Mark and I drove to Moneygall in Co. Offaly on Friday. Moneygall is the hometown of Barack Obama’s great great great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, who left Ireland when he was 19 and arrived in New York on March 20, 1850. I’d heard about it during the election, and on inauguration day CNN showed the residents and distant cousins celebrating his achievement.
I’d read on the internet that Moneygall had installed billboards on either end of town announcing the connection to our current president. They were nowhere to be seen. We were hoping to get cool Irish/Obama chotchkes, but we found none. We planned on having lunch in the Obama Café, but it wasn’t open.
We walked a couple of doors down the street to Ollie Hayes, a nice looking pub with Irish, US, and EU flags above the door. It wasn’t open, but as we were walking back, a small door in a larger door for deliveries next to the pub opened. Two men, one holding a beautiful little toddler with curly black hair, came out on the street. The one holding the child said, “Are you from the states”?
We got to talking to them and it seemed that the older one, the one with the little girl in his arms, was the proprietor of Ollie Hayes. He told us the other man, pictured here, was Obama’s eighth cousin. I didn’t really believe them, but I said, “Well, you’re probably as close as we are ever going to get to Barack Obama”!
I’d posted on Facebook before we left that we were on our way to Moneygall. When I got back I had a reply from Jackie Gorman who works for the Atlantic Corridor, an economic development group in Tullamore. Jackie asked if I’d seen the red, white, and blue sheep. I said no, and told her about meeting the eighth cousin, Henry or Harry, or so we’d been told. She wrote back, “Henry. It was all over the news here for a while.” And she sent me this link in which you can see Henry Healy waxing enthusiastic about his cousin. I think you’ll agree; his resemblance to Barack is uncanny!
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