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Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Was John F. Kennedy more Harvard than Irish? -- new book raises the issue again

Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 09:12 AM

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He was elected president 50 years ago this week yet he remains as fresh in our lives and minds as if he stepped down just a few years ago.

John F.Kennedy is the subject of a new book about his visits to Ireland, including, interestingly, his trip to research his Irish roots in the 1940s.

The book entitled 'JFK in Ireland" is written by Ireland's top television host and journalist Ryan Tubridy whose family has long connections to the Kennedy clan.

Since the book was published some in Ireland have tried to rubbish the premise that Kennedy was really interested in his Irish roots.

That is an old argument and one that has been flatly contradicted by the facts, something I quickly discovered when I talked to his siblings, brother Teddy and sister jean.

I have not read Tubridy's book yet, which I believe is a spirited case for the notion that John Kennedy did for Ireland what Barack Obama did for Africa in terms of world recognition.

There is no doubt about that. I was ten when he came to Ireland. It was like the advent of technicolor, when all that was black and white and dreary was suddenly transformed.

The Kennedy not interested in his Irish roots argument has also been floated over here for many years.

This is despite one key fact that it was Kennedy himself who insisted on the Irish leg of his trip in 1963, in order to pay homage to his ancestral home.

This is after all the man who spoke the words "All of us of Irish descent are bound together by the ties that come from a common experience, experience which may exist only in memories and in legend, but which is real enough to those who possess it."

And he possessed it.

Still, there are those here who have always claimed that Kennedy was more Brahmin than Irish, more Harvard than Celt, but the fact of those three trips to Ireland in his short life certainly belie that theory.

Indeed, Teddy Kennedy was always very fond of recalling the many times that John summoned him to his compound on Hyannis Port when he was president and replayed the tapes of his Irish visit to him.

Teddy also recounted how Jack said he had been almost insulted by the advice of poet Robert Frost who told him at his inauguration to be 'more Irish than Harvard'

Teddy also talked at length about how Jack had been inspired by Eamon De Valera, man who went from revolutionary to Prime Minister and president and how Jack viewed him as a real-live Washington-type figure.

Jean Kennedy too, has always remarked on how the trip to Ireland had stayed foremost in Jack's mind for the rest of his brief life.

But perhaps the greatest evidence is that after his tragic assassination, it was De Valera who Jackie Onassis turned to among all the guests at his funeral , knowing how much the Irish trip and his relationship with Kennedy had meant to the slain president.

It was also the Irish Army which formed the honor guard in Washington.

His wife and closest family never had any doubt that In his heart Jack Kennedy was a paid-up member of the tribe

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AmnahKhan | Oct 31, 2011, 03:30 AM EDT

I think that the only worthy Kennedy was Robert Francis. He was unbelievably a different man than the rest of his family. Though JFK did good things for America, but what ideals RFK held were not even in the vision of JFK. I think Bobby was really sweet, people just did not understand him because he had high moral standards and call him abrasive. I think his only tragedy was to be born in the Kennedy family, which was also his only best opportunity that took him to highest offices. Regarding the womanising of JFK, it is also unbelievable from the man, and highly disappointing. But those about RFK have been proven to be just rumours. The worst thing is that people choose to believe them because he was a Kennedy. I always say that only his own character can defend attacks on his character. But only if the world would understand him as a human being. The history itself misses Bobby, and we would always love him.

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manhattan | Nov 04, 2010, 02:02 PM EDT

PITTSBURGH KID," KID "SAYS A LOT ABOUT YOU. IF YOU THINK THE MISSLE CRISES WAS STAGED IT SHOWS YOUR LACK OF INTELLIGENCE BEC AUSE IF YOU HAD ANY, AND LIVED THROUGH THOSE DAYS AND SEARCHED THE HISTORY YOU WOULDN'T BE SO FAST TO MAKE A STATEMENT LIKE THAT..MAKE YOURSELF A COOLADE AND KNOW YOUR FACTS FIRST.

