Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 72, originally released in print form in 2024. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2024 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
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From Ireland TO CALIFORNIA Moving The Ronald Reagan Pub SARAH M. G. THOMSON
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p r ev i o us sp r e ad The exterior of The Ronald Reagan public house in Ballyporeen, South Tipperary, Ireland, is seen circa 1985 (page 101), and its interior is seen as reinstalled in 2005 in the Air Force One Pavillion of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (page 100).
almost half of all presidents of the united states claim irish ancestry, and a stop for a pint at a local pub has become a staple feature of many a presidential visit to Ireland. One president who was especially proud of his Irish roots was Ronald Reagan. After his election in 1980, a group of genealogy specialists successfully traced his great-great-grandfather Thomas Reagan to the tiny village of Ballyporeen in County Tipperary.1 Thomas’s son Michael Reagan emigrated from Ireland to London and then to the United States in 1856 with his wife Catherine. Their four children included John, President Reagan’s grandfather. John’s children, including the president’s father Jack, had been orphaned at a young age, leaving Ronald Reagan unaware of exactly where his ancestors had emigrated from, and so he was moved by the gesture made by those who researched his roots. In 1981, the Irish government gave Reagan a copy of the genealogical chart tracing his ancestry along with a formal invitation to visit his ancestral home.2 In June 1984, Reagan had the opportunity to take the Irish government up on its offer to visit, and he made a four-day trip to Ireland on his way
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to the G7 Summit in London. Upon his arrival at Shannon airport, Reagan told the assembled crowd, “I’m returning not only to my own roots, I’m returning to America’s roots.”3 At this time, 40 million Americans boasted Irish ancestry, around one-sixth of the population, and many were proud to call themselves Irish Americans.4 A presidential visit to Ireland was sure to garner interest both at home and overseas. During his trip, President Reagan spent time in Dublin, giving a speech to the Irish National Parliament and visiting the University of Galway. However, it was Reagan’s visit to his ancestral home of Ballyporeen that was the key event in his sentimental journey to Ireland. He visited the church where his great-grandfather’s baptism was recorded, watched some Irish dancing, and received gifts from the people of Ballyporeen. These gifts included a leather-bound book of photographs of everyday life in the village, made by the local community.5 Reagan went on to address the crowds with an emotional speech, and, in an apparent attempt to embrace his Irish roots, greeted his audience with a few words in Irish Gaelic. He was
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l ef t A sign in Illinois’s Fulton County Cemetery marks the burial site of Michael and Catherine Reagan who emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1856. Their son John and his wife Jeannie died in their thirties before passing on their knowledge of family history to their four children. One of those children was Jack, who is seen here with his wife Nellie and two sons Neil and Ronald, the future president of the United States (second from right). Ronald Reagan would not learn of his Irish ancestors until after he was elected president in 1980.
r i gh t The Morpeth Roll, which contains more than 160,000 signatures collected from residents of Ireland in 1841, is seen in the Russell Library at Maynooth University. The detail (below right) includes the signature of Thomas Reagan, President Reagan’s great-greatgrandfather.
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b e l ow l eft A beautifully calligraphed ancestral chart, given to President Reagan by the Irish government in 1981, lists the Reagan family line from Thomas to Ronald Reagan.
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Ballyporeen is a small village surrounded by farmland in County Tipperary, Ireland. The three-story green building on the left side of the road, near the center, housed O’Farrell’s and The Ronald Reagan pub. The village welcomed President and Mrs. Reagan with a performance of traditional Irish dance on a stage set in front of The Ronald Reagan pub.
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Crowds filled the street to listen as President Reagan spoke outside O’Farrell’s and The Ronald Reagan pub. Once inside President and Mrs. Reagan met a local baby and shared a toast.
