Greetings from Ireland — Presidential postcards from the Emerald Isle
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Midges, minders, and mugshots are among the many lasting memories of the visits made to Ireland over the past 60 years by presidents of the United States.
Joe Biden even claimed in Washington last year that the Irish are the only people in the world who are nostalgic for the future.
As he now heads to the island of his forebears to mark 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement and catch up with cousins in Mayo and Louth, the remark has taken on an even more profound meaning.
For it reflects a mindset that takes inspiration from the past to deal with the present and face the future with courage and conviction.
His ancestors, Ned Blewitt of Ballina and Owen Finnegan from the Cooley Peninsula, might have put it another way with a wise old Irish saying: “If you don’t know where you are coming from, you don’t know where you are going.”
Mr Biden is proud of his Irish heritage, champions the peace process and is fond of quoting Irish poets “because they are the best.”
US presidential pilgrimages to Ireland began in 1963 when John Fitzgerald Kennedy spent what he described as the best four days of his life here.
He had a cup of tea at the Kennedy ancestral home at Dunganstown, near New Ross, and spotted an elderly man in the crowd in Limerick.
“Isn’t he the image of ‘Honey Fitz’ and his name is Fitzgerald” he shouted to aides Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, referring to his grandfather, who was three times Mayor of Boston.
JFK’s visit was a turning point in modern Irish history. He had been here many times previously and knew more about the country’s storied past than most of its own people.
“My friends, Ireland’s hour has come,” he told the Oireachtas. “You have something to give to the world and that is a future of peace and freedom.”
Kennedy’s family story — from Famine ships to the Oval Office in three generations — was a source of great joy in Ireland. Thousands of people turned out to greet him.
He travelled in an open top car, often standing up to wave to the cheering crowds. Sometimes he even stopped the motorcade, got out and shook hands with the well-wishers to the dismay of his minders.
A man in Galway asked him to sort out difficulties he had with his American pension, proving that politics is always local, even for the US president.
There was also a message for him on a sign in Cork, eight months after the Cuban missile crisis: “Don’t worry Jack, the Iron Curtain will Rust in Peace.”
A few weeks after the visit, taoiseach Sean Lemass was on the cover of Time magazine, which captured those changes with a story headlined ‘Lifting the Green Curtain’.
JFK was credited with having inspired the coverage. It noted that while the Irish clung to their past, there were signs that the country was at last facing up to its future.
“The signs are everywhere: in the new factories and office buildings in the Irish-assembled cars (Fords, Austins, Volkswagen) fighting for street space in Dublin, in the new TV antennas crowding the
rooftops, in the waning of national self-pity.
“The signs are provided by the new hotels and carriage-trade castles, by the well-dressed people shopping in supermarkets, by the death of many glorious cliches, by the whole patriotism of Ireland’s land and leaders,” the magazine noted.
Five months later, Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, requested Irish army cadets to render honours at his funeral in Arlington Cemetery in Washington.
One of those cadets went on to have a distinguished career with the Irish Defence Forces and in the service of the United Nations overseas.
Brigadier General Richard Heaslip (ret) was also a co-founder of the army’s elite ranger wing, which is expected to form part of the massive security operation for Biden’s visit.
Heaslip’s son Jamie became one of Ireland’s greatest rugby players. His teammates included brothers Rob and Dave Kearney from the Cooley Peninsula.
They are cousins of Joe Biden, a further example of the bonds that exist between Ireland and the United States.
Richard Nixon, who lost to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, was himself elected to the White House nine years later and served until he resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.
His mother Hannah was a descendent of a Quaker family named Milhouse from Timahoe, Co Kildare, which he visited with his wife Pat during a four-day visit in October 1970.
Mrs Nixon’s grandfather Patrick Sarsfield Ryan was born near Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, and went to America during the Famine. She travelled to his birthplace and had tea with distant cousins.
The Nixons were the guests of wealthy industrialist John A Mulcahy at Kilfrush House in Co Limerick during the first two days of their visit.
Ireland was a different place than it had been during Kennedy’s visit. There were anti-war protests. A few eggs were flung at the US president’s motorcade. And the troubles in the North had started.
Nixon discussed the Vietnam War at a conference in Kilfrush attended by Henry Kissinger and other top officials.
While he didn’t have Kennedy’s charisma, he tried to follow his style by getting out of his car and meeting with people who turned out to greet him.
He later claimed that the Irish have the most vigorous of all handshakes. “I thought at one stage I was going to lose an arm,” he said.
Ronald Reagan also came for four days in June 1984 after Debretts traced his family tree to Ballyporeen in south Tipperary.
Reagan’s great-grandfather Michael O’Regan was baptised there in 1829 and local publicans John and Mary O’Farrell renamed their lounge bar after the US president.
Mr Reagan and his wife Nancy arrived at Shannon Airport on Air Force One and were flown by a US Marines helicopter to Ashford Castle, Co Mayo.
They were welcomed by owner John A Mulcahy, the Dungarvan native, who had been Nixon’s host in Kilfrush 14 years earlier.
