On Tuesday, July 16, New York Governor Pataki led a dedication ceremony for The Irish Hunger Memorial at Battery Park City. The memorial was designed by Brian Tolle, who visited the deserted Achill Island Village of Slievemore before submitting his plan, which includes a ruined cottage, deserted potato furrows, uncultivated land and a high wall of alternating layers of stone … [Read more...] about The Irish Hunger Memorial
August September 2002 Issue
AIF’s New York Gala Dinner
The American Ireland fund held their annual New York Dinner on May 2, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, raising a record $3million. The gala event attracted 1,500, among whom were special guests Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, New York Met great Rusty Staub, the founder of The New York Police and Fire Widows and Children's Benefit fund, and The Chieftains, who received the AIF's … [Read more...] about AIF’s New York Gala Dinner
Ali’s Irish Roots
While Muhammad Ali's biographer, Thomas Hauser, established some years ago that Ali's great-grandfather was Abe Grady from County Clare, the Heritage Centre in Corofin, County Clare, has now established that Grady was an Ennis man. Born in the 1840s, Grady settled in Kentucky and married an African-American woman. Their son also married an African-American woman and the … [Read more...] about Ali’s Irish Roots
Hitching in Ireland with Mom
In this land of fiercely independent people, who value their poets as highly as their warriors, our strategy was to be road warriors by day and elegant country houseguests in the evening... In 1922, my grandfather, James O'Sullivan, a captain in the fight for Ireland's independence, emigrated from Ireland to the United States via Canada -- one year after the partition of … [Read more...] about Hitching in Ireland with Mom
Against the Tide
Bringing salmon skins into the fashion world and proving the skeptics wrong. ℘℘℘ Among the many gifts he has received from appearances around the world, Mikhail Gorbachev left Dublin in January with a particularly unusual memento. In a standard diplomatic exchange of gifts, Irish President Mary McAleese presented the former Soviet premier with a leather wallet made from Irish … [Read more...] about Against the Tide