Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508180077
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Irish immigrants dug the canals, built the railroads, fought on both sides in the Civil War and went west to homestead on land grants 40 times the size of the farms they left.
``Letters from America,'' dollars sent home, flowed into Ireland at an average $5 million annually, then the largest transfer of funds across the Atlantic.
``The pennies of Irish servant girls,'' it is acknowledged, built St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Immigrant donations built St. Colman's Cathedral in Cobh, Ireland, where tens of thousands embarked, most never to return.
By 1870, one in every five voters in New York City was Irish. ``In urban American politics the Irish became a force to be reckoned with,'' observed Kerby Miller, history professor at the University of Missouri.
Above all, the ``famine experience burned itself into the Irish character,'' says historical geographer Kevin Whelan, a fellow of the Royal Irish Academy.
``It's our psychic history,'' says the Rev. George Aggar of Cobh. ``Hunger gnaws at us. In every little pub or shop there's always a collection box on the counter for starving people somewhere in the world. When rock star Bob Geldof organized his `Band Aid' project to feed the starving in Africa, Ireland raised more per capita than any other country.''
Boston physician Tom Durant, a frequent flier to disasters anywhere, notes that ``wherever famine strikes - Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia - Irish relief teams from `Goal' and `Concern' are always first to arrive and take on the worst jobs, like burying the dead. A Dublin nurse told me she came to Rwanda because her grandmother never let her forget.''
``Inherited values,'' said curator Michael Callopy of the Cobh Heritage Center, ``trigger our sympathy for anyone, anywhere facing starvation.''
by CNB