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l ef t John and Mary O’Farrell pose with their family outside their pub after renaming it The Ronald Reagan in 1981. op p o s i t e
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Reagans’ visit, the O’Farrell family even kept the glasses the Reagans had used to toast their visit on display for visitors to see. For the next twenty years, The Ronald Reagan pub enjoyed visits from many who wished to follow in the footsteps of the former president, including former Reagan staffers and interested American tourists wishing to make a “nostalgic visit,” as Reagan had said, “to the original home of the Reagan clan.”9 In 1984, no one could have predicted what the future had in store for this small pub in a sleepy Irish village. However, a few weeks after Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004, the pub received an unexpected visitor. Frederick Ryan Jr., a close aide and friend of the Reagans and fellow Irish American, was in Ireland on a family vacation. Ryan had helped to organize Reagan’s visit to the pub back in 1984 and wanted to pay it a visit. Ryan went to The Ronald Reagan pub but found it to be locked. To his dismay, upon speaking to the O’Farrells, Ryan learned the pub was on the brink of closure. There was soon to be an auction, and all the items in the pub would be sold off to other local businesses. At that moment, Ryan made a bold offer. He wanted to buy the entire contents of the pub. He wanted to buy everything: the dart board, the carpets, the wall coverings, the signs, the windows, even the original light bulbs. Nothing was too big or too small. He explained to the puzzled pub
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open about the poverty his ancestors faced prior to their migration and grateful to the researchers who had tracked down his family history. “Thanks to you,” he said, “and the efforts of good people who have dug into the history of a poor immigrant family, I know at last whence I came. And this has given my soul a new contentment. And it is a joyous feeling. It is like coming home after a long journey.” He went on to speak about the American Dream and how his return to Ireland showed that any child, no matter how humble the origins, had the potential to “grow up to become the Prime Minister of Ireland or President of the United States.”6 Back at home, the press coverage of Reagan’s time in Ballyporeen was positive. Headlines included “Reagan Basks in Ancestral Ballyporeen,” while the cover of the Los Angeles Times featured a photo of a banner reading “Welcome Home to Ballyporeen, Mr President” and a second photo of Ronald and Nancy Reagan cheerfully enjoying a drink in the local pub (Ronald, a Smithwick’s ale, Nancy, a Carolans Irish Cream liqueur).7 That pub was named O’Farrell’s, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan chatted with the owners, John and Mary O’Farrell. President Reagan also receiving briefings from White House staff while visiting the pub.8 Though the pub had been in the O’Farrell family for almost two hundred years, it had been renamed The Ronald Reagan in 1981. After the
In 2004, the O’Farrells closed their pub for good and the interior was shipped to Simi Valley, California. There it was unpacked, reassembled, and installed in the Air Force One Pavilion of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
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California. Once in the Golden State, the pub was reassembled as a central attraction in the Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where it remains to this day. The O’Farrells flew to California to cut the ribbon on the new Ronald Reagan Pub and to serve the first drinks at the newly reopened establishment. Ryan further explained his decision, saying, “Ireland and [Reagan’s] heritage had a profound impact on shaping his character, his world view, the things he stood for, and the chance to go back to Ireland, where his ancestors had come from, without much, and to return as the President of the United States, was something that he was thrilled about being able to do.”11 Museums offer an important means by which the American public engages with its history, with one study finding that Americans put “more trust” in history museums than in any other means of learning about U.S. history.12 So preserving the pub in this way has helped to enrich the story being told within the Reagan Library’s museum space. Today visitors to the Reagan Library can stop
During the opening of The Ronald Reagan Pub in the Air Force One Pavilion, First Lady Nancy Reagan enjoys a glass of Carolan’s Irish liqueur and a funny toast made by Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., who purchased the pub in Ballyporeen, Ireland, and arranged for it to be moved to California as his gift to the Reagan Library. They are joined by journalist Hugh Sidey ( far left) and the O’Farrell family (standing behind Mrs. Reagan and Fred Ryan).
