Home Sweet Kennedy Home

27 July 2001, Friday: "Miss," I asked, "I'm just curious. Could you tell me where the juniper tree is?"

"What juniper tree?" said our tour guide.

"The one that President Kennedy planted in the front yard back in June of 1963, just five months before he was assassinated. Last time I was here I saw it – the Irish juniper tree. He never came back. He never got to see it grow."

I searched the newspapers displayed as artifacts behind glass in the historical interpretative display. "See? Here's the story," I said, pointing to an article.

"I never heard of it," she said, "but I'll go back in the house and ask."

My daughter Diana and I were at the Kennedy Homestead Visitor Center in the little village of Dunganstown, site of the Kennedy ancestral home in southeast Ireland. It was operated then (and still is) by the Ryans, direct descendants of the Kennedys. Two new buildings were dedicated to explaining JFK's Irish heritage with audio-visuals of his historic visit to Ireland, recorded speeches, dozens of newspapers and, of course, a souvenir shop.

It was very different just seven years ago when my wife Anne and I paid a visit – her first, my second …

Access then was by an unmarked winding, one-lane country road about three miles off Highway R733, not far from New Ross, a town of some 8,000 people. The road was so narrow I had to back up several hundred feet to allow a huge farm combine go by. A small, one-room outbuilding stood by the roadside, which bore a plaque that read: "Birthplace of Patrick Kennedy, great grandfather of President John F. Kennedy, U.S.A. who returned to his ancestral home on 27th June, 1963." Inside was wall-to-wall JFK memorabilia.

We were alone in that quiet little white shrine. Photographs of the slain President and Bobby and Ted and Martin Luther King stared out from the walls. The building was small, about ten feet square, lit only by light of the gray Irish sky streaming through the window. A framed family tree hung on the wall over the guest book signed by travelers like us from all over the world: Portugal, France – even Argentina. Somehow, each one of us had made the pilgrimage down this dusty little back road to leave our mark near John F. Kennedy’s roots. As we signed it today, I found my signature from 24 August 1992.

JFK made this same pilgrimage in the summer before his death; 115 years after his great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had left the house in Dunganstown and walked down that same narrow country road to New Ross, there to begin his journey to America and the life of a cooper in East Boston.

Now his great-grandson, John F. Kennedy, had returned to that same farm as President of the United States. On 27 June 1963, JFK dined on cold salmon, brown wheat bread, a cup of tea, first in the farmyard with hundreds of others, then in the house in front of a bright turf fire with third cousin Mary Kennedy Ryan and several other cousins. Mrs. Ryan, a direct descendant of Patrick Kennedy, was the family matriarch and owner of the homestead. The original family house was destroyed years before, but most of the other old outbuildings were and are still there.

Before he left, JFK planted a juniper tree in the garden "so we'll have something to remind us of this day in the years to come." Later, he was given the keys to nearby New Ross and several other cities. He made speeches and led parades, and parks were named after him. The people revered John F. Kennedy and even today, he remains iconic in Ireland, where many people grew up with two photos in their living room: one of the pope and the other of JFK.

Which of us who remembers the shock and sadness beyond mourning of that fearful day in 1963 can forget the sound of those muffled drums at his funeral march? I was only twenty-five when he was assassinated and will never forget it as long as I live …

"Sir?"

The guide broke me out of my reverie.

"Yes," I said.

"Another guide called one of the family members. The tree died but two years ago and had to be removed. I'm sorry."

I looked at my daughter. "Sorry, Diana, we're just a little late. But time moves on, and so should we." So move on we did, with new memories stashed in our boxes of memories, to be taken out now and then to be reminisced over like old family photos.

The summer of 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of JFK's visit to Ireland. On June 22nd, huge crowds, including Kennedy's daughter Caroline, grandson Jack, and sister Jean all turned out for the celebration at Dunganstown. At nearby New Ross the eternal flame was lit. It was taken from Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery and carried via Olympic-style torch by plane, boat and several members of Ireland's Special Olympics team. It was the first time the Kennedy eternal flame had been passed along in this fashion. The event was the latest in a year of Kennedy 50th-anniversary events, which will culminate with the unveiling of a new memorial in Dallas on Nov. 22nd. Ironically, JFK was assassinated 105 years to the day that his great-grandfather Patrick succumbed to cholera in Boston.

Both Kennedy and the juniper tree he planted are gone but the eternal flame still burns – in two countries.

