was officially named but most of those who heard the initial news flash knew immediately who had been killed when a bomb exploded on March 15 under the car of an unidentified woman solicitor in Lurgan, Northern Ireland. It had to be Rosemary Nelson. Women have rarely been targeted deliberately. The IRA had never done so. Loyalists had picked off … [Read more...] about Death of an Activist
From Bull Run to Appomattox, the 6th Louisiana's Irish Confederates fought proudly On April 28, 1861, two weeks after Confederate guns had fired the first shots of the Civil War against Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, a notice appeared in the columns of The Daily Picayune, one of New Orleans' leading papers. It was a call to arms aimed at the thousands of Irish immigrants … [Read more...] about Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers
The Queenstown Story Their names were Peter, Jack, Nora, Maggie, Minnie and Kate, and one by one, the Sullivan children left Bounard, County Kerry, for Boston. They eventually made their way to Newburyport, where my grandmother, Minnie, married a Cork lad named James Barry. In my eyes, the most fascinating souvenir of the journey was my grandmother's trunk, mostly black, but … [Read more...] about Footsteps of the Past
