Galway Advertiser 2003/2003_07_03/GA_03072003_E1_032.pdf 

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The day JFK came to town
In J u n e 1 9 6 3 , P r e s i d e n t J o h n F. Kennedy c a m e to Ireland for three days. Included in this trip w a s a visit to Galway. He landed by h e l i c o p t e r in the Sportsground where he was met by the Mayor Paddy Ryan. An open Cadillac led a procession of security c a r s and Garda o u t r i d e r s d o w n College Road to the Square, where a huge crowd was waiting. There he received the Freedom of the City and made the following speech: "MR M A Y O R , members of the City C o u n c i l , Prime Minister, Ambassadors. If the day was clear enough and if you went down to the bay and you looked west and your sight was good enough you would see Boston, Massachusetts. A n d if y o u did, y o u w o u l d s e e down working on the docks there the O ' D o h e r t y s , F l a h e r t y s , and Ryans, and c o u s i n s of yours w h o h a v e g o n e to B o s t o n and m a d e good. I wonder if you could, per haps, let me know how many of you here h a v e r e l a t i v e s in A m e r i c a , whom you'd admit to? If you would hold up your hands. "I don't know what it is about you that causes me to think that nearly everybody in B o s t o n c o m e s from Galway. They are not shy about it, at all. I want to express as we are about to leave here, to tell you in this country how much this visit has meant. "It is strange that so many years could pass and so many generations pass and still some of us who came on this trip could come home here to Ireland and feel ourselves at home and not feel yourselves in a strange country but feel ourselves among neighbours even though we are sep arated by generations, by time and by thousands of miles. "So you have made all of us. You send us h o m e c o v e r e d with gifts which we can barely carry, but most of all, most of all, you send us home with warmest memories of you and of your country. "So I must say that although other days be not s o bright as w e look towards the future, that the brightest days will continue to be those o n w h i c h w e v i s i t e d y o u here in Ireland. "If y o u e v e r c o m e to A m e r i c a , come to Washington, and tell them if m e a n s in G a e l i c ' A H u n d r e d they wonder who you are at the gate Thousand Welcomes." Then, they got back into the cars that y o u c o m e from Galway. The and drove down Shop Street, through word will be out, and when you do, it will be 'Cead Mile Failte', which Lower Salthill, to Seapoint where his helicopter was waiting. It seemed as if half the population of Galway was trying to climb into the aircraft to personally say goodbye to him. The helicopter flew to Shannon, where JFK made his final speech. H i s visit m a d e an extraordinary impact on the entire country. Five months later he was dead. TK

It's a pity the Government h a s n ' t the stomach for freely elected m a y o r s , which it originally promised to introduce next year. In recent years we have seen m o r e a n d m o r e power stripped f r o m t h e e l e c t e d city a n d c o u n t y c o u n c i l s , r e d u c i n g m o s t of t h e i r a c t i v i t i e s t o r u b b e r s t a m p i n g Dublin opinion. In o r d e r to m a k e a freely elected mayoral office work, so that may o r s could introduce their own particular pro g r a m m e , they would have to be invested with powers Dublin was not prepared to relinquish. O n e of G o v e r n m e n t ' s c o n c e r n s also, was the fear that some sort of environmental crackpot would be elected a n d t h e r e would be a n out b r e a k of c l e a n l i n e s s a n d p r i d e , which sadly Galway could do with. But I was heartened with the election this week of Terry O'Flaherty as the city's new mayor. Mayor Terry is every inch the daughter of the indomitable Bridie, twice mayor of Galway in the '80s, and one of the best there ever was. Bridie was a particularly effective local coun cillor, but as mayor, she was in her element repre senting the city in Boston and elsewhere. At recep tions she was enormously popular, and wasn't a bit shy about waving her finger at industrialists and telling them they "must" open a factory in Galway. Many of them did so. The new mayor has pledged that one of her ambitions will be to reverse the "dirty Galway" tag, recently heaped on the city in a national sur vey. I hope she takes note of another great mayor, Richard M Daley of Chicago, on an honorary doc torate of laws was conferred in the university last

