son of Winston, and had been linked with some of the more exotic men of the time, including the American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and the Italian car magnate Gianni Agnelli. But on this particular morning, she was accompanying a skinny Congressman down the narrow, winding roads of New Ross. It didn’t take Kennedy long to find Dunganstown and, once there, he was directed along a rough track to a thatched–roof cottage, the home of Mary Ryan, a third cousin on his father’s side.
Their house was a far cry from the luxury of Lismore Castle, with sparse comforts, an outdoor toilet and chickens and pigs wandering in the yard, but John F. Kennedy was delighted to sit down and listen to Mary Ryan’s stories of his grandfather, Patrick, who had visited there thirty years previously, and other family members who had stayed behind in County Wexford during the Famine. Kennedy produced a camera and took some photographs, which continue to grace photo albums in the Dunganstown homestead.
Alas, in the time he spent there, Kennedy failed to make a significant impression as years later, the only recollections Mary Ryan and James Kennedy, another third cousin, had were physical. Respectively, they commented “He didn’t look well at all” and “Begod, and he was shook looking!” However, hospitality was forthcoming and tea was duly served to the young American and his aristocratic companion. Sixteen years later, the eyes of the world would focus on Mrs Ryan when she once more served her distant relative tea and cake but by then the circumstances would be utterly changed.
Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, as it was in the early 20th century. It was here in 1947 that Congressman Kennedy came to stay.
Though Kennedy may not have made much impact, the time he spent with Mrs Ryan had profound resonance for him. As they drove away down the dirt track that afternoon, a wistful Kennedy claimed later that he “left in a flow of nostalgia and sentiment”. He turned to Lady Churchill for her thoughts on the visit and she offered pithily “That was just like Tobacco Road!” (a novel set amongst farmers struggling in the Great Depression of the 1930s). Flying towards Ireland on Air Force One sixteen years later, Kennedy would remember this moment: “I felt like kicking her out of the car. For me, the visit to that cottage was filled with magic sentiment. That night at the castle … I looked around the table and thought about the cottage where my cousins lived, and I said to myself, ‘What a contrast!’”27
One of the photographs taken by JFK when he visited the ancestral homestead in Dunganstown, Co. Wexford, in 1947.
Further evidence that he was beginning to feel his own Irishness more strongly comes from his support for a 1947 bill in Congress, proposing that post–war aid for the British should be contingent on their government ending Partition in Ireland. Rhode Island Congressman John Fogarty had introduced this resolution on a number of previous occasions, and would do so again later. The bill was never going to become law but it was an easy way for Kennedy to underline his Irishness with his Irish–American base and may well have reflected his own views on Partition at the time. It was defeated in Congress by 206 votes to 139, with 83 abstaining but JFK had laid his cards on the table. As far as the Irish nationalists were concerned, he was on their side.
The Senator in Dublin, 1955
Kennedy’s years as a Congressman gave him a good training in how to be a grafting politician, complete with all the requisite wheeling and dealing, and in 1952 he decided to make a run for Senate. His most important decisions at this stage lay in the people with whom he surrounded himself. Top of the list was his brother Bobby, who ran the Senate campaign. Another three key players formed the group commonly known to all as the Irish Mafia. Bobby’s Harvard roommate, Kenny O’Donnell, became a key adviser and organiser while Dave Powers, a first–generation Irish–American, was a political fixer who aided in morale maintenance, acted as court jester28 and kept secrets. Larry O’Brien completed the unholy trinity that formed Kennedy’s inner circle. With parents hailing from Cork, O’Brien was described by Kennedy as “the best election man in the business”, who could read elections and their results like no other. He helped run the two Senate campaigns, the Presidential race and acted as Kennedy’s man on Capitol Hill for the duration of the Kennedy Administration.
The other two men whom Kennedy kept close were the non–Irish Ted Sorensen, who joined the Senator in 1952 and remained by his side until 1963, and the thirty–three–year–old Pierre Salinger. Kennedy described Sorensen, who wrote most of the President’s key speeches,as his “intellectual blood bank”. Salinger became press officer for the Presidential campaign and, later, White House Press Secretary.
In order to win the Senate seat in 1952, Kennedy first had to eliminate the biggest beast in the Boston jungle, Henry Cabot–Lodge. Cabot–Lodge was a member of one of the most esteemed Boston Brahmin families, who had run the state for generations. This didn’t daunt the young Congressman who felt that as a war hero and author, and armed with a bottomless financial well, he was ideally placed to take the seat – and he did. By the end of 1952, Senator Kennedy was ready to take his place among the men of power on Capitol Hill.
During his early years as a Senator, Kennedy focussed on his personal rather than his political affairs. In 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, a highly glamorous union in a business not noted for beauty, and in late September 1955, he and his wife paid a visit to Ireland, at her instigation. It wasn’t a nostalgic meet–the–relatives trip this time, but a piece of calculated meeting and greeting designed to enhance Kennedy’s image with Irish–American voters at home. They would be staying in Dublin’s luxurious Shelbourne Hotel rather than driving down muddy back lanes looking for distant cousins.
They were en route back from a European tour during which Kennedy had spoken in Poland on the Catholic Church’s successful fight against Communism.29 (This fight would spur on a young Karol Wojtyla to keep writing his religious treatises, despite opposition from the Communist government. He would later become John Paul II, the first non–Italian pope in 450 years, a man who in 1979 commanded the biggest–ever turnout for any visiting dignitary to the island of Ireland.) On a previous visit to Dublin, Jackie Kennedy had befriended a Vincentian priest by the name of Father Joseph Leonard, and he now arranged for Kennedy to address students at All Hallows College, which he duly did, happily answering questions on Catholicism and American issues.
John F. Kennedy wasn’t yet being talked of as a candidate for the presidency but the thirty–eight–year–old politician’s status and importance had grown between each of his flights over the Atlantic and his wife was keen that he should appear presidential wherever they stopped off. It might have been unusual for a politician to engage in religious questions, but he had never made a secret of his religion, even though it could have proved a liability in electoral terms.
Irish Minister for External Affairs Liam Cosgrave hosted a lunch for the visiting Kennedys. Protocol dictated that such a lunch should have been held at the Department of External Affairs in Iveagh House but JFK had recently had an operation on his back and “was at that time moving around on crutches, [so] instead of giving him lunch anywhere else, we arranged that it be given in the Shelbourne,” the Minister recalls. Among the guests that afternoon were Father Leonard and Mrs Kennedy. With illness–related problems proving a theme, the Taoiseach John Costello’s wife took over as hostess because Mrs Cosgrave was unwell.
Liam Cosgrave’s memories of Kennedy in 1955 tally with the man who would return eight years later as US President: “He was very friendly, matter of fact, devoid of pretence