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haikued2 | Nov 03, 2010, 12:20 PM EDT

OF COURSE HE WAS. When he was elected his family could have bought about half of Ireland....not many Irish can say that. His heritage was Irish, but his schooling was all US liberal and Harvard polished. He was a pretty good President because he was also pragmatic enough to know what the real issues were. I liked Bobby better, even with his abrasive personality. But super rich American kids are just that.

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MarthaAnne | Nov 02, 2010, 12:43 AM EDT

Watchman, I generally agree with you about John and certainly Joe Kennedy. I always thought that John Kennedy was a vastly over rated president. Many of my friends in Boston agree, and this might surprise non-New Englanders to hear that!

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MarthaAnne | Nov 02, 2010, 12:40 AM EDT

I wish to add a little more here: My parents were life long friends to an older bachelor named Joseph O'Gorman, who attended Harvard with Robert Frost. Mr. O'Gorman was a frequent visitor at our house when we children were growing up. He majored in Celtic Languages at Harvard. He used to tell my parents the names of things in Irish, Welsh, and other Celtic languages. He died in his mid 90's in the 1960's, I believe it was. He had retired very young after selling his prosperous clothing company. Of full Irish descent, just like the Kennedy's.

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MarthaAnne | Nov 02, 2010, 12:33 AM EDT

The Kennedy's are basically the Boston Irish, as were my family on both sides. My grandfather worked in the same office building as did Joseph Kennedy (and he disliked him for his immoral conduct). The Kennedy's were a known entity to my grandparents and all Boston Irish types. For heaven's sake, they were IRISH AMERICANS and that meant that the Boston Brahmin did not want to socialize with them, and rarely did. The Kennedy's were ACUTELY are of being Irish Americans, regardless of the Harvard association (which my family also had, two having attended Harvard). In Boston, if you were of Irish descent, you HAD to have strong feelings about your culture as you were not welcome in the same clubs and social circles as the Yankees (Bostonians of English Descent), and the Boston Brahmins. My mother, who grew up in an Irish American prosperous home and who had a live in Irish maid always, nevertheless was not spoken to other than "Good Day" or something similar by her family's Cambridge Yankee neighbors. If you were of Irish descent (she was of the same approximate age as Jack Kennedy), you were IRISH and not Yankee or Brahmin and you summered in towns different than those of the Yankees. My parents lived this, so I don't need to wonder if Kennedy "felt Irish".

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Pittsburghkid | Nov 01, 2010, 10:57 PM EDT

Sorry, Kennedy was just another Politician. Being an American, his Presidency was a failure. From the Bay of Pigs to the phoney Russian show down. Yes, the show down with Russia over Cuba Missle was a hoax. When Russia pulled out missle in Cuba, Kennedy pulled out missle in Turkey. It was an nice media event, although the pulling out of missles got little play. He would have pulled out of Vietnam, except an unforunate trip to Dallas. His affair with Marlyn Monroe was discusting. Although, he did do one thing right, and that was the tax cut. The real Great Irish American President was Ronald Reagan. Although, his mother was not Irish, but Reagan was Irish to his soul. It was Reagan, who won the Cold War.

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seamusmoore | Nov 01, 2010, 09:05 PM EDT

As to the concept of "Irishness", it was famous Irish patriot and poet Thomas Osborne Davis, who constructed the concept an Irish identity, who once said: "It was not blood that made you Irish, but the willingness to be part of the Irish nation. Although the Saxon and Dane were, Davis asserted, objects of unpopularity, their descendants would be Irish if they simply allowed themselves to be." I believe that JFK was proud of his Irish heritage, unlike his father Joe, who while Ambassador to England, took his family over to Ireland a total of zero times. Teddy got to visit Ireland only when Grandpa Fitzgerald came over from America to take him. A very wise man once noted that the Kennedys from Wexford were "nothing more than hooch purveyors till they married the Fitzgeralds from Munster". You won't read that in Kennedy apologist Doris Kearns Goodwin's Kennedy tomes which neglects to tell you that Patrick Kennedy was a sickly, weak man who died 9 years after coming to America leaving his wife, Virginia Murphy (Cork name), with four small children to provide for. Oh, those Kennedy mouthpieces and their fabulous yarns. The best is in Thomas Maier's book "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings". He describes the helicopter carrying JFK from Dublin to wexford as it descends on the Sean Kennedy GAA field in New Ross, noting "it recently named in honor of the US President". Sure it was, it wouldn't be named for the captain and star of the 4 in a row (1915-8)Wexford All Ireland winning football team, particularly since it was a GAA field.