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Keeping the mayoral office in the family
Friday. Mayor Daley (61), immensely popular and dynamic, has been elected mayor by the people on five successive four-year terms. He has channelled his extensive powers ( it costs $8 billion annually to run Chicago) and personal energies into making making Chicago a better and more equitable place to live in. As he is driven around Chicago, he makes lists: abandoned cars to be towed away, rub bish skips to be moved, fences to be mended. His " graffiti blasters" programme has been copied all over the world. Spray paint is banned in the city; there is a 24-hour anu-graffiti hot- line and city crews have the legal right to remove graffiti from private property. There is a constant crack down on c r i m e . He e v e n s e r v e d a writ on The Gerry Springer Show, which is recorded in Chicago, for inciting violence. The mayor is passionate about greenery. He has a much praised organic garden on the roof of city hall and has planted 200,000 trees all over the city. Pavements have been widened and enlivened by often striking street sculpture. Chicago is famous for its arts festivals and events. The mayor's powers extend into the schools where he has raised performance standards, introduced 'Good Citizenship" programmes, as well as organ ising Summer schools, and "after school" activi ties. The economies of scale may be vastly differ ent between Galway and Chicago, but the prob lems are much the same. We should look and see what we can learn. precedent in Irish politics by succeeding to the office once held by her mother; but if other prece dents are anything to go by, it's a good omen. R i c h a r d M Daley a l s o s u c c e e d e d his father Richard J Daley who was returned unopposed to the mayoral office no fewer than seven consecu tive terms. He died in office in 1976. Originally from county Waterford, the Daley's established their power base in the city's Southwest Bridgeport neighbourhood. Daley senior blotted his copy book in 1968, w h e n the city hosted the n a t i o n a l Democratic Convention and the local police used some rough tactics to break up an anti-Vietnam protest, which was widely carried on all the TV networks. Yet his straight-talk, get-the-job done attitude, dramatically reduced crime in the city, cleared slums, and he set about an ambitious build ing programme that today gives Chicago on the lake a skyline every bit as impressive as New York.
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IMPRESSIVE AS NEW YORK
Terry O'Flaherty may have set some kind of

Chicago is Democrat to the core, and as 1 have remarked before, politics in America tends to be a blood sport. It was Daley senior who got John F Kennedy elected president in 1960. Everyone knew that the duel between Kennedy and Richard Nixon would be close. Daley promised to put his political machine behind Kennedy, and boy, did he deliver! Just three days before polling day. he led the young candidate through a torch lit Chicago and massive, cheering crowds. The head of the

Board of Elections in Chicago, Sidney T Holzman, s o m e h o w m a n a g e d to find that an amazing 200,000 voters were missing from the voting reg istrar. The missing names were promptly added. On election day, November 8, an unprecedented 89.3 per cent Chicagoans voted compared to the 65 per cent national turn out. As results from all over the country poured in, Illinois was proving to be the pivotal state. Whoever won Illinois won the election, and Kennedy won the day, but only just. Out of 4,657,394 votes cast, Kennedy won by a mere 8,858 votes. He just about scraped home nationally too. The final result gave him a razor thin 49.7 per cent over Nixon's 49.6 per cent. But t h e r e was hell t o pay in Chicago. Republicans accused Daley of "scraping the grave yards" to get the necessary volume of votes. There were law suits and fist fights. Eventually an old pal of Daley's, Judge Thomas Klucznski, was appoint ed to investigate accusations of fraud. No one was surprised when the case was thrown out of court. Even more interesting was Nixon's reaction. He must have been bitterly disappointed at such a nar row defeat, but he never challenged the result or asked for a recount. He was concerned that if he had done so he would be regarded as a "poor l o s e r " which might have damaged his future prospects. His wife Pat was more blunt. "If it " n't for an evil, cigar smoking man in Chicago, Sidney T Holzman, my husband would have been president of the United States."
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Ronnie O'Gonnan rogorman @ galwayad vert iser.ie