OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Category: Archive

75 years young

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

A newspaper’s reputation is the sum of all its previous issues combined with the promise of the next. The past sustains the present and spurs the future.
This is an idea that has guided the Irish Echo, and all who have worked on the paper’s behalf, over the last three-quarters of a century.
But it probably wasn’t at the forefront of Charlie Connolly’s mind when he saw the very first issue off the presses in November 1928.
The Echo’s founding publisher, like an anxious new parent, just wanted his paper to come into this world with a kick and a bit of a roar.
Next week would be another story.
As it turned out, there would be a lot of next weeks. Thousands of them.
Given Charlie Connolly’s views on the partition of his native island, it’s safe to assume that his plan for the new paper wasn’t based on the notion of pulling punches.
The Monaghan native wasn’t known as “Smash The Border Connolly” for nothing.
The ink on the maps showing that border had barely dried by 1928. Connolly knew all about ink. He had trained and worked as a printer.
In order to remove one thin line of it, Connolly would apply many gallons of the stuff across pages that spoke loudly of a divided Ireland on one side of the Atlantic ocean, and unabashed Irish pride and determination on the other.
Charles F. Connolly certainly had the whiff of history about him. He had become well established in his adopted country by the time the first Echo hit the streets.
He had been grand marshal of the New York St. Patrick’s in 1918, the first year that women were allowed to march in the event, and the first parade to be headed by the Irish tricolor.
Connolly made sure that every marcher in that parade wore a badge depicting the green, white and orange. Here was a man intent on being noticed.
Back in Ireland, before he bought his ticket for America, Connolly had published a paper in Monaghan Town called the National Advocate. Later, in New York, and before the appearance of the broadsheet Echo, Connolly had published a tabloid called the Sinn F

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