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Watchman | Nov 01, 2010, 05:08 PM EDT

Joe Kennedy was a Fascist sympathiser, an appeaser and a criminal. To talk about his "struggle" for acceptance within the Manhattan élites is to miss a whole series of important points about the sort of man he was. His son, JFK, was a useless President. A compulsive womaniser, who brought the world to the brink of war through his stupid decision to position missiles in Turkey aimed at Russia, he invaded Cuba (disastrously) and did little or nothing to advance the cause of Civil Rights. LBJ was a far greater man. Bobby Kennedy was his big brother's bagman. His refusal to allow Martin Luther King into the White House was, and remains, unforgivable. Teddy Kennedy was deeply flawed, but he was highly intelligent and possessed real political courage. He regretted the follies of his younger days and worked tirelessly over the last 25 years of his life to help build a better America. If I believed in God, I would hope that he rests in peace.

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manhattan | Nov 01, 2010, 01:45 PM EDT

No Irish had it as bad as the famine Irish who landed in Boston. They suffered discrimination in New York but Boston was a small city totally run by WASPS. But they brilliantly got themselves into politics and that helped get them out of the of the gutters they were left to live in. Joe and Rose Kennedy came from successful Irish parents. But no matter how much money or success they had they could never be accepted by the elite. Joe was discriminated against at Harvard because no Catholic could be accepted into any clubs. They and so many Irish that did make it didn't want to be considered Irish, they wanted to be American first and foremost. JFK didn't have those barriers so, he could search out his roots. I read a book by Teddy, it was so moving when he spoke about his Irish heritage.

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joanmoody | Nov 01, 2010, 11:26 AM EDT

Kennedy was Kennedy and as proud of his roots as he was didn't understand that NINA did not die and hasn't for those of us who live in the southwest where Hispanics loom large. We are the minority in Texas and jobs are difficult because we do not speak Spanish and this being America!

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jamieLM | Nov 01, 2010, 10:41 AM EDT

Reagan's father had a "drinking problem" and everyone in town knew it. Reagan may have been embarrassed as a kid by the Irish stereotype of the drunken Irishman. Reagan grew up in small Illinois towns where in the early 1900's not everyone celebrated their ethnic heritage, no matter what it was. During WWI, NO ONE wanted to claim German ancestry. Nationalism and pride in being "American" came first for many people who had sad/bad memories of their home country and who wanted to make a new start in the U.S. Reagan may have felt somewhat removed from his Irish roots by his adult years. Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on the Kennedys is a good one. Rose's family, the Fitzgeralds, felt the same way as the Kennedys. The Irish who moved out of the eastern cities and into the Midwest faced no more discrimination than any other ethnic group. They had a "leg up" on other ethnic groups because they spoke English. The Irish established towns, churches, and businesses. Many became farmers. The Midwestern Irish were quite successful and still are today.

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mikemeboy | Nov 01, 2010, 12:57 AM EDT

Harvard? Not so you could tell, although isn't that where the John F. Kennedy Center for Government and Public Policy? just wondering, I do know that some of us Irish Americans (like himself) took hope and inspiration in his victory. WE HAD MADE IT! against the likes of the Cabots and Lodges, and the other "Brahmins". NINA signs had come down at last!

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plasticpaddy | Oct 31, 2010, 11:07 PM EDT

If its written by Ryan Tubridy it must be a pile of sh*te. Also Reagan explicitly denied his Irish heritage many times during his presidential campaign. Allied to that the fact that he is one that should be disowned by us due to his callous nature and his disrespecting of his heritage.

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Celtica43 | Oct 31, 2010, 10:01 PM EDT

Oh, puleeeeeeeeease!

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