On this day in 1963, John F. Kennedy, an Irish-American and the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, arrived in Ireland for a state visit. JFK referred to his stay there, which occurred five months before he was assassinated, as “the best four days of his life.” He was greeted by Éamon de Valera, the Irish president and a legendary leader in that nation’s struggle for independence from Great Britain.
While there, Kennedy also met with 15 members of his extended Irish family in Dunganstown, their ancestral homestead in County Wexford. He drank a cup of tea, ate a piece of cake and toasted “all those Kennedys who went and all those Kennedys who stayed.” His great-grandfather, Thomas Fitzgerald, had left Ireland during the 1848 famine and settled in Boston.
In Dunganstown, a boys choir sang “The Boys of Wexford.” Kennedy broke away from his Secret Service detail to join the choir for a second chorus, eliciting a misty eyed reaction from some observers.
Before departing on June 29, the president, speaking in Eyre Square in Galway, said: “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. And if you did, you would see down working on the docks there some Doughertys and Flahertys and Ryans and cousins of yours who have gone to Boston and made good.”
At the time, Ireland had been independent for 41 years. The island’s northern counties, however, remained part of the United Kingdom and were plagued by sectarian violence. Speaking before the Irish parliament, the Dáil Éireann, in Dublin, Kennedy condemned what he termed Britain’s record of persecuting Irish Catholics.
From Ireland, Kennedy went to London to meet with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and members of his Cabinet.