Homecoming before heartache

How JFK’s one and only presidential visit to Ireland changed the nation

again, and I am taking, as I go back to America, all of you with me.”

But sadly, he would never make that return trip as he was assassinated five months later.

This month the 60th anniversary of JFK’s historic Irish trip is being marked by the EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum.

The exhibition, at their Dublin location, provides visitors the opportunity to “discover the cultural and political significance” of JFK’s Irish visit, which they describe as a “pivotal moment in Irish-American relations”.

It is a joint project with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Homecoming: JKF in Ireland, will reveal how JFK’s four-day visit “strengthened ties between two nations and ushered in a new era of optimism in a changing Ireland”.

“We are delighted to be hosting this exhibition in collaboration with the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston,” curator Catherine Healy, the Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, confirmed this week.

“JFK’s visit to Ireland brought international attention to the progress made by the independent Irish state, but it also served as a celebration of Irish diaspora success,” she explained.

“The first Catholic to be elected to the White House, he was a powerful emblem of Irish America’s transition from tenement poverty to middle-class respectability.”

 This exhibition will be on display at EPIC The Irish

IT was 60 years ago this month when US President John F Kennedy made his historic trip to Ireland.

On June 26, 1963 JFK arrived in the Emerald Isle on an emotional trip to his ancestral home.

It marked the first visit to Ireland by a US president, although eight more have visited since, most recently his fellow Irishman Joe Biden.

But JFK’s was a trip that was as special to the people of Ireland as it was to JFK himself, who was determined to trace his roots while in the country.

He met cousins in Wexford during his visit, which saw him hosted by then Irish President Éamon de Valera.

So enamoured with his ancestral homeland was JFK that in a speech made before he left, he promised to return.

He quoted a poem in that speech, which was written by De Valera’s wife Sinéad de Valera, who had performed the poem of exile for the