The Irish delegation’s go to to Boston was acknowledged on the Wednesday City Council assembly, the place town’s “deep ties” to Ireland had been mentioned.
City Council President Ed Flynn, as a sailor aboard the USS The Sullivans, beforehand visited Cork and Kerry and helped coordinate the Irish delegation’s go to to Boston.
Heading the delegation of councilors, chief executives and workers had been the mayors of Cork and Kerry counties, Frank O’Flynn and Jim Finucane, and their wives.
“This delegation is visiting Boston to celebrate 300 years of Irish contributions to Boston and Massachusetts, to promote cultural, political, economic exchange,” Flynn mentioned on the Council assembly. “We have deep ties to Ireland, and particularly to this area of Ireland, including Cork and Kerry.”
Flynn, for instance, mentioned his grandparents initially hail from Cork, and famous that he shares an analogous final identify with the county’s present mayor.
O’Flynn and Finucane each spoke affectionately concerning the shared historical past between Boston, Massachusetts and Ireland. They confirmed explicit reverence for former President John F. Kennedy, America’s first Irish-Catholic president.
“As a famous son of Massachusetts John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said of Ireland, ‘This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection,’” O’Flynn mentioned, referencing a well-known quote from JFK’s 1963 presidential go to to Ireland.
“It is that affection that has not only united our past, but that continues to unite us and unite our future,” O’Flynn added.
Finucane used his remarks to focus on Irish contributions to the United States, significantly throughout the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
One lord lamented within the British Parliament after the Revolution, “We have lost America through the Irish,” he mentioned.
A 1200-member Irish brigade that fought as a part of the Union Army within the Civil War, was dubbed “the fighting Irish” by the Confederate Army Capt. Robert Healy when the boys charged up a hill carrying weeds resembling shamrocks on their hats, “with no hope of victory.” Only 200 survived the battle, he mentioned.
“From that day on, the view of the Irish changed in the United States,” Finucane mentioned. “Instead of new immigrants, all of a sudden they were people who wanted to build, wanted to contribute to democracy.”
Also readily available for the City Hall presentation was Kelly Sullivan, the granddaughter of Albert Sullivan, considered one of 5 brothers killed aboard the ill-fated USS Juneau in 1942. The ship was torpedoed and sunk throughout a World War II Naval battle, within the South Pacific.
The USS The Sullivans is known as after the 5 Sullivan males, whose household emigrated from the a part of Ireland represented by the visiting delegation.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”