February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
As such, its role over the last 75 years has been to keep watch on the ancient nation from which Irish America sprang, while at the same time chronicling the lives of those Irish Americans who have helped forge the new nation to which they belong.
From 1928 until today, the Irish Echo has done so through all the tragedies and triumphs that have affected Ireland and Irish America. There have been many of both. As Oscar Wilde said when asked why it is that the Irish, unlike the English, produce so few philosophers: “Our lives are too exciting.”
In America, we reported on the rise of the Irish from the precarious state of impoverished emigrants to the pinnacle of the presidency with the election of JFK. And we were there when the subsequent tragedy occurred — a tragedy that was to repeat itself five years later with the assassination of his brother Robert. Sadly, 30 years later the Irish Echo would have to place another JFK on its front page, with the tragic death of the late president’s son in July 1997.
Meanwhile, just as the world of Irish America was being transformed, so was that of Ireland, for better and for worse. The Irish Echo has always regarded the North as a major concern, attacking partition in the 1930s, reporting on the border battles of the 1950s and chronicling the outbreak and course of the conflict from the 1960s until today. As well, it has reflected it its pages the cultural changes that have come about as Ireland moved from an isolated rural country to a dynamic modern economy, among the most expansive in Europe.
Covering two nations in depth is not always an easy task. But it is one that the Irish Echo looks forward to doing in the years to come in the confident hope that it will never be short of interesting material.