Author Patrick Simpson and his wheelchair-restricted wife Anne uncover their experiences exploring historical and cultural experiences around the world. Visit now to learn how independent travel for disabled persons is not only possible, it can be fun!! www.booksbypatricksimpson.com

LINKS:
Kennedy Homestead Visitor Center
"A CUP OF TEA TO ALL THE KENNEDYS WHO WENT"
New memorial in Dallas

The Irish Story Teller

05 September 1992: Stephen Dirrane worked as a chef in New York restaurants for twenty years. Then he came back home – to Ireland. There, he did what he did best: cook. Only this time it was for the guests of Tigh Gilbert, his lovely guest house on Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands. Located thirty miles off the coast of western Ireland, they have guarded the entrance to Galway Bay since time began.

I visited the biggest of the three, Inishmore. At about eight miles long and two miles wide, this stoically rugged and beautiful wind-whipped island is home to forty pre-Christian and early Christian architectural remains, along with ancient forts and nearly 900 Irish speaking inhabitants who live on farms scattered among over 6,000 miles of stone walls. These open-faced lovely people perpetuate a heritage of self-sufficiency and culture passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years. They greet you in Irish with, "Cead Mile Failte!" ("A hundred thousand welcomes!")

I first met Stephen in the summer of 1992 when I hiked/bussed from one end of Ireland to the other. To get to Inishmore, I booked "The Happy Hooker" ferry from Doolin, the traditional music capital of Ireland. It was a wild two-hour roller-coaster ride across the windy and cold sea.to Kilronan, the main village on the island. I rented a bicycle for $6.50 a day and pedaled about two miles to the guest house. It was there that I first met Stephen, who rented me a single room for $16.00. The house had an old world atmosphere. The dishes and cups and mirrors on the white painted walls seem to give off a light of their own that was reflected in the dark wood trim and dining tables, and finally absorbed by the soft couches and chairs.

He introduced me to the half-dozen other guests as suppertime arrived. And what a supper! We had steak, potatoes, vegetables and ice cream, all served family style. It was surely the best meal I had in all of Ireland.

Afterwards, we gathered like castaways around a glowing turf fire. Outside, it was a windy and cool early September evening. But inside, there was no television, no radio and no noise except the chiming of the grandfather clock on the quarter-hour. Oliver, Stephen's dog, was always within range of the fire’s glow. We took turns reciting our favorite poem or singing our favorite song. I listened to my new friends from all over Ireland converse, recite poetry, and sing both in English and in the warmth of the ancient Irish language. It was strictly English for me and the guest from Toronto. Stress was a foreign word to all.

Seventy-year-old Stephen, our host, looked very much like a very tired, very pre-occupied Albert Einstein with his great gray mustache and balding head. He loved the Aran Islands and the Irish-Gaelic language and seemed to be waging a one-man campaign to keep the ancient language alive by memorizing and reciting poetry in that beautiful language to all who would listen. He was a unique man, a modern-day seanachie (Irish storyteller) who sat by the fire and enchanted his audience with tales of times past. He would spontaneously burst into poetry, becoming totally lost in whatever long-past Irish era the poem represented – and carry us along with him. (Later, I learned that he played the part of a canoeman in the 1934 British fictional documentary, Man of Aran.)

My stay at Tigh Gilbert was the highlight of my Irish journey. It was a spiritual and emotional journey through time and this beautiful green land. I met smiling people and their music and poetry everywhere I went. I still feel the glow of the fire and the warmth of the words from Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", as spoken by Martha, a guest from Dublin…

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; …

Thank you Stephen for being Stephen and for preserving Ireland. May God bless you always.

Author Patrick Simpson and his wheelchair-restricted wife Anne uncover their experiences exploring historical and cultural experiences around the world. Visit now to learn how independent travel for disabled persons is not only possible, it can be fun!! www.booksbypatricksimpson.com

LINKS:
Aran Islands
Doolin
Irish-Gaelic language
Man of Aran

Emma Lazarus

Not long ago, I watched a PBS documentary about the Statue of Liberty. To PBS's credit, the plaque at its base was read verbatim. ("Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses …") However, no mention was made of its author, Emma Lazarus, who was a major Jewish American literary figure born in New York City.

So I will; I feel I must because – as it turned out – my gentile daughter married into a family with Jewish roots. It happened at a time in my life when I was busily researching our own family tree. After her first son was born, I wanted to learn all I could about his roots. So, I set about meeting with his other grandmother, who said, "I have a book with a four-page genealogical chart inside of it. My parents and Emma Lazarus are both on it, but I've never been able to make the connection. Maybe you can." With that, she gave me a copy of The Grandees: America's Sephardic Elite by Stephen Birmingham (Syracuse University Press, 1971).

