MORE ON THE GREAT HUNGER:

• Other Famine Memorials Worldwide
• An Ghorta Mor -- Crossroads of A People
• Grosse Ile, Quebec -- Journey of Hope, Island of Death

  New York Dedicates Its Famine Memorial

  By Gerry Regan
  The Wild Geese Today

  Brian Tolle, 2002 Artist's rendering of the newly dedicated Irish Hunger Memorial in lower Manhattan, looking west, toward the Hudson River.

  NEW YORK (Published July 2002) -- Comprising in part a quarter-acre of land, arrayed with barren potato furrows, flora from County Mayo, and rocks from each of Ireland's 32 counties, New York's new Irish Hunger Memorial is clearly "not just another man on a horse," as one speaker noted during the memorial's 90-minute dedication Tuesday.

  So then what is it? In the view of Ireland's president Mary McAleese, the memorial is "a new conscience at the heart of New York for the suffering, hungry people of our world."

  While striving to accent the obscenity of mass hunger that goes on to this day, the memorial, and particularly its centerpiece -- a 180-year-old derelict cottage imported from north Mayo -- speaks of the single most formative event in the history of the Irish people, An Ghorta Mor, also known as The Great Hunger.

  "That shameful starvation, which ravaged 19th century Ireland, changed the future of this country, changed the future of Ireland and left a heavy shadow on our psychological landscape," said McAleese during her keynote address. "It has taken many generations to lift that shadow, and today we are proud that Ireland is a first-world country with a third-world memory," a memory, she noted, that has Ireland among the world's leaders in generosity to suffering people worldwide. [Click here for the full text of her remarks.]

  WGT Photo/Gerry Regan New York Gov. George Pataki, left, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg field questions in front of the memorial, with the abandoned cottage behind.

  Of course, the memorial's stones don't talk, at least not in so many words, though some are engraved with their county of origin. Still, the memorial itself does speak, via recordings about famine worldwide to those walking its 25 paces-long entrance into the cottage, and quotations on the outside wall.

  Nearly two miles of them have been imbedded in bands around the base of the memorial, says a fact sheet from Battery Park City Authority, who commissioned and paid for the $4.7 million memorial as a capital project. There are some 100 quotations in all, which underscore the pervasiveness of hunger then and today.

  For example, "Panhandler, United States: Poverty means never having quite enough to eat," lies nearby "Let Ireland's extremity be America's opportunity to each the nations a magnificent lesson in brotherly love," a comment from Elihu Burritt, from "A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen and Its Neighborhood."

  WGT Photo/Gerry Regan The quotations imbedded in the walls of the base are separated by Kilkenny limestone.

  Undoubtedly over its years in Mayo's Attymas parish, the fieldstone cottage had seen quite a bit of woe. The parish, the authority points out, was the first to report deaths from the Famine, in the fall of 1846, a year after the first reports of blighted potatoes. One Father O'Neill, the parish priest there, reported on November 19 that four persons had recently died of starvation.

  This is certainly a sunnier time, and a bright sun bathed the dedication, which drew more than 1,000 people sitting and standing by the memorial's southside, enjoying generous breezes off the nearby Hudson River. Among those who spoke were rock star Bob Geldof, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and New York Governor George Pataki. Cardinal John Egan, head of New York's Archdiocese, gave the invocation, and Northern Ireland Assembly member Martin McGuinness made an appearance as well.

  Author and actor Malachy McCourt, resplendent in a white suit, elicited the day's heartiest laugh when he told the crowd: "This day goes to show that death in Ireland is not always fatal." The Famine, continued McCourt, well-known for his liberal views, resulted from a "conservative ideology," one "peculiar to the British." With two of the state's leading Republicans behind him, someone shouted, "That's not on the wall." Malachy smiled and said: "Maybe I'll be on the wall after this."

  Malachy McCourt, resplendent in a white suit, elicited the day's heartiest laugh when he told the crowd: "This day goes to show that death in Ireland is not always fatal."

  James F. Gill, the authority's chairman and head of the committee that created the memorial, also lay the blame on the British of the time, noting "There were ample funds in England for famine relief. But there were also voices in London proclaiming the potato blight to be the result of 'Divine Providence," that God was punishing the Irish for laziness and popery."

  In any event, Gill said, "it would be impossible to overstate the importance of Irish immigration to the City and State of New York. Between 1847 and 1851, more than 848,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City alone, many of them landing on the piers and docks that used to be located at the very place we are sitting today."

  Groundbreaking for the memorial, commissioned in 2000, took place in March 2001. The original dedication ceremony, slated for March 17 this year, was postponed because of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, only a block away.

  The fallen towers were invoked numerous times, with Pataki suggesting that "the memorial has even greater importance, greater meaning, because of what transpired on September 11." Many of the 2,823 lost on Sept. 11, including the majority of the 300-plus firefighters, were Irish-American.

  WGT Photo/Gerry Regan Waterford contributed this stone, which stands, like a gravestone, above any other.

  After the ribbon-cutting, a steady stream of musicians and dancers was to perform till 7 p.m. on a stage beside the half-acre site in lower Manhattan's Battery Park City, beginning with Eileen Ivers and Band. Other featured performers included Cherish the Ladies and Paddy Reilly.

  When the memorial finally opened to the masses, people queued for nearly an hour to enter for tours that lasted about 15 minutes.

  Holmdel, N.J., resident Vera Leah, an immigrant from Cliffoney, County Sligo, visited with John Leahy, her husband and fellow immigrant, and niece Margaret. Mrs. Leahy thought the memorial a stunning evocation, noting how the memorial is so "typically of the west coast of Ireland, rocky, very poor land, a lot of stone."

  "The poor areas, who had the poor land, suffered the most," Mrs. Leahy said.

  "I think it a wonderful tribute to (the Famine's victims)," said Margaret Leahy, a high school teacher in Tralee, County Kerry. "It is nice to see that they're remembered. What's here is very realistic."

  WGT Photo/Gerry Regan Martin Slack, 20, and sister Ashley, 17, came from Chicago to visit the memorial and the cottage that had been in their extended family for 180 years.

  New York artist Brian Tolle, 38, the memorial's creator, placed the memorial on a limestone base, and imported Kilkenny limestone to separate the bands of text on the outer walls. The cottage, which had been used most recently as a cow shed, was donated by Mayo residents Chris and Tom Slack.

  The quarter-acre cultivated area is significant, the Authority points out, recalling a clause to the Irish Poor Law stipulating that no person occupying land of more than one-quarter acres was eligible for relief. The landscape is planted with 62 species of Irish plants and grasses, including rushes, foxglove and blackthorn. The western end, 25 feet above the pavement, offers views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

  Mayor Bloomberg perhaps said it best: "The Irish infused New York with their rich cultural heritage. They built the subways, the skyscrapers, and filled the ranks of the city's police and fire departments. (The memorial) reminds us that the spirit of Ireland will always have a home in New York."

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  More Online Resources: 

• Photos of the Irish Hunger Memorial, under construction last March,from Castlebar.News.
• Views From Attymas, County Mayo, from Castlebar.ie
• The Great Famine in Connacht, 1845–1849, published in The Green Dragon, No. 9, Winter 1999/2000.
• Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority

  Send your news items to Gerry Regan, at news@thewildgeese.com.