Red
I just found this article:
Irish Town Marks Ronald Reagan's Death
BALLYPOREEN, Ireland - June 3, 1984. It was the day that Ronald Reagan rediscovered his Irish roots - and overcame his reluctance to hold babies.
The people of Ballyporeen fondly remember the Reagan visit. He was there to see documents that proved his great-grandfather, Michael Regan, had been born in the small hamlet in County Tipperary.
"He was here for four hours, drinking beer and chatting," Mary O'Farrell, who with her husband John runs O'Farrell's bar in the main street, recalled Monday. They had renamed the establishment the Ronald Reagan Bar after the favorite son was elected in 1980.
"He was very easy to talk to and he went way past his schedule and his staff were shouting, 'It's time to go, Mr. President,'" O'Farrell said.
The O'Farrells presented their four-week-old baby daughter, Catherine Nancy - named for the president's wife - but were careful not to ask the president to hold her, since his staff had advised he would not.
"Mrs. Reagan held the baby while he signed the visitor's book, but then she needed to sign and I said, 'Mr. President, why don't you hold the baby?'" Mrs. O'Farrell recalled. "And he did. And he was charming."
The O'Farrells were saddened to hear of Reagan's death of pneumonia on Saturday - but they had received a personal note of warning.
"He wrote to us four times after coming here, the last time about 10 years ago when he said he was suffering from Alzheimer's," said Mrs. O'Farrell. "I think it must have been very hard for Mrs. Reagan."
O'Farrell's bar is now for sale, but the new owners are likely to retain the Reagan connection, which is also highlighted at the Ronald Reagan Center, home of Ballyporeen's tourist office.
Former chairman of Tipperary South County Council, Con Donovan, was the first person to formally welcome Reagan when his helicopter landed in a local sports field.
"I remember him on the podium throwing out his arm and saying, 'There is no place in the universe I would rather be than here in Ballyporeen,'" Donovan said.
Addressing the crowds who crammed into Ballyporeen, Reagan tried a bit of Gaelic, thanking "the muintir na hEireann" (people of Ireland) for welcoming him to his ancestral home.
"I know at last whence I came," he declared. "And this has given my soul a new contentment. And it is a joyous feeling. It is like coming home after a long journey.
"I can't think of a place on the planet I would rather claim as my roots more than Ballyporeen."
Reagan said his great-grandfather - who left Ireland in the 1860s, a time of great poverty - had gone "seeking to better himself and his family."
For a long time, Reagan had known little about his ancestry because his own father had been orphaned in childhood, he said.
"From what I'm told, we were a poor family. But my ancestors took with them a treasure, an indomitable spirit that was cultivated in the rich soil of this county," Reagan added.
The president joked that he had learned from genealogists that all Regans and Reagans belonged to the same clan, and "that in it those who said 'Regan' and spelled it that way were the professional people and the educators, and only the common laborers called it 'Reagan.'
"So, meet a common laborer," he said, to laughter.