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The First Word - The Irish Way
By Patricia Harty
“If Ireland was forward-looking enough to want to have a profound influence on American life, they would have a program to take over 3,000 to 4,000 16-year-olds a year and give them that experience.”
– Eoin McKiernan, Irish America magazine (January, 1887).
With the passing of Eon McKiernan, 89, (see page 72) we reflect on his rich legacy that lay in his love of Ireland.
No one was more knowledgeable on the question or Ireland or Irish America, than Eoin. For many years – until the beginning of the year 2000 – he penned the Last Word column for this magazine. He wrote about Ireland and Irish America, politics and history, literature and language. He wrote of great events and the everyday incidents that marked our passage. He told us stories of great heroes and reminded us of anniversaries such as that of Irish rebel John Devoy (September marking his birth and death), and brought to our attention those lesser-known champions that he admired. One such person was the linguist Jeremiah Curtin (the son of Irish immigrants the first Wisconsinite to earn a degree from Harvard College), whom Eoin wrote “recognized language as the treasury, the transmitter, the myth maker and molder of societies.”
I was lucky to know Eoin as a mentor and a friend.
Increasingly, towards the end of his life, he began to see the Irish language as a vital component in the survival of our culture and he cautioned us to preserve it. “A smaller nation sharing a language with a much larger nation will dance to the tune of the larger one,” he wrote in his final magazine column (Feb./March 2000).
To Eoin, the language, Gaeilge, was an essential part of our Irish culture. He must have been disappointed at the end of his life that the Irish language is not recognized as an official language in the EC. But he surely was cheered at the great debate its status has caused in Ireland.
The son of an Irish mother and a first-generation father, Eoin came early to the stories of Ireland. He especially loved Co. Clare, that place, rich in traditional music and song, from whence his mother came.
The immigrants of that era passed on the music and stories to their sons and daughters so that they might teach them to their children. In this way the land they loved but would never see again was kept alive in the hearts and minds of future generations. (I would have liked to have one last conversation with Eoin about my visit to Prince Edward Island, see page 52 and its thriving traditional music scene.)
Concerned that the oral tradition was being lost as Irish-Americans assimilated, Eoin used the technology of the present to create dozens of public television programs celebrating Irish artists and history. In 1962 he founded the Irish Cultural Institute, and awarded grants to Irish writers, composers, artists, and Irish-language endeavors.
And because he himself was profoundly moved by a trip to Ireland when he was 15-years-old, he founded The Irish Way, a summer program for American high school students. By bringing them to Ireland and immersing them in its culture, he hoped to keep alive the flame in future generation. And he was successful.
Not only did his students learn about Ireland, they taught their parents and made return trips with their families. Today the Irish Cultural Institute is alive and well as is the Irish Way Program. And when we look at Irish America we see all the Irish Studies courses now being offered at universities and colleges across the states. And in all this Eoin McKiernan lives on – true pioneer and eternal flame.
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