Security was tight but it didn’t prevent an invasion of midges in the grounds. Gardaí had to break off tree branches to drive the pests away and soldiers deployed around the perimeter lit fires to keep them at bay.
Meanwhile, Ballyporeen, a parish of 1,400 people including a village of 300 people, took on the trappings of a Hollywood film set.
A security operation involving 1,000 gardaí, dozens of US Secret Service agents, and units of the Irish Army were deployed to protect the US president.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams stopped in the village 10 days before the presidential visit. He was on a whistlestop tour of Munster for the party’s Euro election candidate, Richard Behal from Killarney.
Seizing the moment, Adams went on to the presidential platform that
had just been erected and said he had two things in common with Ronald Reagan — they had both been shot and were canvassing for votes in Ballyporeen.
Over the following days, the streets were swept, not with brushes but with electronic gadgets seeking hidden bombs.
There were robust operational exchanges between gardaí and the US Secret Service people, who were easily recognisable with their crew cut hairstyles and trendy raincoats.
Street drain covers were welded to prevent bombs being placed underground.
Sniffer dogs were deployed. Residents were ordered to close their upstairs windows on the day of the visit and not to look out.
Everyone entering the village was frisked. Handbags were scanned with metal detectors. Photo ID cards had to be worn by accredited personnel.
Ronald Reagan’s bullet- and bomb-proof car known as “The Beast” intrigued locals who wondered how many miles it would do to the gallon.
Some women tried to calculate the number of Green Shield Stamps would issue from the sales promotion scheme for the purchase of a fill of diesel for the vehicle. Supermarket loyalty cards were still a long away in the future.
On the night before Reagan’s visit, US protocol people spotted a large
advertising billboard promoting Bushmills whiskey on the wall of a house. It read: “Bush — the President’s Choice.”
But that was deemed too commercial for the White House, and it had to be changed, not an easy task at a late hour. But a solution was found.
The “P” was taken out of the word ‘president’ and Ronald Reagan walked down Church St the following day with the altered sign reading: “Bush — the Resident’s Choice.”
A towering US Navy officer holding a briefcase that contained the electronic command codes the US president would use to order a nuclear missile strike stayed within 10 paces of the most powerful man in the world.
That sobering thought vanished when Ronald and Nancy Reagan walked through the front door of John and Mary O’Farrell’s pub. The president sipped a pint of Smithwicks and the First Lady was served a glass of Carolans liqueur.
Mrs Reagan held the O’Farrell’s four-month-old infant, Catherine Nancy, in her arms. Then she handed the still sleeping baby to her husband, alarming the Secret Service people, who anxiously whispered “baby alert” into their sleeve microphones.
The president later met with his North Cork cousins including his lookalike, Myles O’Regan from Buttevant.
Reagan subsequently wrote in his autobiography, , how he had often been told about people who supposedly bore a resemblance to him.
He’d never been able to see much similarity. But that day he got a shock and had to take a double take.
“It was amazing how he and I resembled each other. His eyes and hair. His whole facial structure all resembled mine.
“Since it had been over a century since my great grandfather had left Ballyporeen for America, it was an eerie experience,” he wrote.
Ronald Reagan, whose visit attracted huge protests in various centres over his foreign policy, kept in touch with the O’Farrells. About 10 years later, a surprise letter arrived from the retired US president.
He wrote: “I will cherish our visit together always and the hospitality you showed Nancy and me. Yes, John Kennedy has an airport; Johnson has a space centre; but Ronald Reagan proudly has a pub. Now that’s got flair.”
What was not known to the public at the time was that Ronald Reagan was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Five months later he broke the news to the American people.
He died in 2004 and his wife Nancy passed away in 2016. They were both laid to rest in the grounds of the Reagan Presidential Library in California, which now has a permanent link with Ballyporeen.
The Air Force One aircraft that Reagan and six other US presidents used while in office is one of the exhibits.
Beneath its wing is the Ronald Reagan Pub. A popular snack bar, it has the original furnishings from the O’Farrell premises in Ballyporeen.
Another pub featured in the 2011 visit of US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to Moneygall on the Offaly-Tipperary border.
Obama’s eighth cousin, Henry Healy, welcomed the couple and showed them a house that had been built on the site where one of his ancestors, Falmouth Kearney, had lived.
Afterwards, they visited Ollie Hayes’s pub where Mrs Obama accepted a challenge to go behind the bar and pull a pint, which she successfully did.
A motorway service station known as the Barack Obama Plaza is now located at Exit 23 off the M7 motorway.
George W Bush’s one-day visit to Dromoland Castle in Co Clare for an EU-US summit in 2004 was more low-key but it also revealed that the image is always the message on such occasions.
A press conference in the manicured castle grounds had to be delayed because media buses from Ennis were forced to make detours due to routes being blocked by protesters.
Empty seats were not the desired television image. But all was well again when the press corps arrived and took their places.
Donald Trump and his wife Melania spent two nights at his hotel and golf resort in Doonbeg Co Clare in 2019. It was a largely private visit, but he and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met for talks in Shannon.