I took the challenge. The chart, although lengthy and detailed, was an abbreviated version of "America's Sephardic Elite", derived from Americans of Jewish Descent, an eight-pound tome containing 25,000 names traced as far back as the sixteenth century. It was compiled by Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern in 1960 and quickly became a "who's who" of Jewish high society. After a lengthy study of my own, I finally made the connection; I traced my grandson's ancestors twelve generations up to Moses Raphael Levy (b.1665 in Germany; d. 1728 New York City) and then eight generations down the other side to Emma Lazarus. It turns out that my grandsons (now two) were born into a great family, indeed!

In the process I felt as if I'd gotten to know Emma Lazarus as a real person. She was a descendent of Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition who arrived in America even before the American Revolution – her father could trace his ancestry back to the first twenty-three Jews who settled in New York in 1654 on the "Jewish Mayflower". Emma herself had received a classic private education and was very much an upper-class New York Jew,

But this all changed in the early 1880s when she first met Eastern European refugees escaping from Russia's vicious anti-Semitic pogroms. It was bad enough that they were poor, sick, and uneducated, but worse; many American Jews in Emma's own social circles seemed embarrassed by the unsophisticated Jewish refugees. They didn't want to associate with these "different Jews."

This infuriated Emma and awakened within her a renewed commitment to Judaism. Already an important figure in New York's elite literary circles, she began to write passionate Jewish poems and essays and personally helped refugees with money, food, clothing and even training. She wrote "The New Colossus" in 1883 for a fundraiser auction to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. This sonnet, in which America is depicted as the golden land of hope and opportunity for the oppressed, was auctioned in a benefit sale for $21,500, a sum unheard-of for a short piece of poetry. Emma Lazarus died only four years later, at the age of 38, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma. In 1903, her poem was engraved on a metal plaque, and attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

Author Patrick Simpson and his wheelchair-restricted wife Anne uncover their experiences exploring historical and cultural experiences around the world. Visit now to learn how independent travel for disabled persons is not only possible, it can be fun!! www.booksbypatricksimpson.com

LINKS:
Statue of Liberty
Emma Lazarus
The Grandees: America's Sephardic Elite
Americans of Jewish Descent
Jewish Mayflower
Russia's vicious anti-Semitic pogroms

New friends forever

01 August 1999, Sun.: We'd been searching for the little piece of land in South Dakota's Minnehaha County, once owned by my ancestors, now owned by a Marvin Manifold. Marvin couldn't take us today, but his parents could. So this morning, we met Maurice and Leona for the first time, right after services at Split Rock Lutheran, a little church just north of Brandon. "It's about a mile," said the smiling Maurice, "You can't drive a car up there. I'll take you in my truck." While we drove through hip-high weeds, Anne stayed back in the car with Leona – where they almost instantly became close friends.

Maurice stopped on a bluff and there, overlooking the beautiful Split Rock Creek, was the 160-acre "quarter-section" once homesteaded by my great-granduncle Theo, who moved on after only three months, ostensibly because most of his neighbors could only speak Norwegian. I felt a connection somehow; as if all the moments in my life had come full circle.

Afterwards, the Manifolds invited us to the "Song of Hiawatha" pageant, an event that ran only three weekends each summer. Based on Longfellow's poem, the beloved outdoor drama was celebrating its fiftieth year. Maurice and Leona drove us some thirty-five miles north to Pipestone, Minnesota where, for centuries, Indians of many tribes gathered to quarry the prized red stone from which they carved their ceremonial pipes.

We entered the pageant grounds and Hiawatha, future Indian prophet. As the story of his romance withjoined a crowd of hundreds seated in folding chairs on the shore of a small lake. As the sun set behind the trees, the lake reflected the images of a dozen white teepees on the opposite shore. Then the spotlights swung to the lakeshore, where the gentle Nokomis was seen cradling her infant grandson Minnehaha progressed, an evening chill set in, but we'd come well prepared: I had my sweater, Anne had her jacket, and the Manifolds had their blankets.

It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event. Today, we had found "our land" – and two new friends forever.

Author Patrick Simpson and his wheelchair-restricted wife Anne uncover their experiences exploring historical and cultural experiences around the world. Visit now to learn how independent travel for disabled persons is not only possible, it can be fun!! www.booksbypatricksimpson.com

LINKS:
Split Rock Lutheran
Split Rock Creek
"Song of Hiawatha" pageant
Pipestone, Minnesota
Hiawatha