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owners that he had an idea. He would arrange to have the contents of the pub shipped to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, where it could be reconstructed and preserved for future Irish Americans to visit. In Ryan’s words: “I knew [the pub] was something Ronald Reagan was so proud of, that he talked constantly about. It would be a great bridge to Ireland for all the people who come to visit the Reagan Library in Los Angeles. . . . That’ll be my gift to the Library.”10 Ryan, then the chairman of the Reagan Library, had been involved in the construction of the new Air Force One Pavilion and decided that it would be fitting to relocate the pub to the shadow of the plane Reagan had used to make his sentimental journey to Ireland in the 1980s. He told Nancy Reagan of his plans. When she realized Ryan was entirely serious, she was thrilled to know this small piece of Reagan’s presidency was to be preserved in this way. True to his word, Ryan arranged for every item within the pub, from the dart board to the beer mats, to be packed up and shipped to Simi Valley,
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Reconstruction complete, The Ronald Reagan Pub from Ballyporeen, Ireland, is seen at the far end of the hall beneath Air Force One in the Air Force One Pavilion of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 2005.
midway through the museum to enjoy a drink at Reagan’s “authentic” Irish pub. The menu includes packaged snacks and sodas for visitors to the museum during the day, but pints of Guinness and Smithwick’s are available for attendees at evening events. The one difference is the pub has an open front, so customers can relax outside the pub and look over the hills of Simi Valley while sitting in the shadow of a retired Air Force One. In recent years the venue has played host to an array of events from presidential primary debates to St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, a holiday that Reagan especially enjoyed. Journalist Lou Cannon boldly declared in 1984, upon Reagan’s return to American soil, “No president since John F. Kennedy has performed as successfully on the world stage,”13 and it is fitting that a small part of this triumphant presidential trip has been preserved for future generations to enjoy. Indeed, it is miraculous that more than 5,000 miles from the pub’s original location, people can now stop and pay their own “nostalgic visit to the original home of the Reagan clan.”14
notes 1. Peter Osnos, “Reagan’s Homecoming Excites Irish Village: Warm Irish Homecoming Planned for Reagan,” Washington Post, April 6, 1984, E1.
Reagan,” 1981, Advanced Office of the President Records: Series III: G-7 Summits, OA17071, box 22, “Irish Genealogy (Reagan),” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Simi Valley, Calif. 3. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Arrival at Shannon Airport in Shannon, Ireland,” June 1, 1984, available online at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum website, www. reaganlibrary.gov. 4. Lou Cannon, ‘This Year, Campaigner Has a Rose Garden to Take on the Road.” Washington Post, February 6 1984. 5. “President Ronald Reagan Visits Ancestral Home in Ballyporeen,” 1984, available online at RTÉ Archives website, www.rte.ie/archives. 6. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks to the Citizens of Ballyporeen, Ireland,” June 3, 1984, available online at Reagan Presidential Library website. 7. Lou Cannon and Michael Getler, “Reagan Basks in Ancestral Ballyporeen: President Looks Up His Ancestry, Quaffs Stout in Ballyporeen,” Washington Post, June 4, 1984, A1; Jack Nelson, “President Sees His Irish Roots,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1984, A1. 8. “Obituary: John O’Farrell—Publican Who Served Pint to Reagan,” Irish Times, October 3, 2015. 9. Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Trip to Europe,” June 2, 1984, available online at Reagan Presidential Library website. 10. Quoted in Conor Brady, “The Story of the Ronald Reagan Pub: From Tipperary to California” [interview of Fred Ryan], podcast posted June 30, 2023, Publin, www.open.spotify.com. 11. Ibid. 12. Jodi Kanter, “Character-in-Chief: Performing the American Citizen at Two Presidential Libraries,” Text and Performance Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2012): 350, citing Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past (1998). 13. Lou Cannon, “No Recent President Has Performed So Well on the World Stage,” Washington Post, June 11, 1984, A1. 14. Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Trip to Europe.”
2. Fr. Eanna Condon, “The Irish Ancestry of President Ronald
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