Maureen Dowd: Fighting Irish girl

By

Niall O'Dowd,

Irish America Magazine

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A 2-year-old Maureen Dowd dressed up in her shamrock dress for St. Patrick's Day

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As part of his job Michael Dowd guarded FDR and Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare. He loved Truman but didn’t like Bobby Kennedy, who let the side down by not hiring some Irish who needed work on the Hill.

Michael won a medal for bravery and befriended high people, and saw places a young Irish emigrant had no right to dream of. He rose through the ranks of the Ancient Order of Hibernians to become head of the largest Irish organization in America.

Her mother was an Irish rebel. In the 1970s, Peggy Dowd led a demonstration at the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday when 14 were shot by British forces in Derry. To her eternal satisfaction, the then British ambassador had to sneak in through the underground garage.

Maureen and Peggy agree she would have been “delighted” that President Barack Obama recently got rid of the Churchill bust that George W. Bush kept in the Oval Office.

Their parents’ biggest fight occurred on a trip to Ireland.  Being a Clare man, Michael Dowd wanted to go to Eamon de Valera’s grave. His wife wanted to pay homage to Michael Collins. The Irish Civil War was almost reenacted.

On another occasion Mike Dowd arrived back in Ireland with an American car, a roadster. The locals were gobsmacked at the likes of this prosperity.

“They thought he was a ‘millunare,’ as he pronounced it,” Peggy says, laughing.

Their father had tried to set up an AOH museum in Washington for Irish artifacts. A priest in Massachusetts sent a holy medal that he had received from the mother of Michael Collins. He swore Collins wore it the day he died in the republican ambush at Beal na mBlath outside Cork city.

The medal remains one of the Dowd family’s greatest treasures. Maureen wants to talk to the Irish Government about it.

Their father died in 1971. On her own deathbed many years later in 2005, Peggy Dowd talked out loud to him, leading Maureen and the younger Peggy to believe he was waiting for her.  Their mother was hale and hearty for many years before succumbing to old age at 97. She was going blind towards the end. Maureen would go over to her and turn on the daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.

Her mother loved Tim Russert and Meet the Press. She confessed she hated going blind because it meant she couldn’t see Tim Russert any more. The late great NBC anchor returned the favor, often wishing her a happy birthday on air. Somewhere in a green swathe of heaven that TV twosome continues.

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