By Kathy Quirk
Special to The Irish American Post

"You arrive in the west of Donegal — which is so hauntingly beautiful — and going down the tiny little road in front of you are a bunch of students from Milwaukee. It seems incongruous," but their enthusiasm is energizing, said Irish President Mary McAleese at a reception at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Aug. 20. 

In a poetic speech, McAleese thanked the university and the local Irish community for their efforts to preserve and encourage Irish culture and arts. 

The students "have this energy and this love of things Irish and the language," said McAleese. "It gives tremendous energy and reinvigoration to all of us in Ireland. The very fact that from far-off Milwaukee they come lifts our hearts and gives us a great sense of our own self-respect and self-confidence."

McAleese was in Milwaukee to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Irish Fest, and she had extensive praise for the many contributions UWM has made to Irish culture and studies through the Celtic Studies program, archaeological research, its collaboration with Irish Fest on the Irish Fest Summer School and other scholarly projects. 

The Irish president spoke of the gifts the early Irish immigrants brought to Milwaukee and the United States, and the "synchronicities" that abound between Milwaukee and Ireland.

The early Irish settlers, said McAleese, were "the poorest of the poor. They came in rags. What did they have to offer apart from their hands to work? They had music in their heads, they had lovely seán nos songs, they had poetry, they were rich storytellers, they had an absolutely insatiable curiosity about the world. They had a passion for people, for sharing fun with people. They always could find joy in life. I think that’s the great gift they brought and planted here." 

She thanked the university and the local Irish community for "the way in which you respect that which they brought, and the way in which you’ve turned it into a subject of scholarship and also into a subject of continuing joy and passion in people’s lives. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts you could return to those early immigrants…the gift of real respect for what they brought, those things that were carried in their hearts and their tongues and their voices and their heads." 

In her speech, McAleese also announced that the Irish government would be increasing its funding for Irish language studies in UWM’s Celtic Studies program. (It was nice to hear the words "funding" and "increase" together, UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago quipped.)

Santiago noted that Ireland’s focus on higher education and university research as part of its strategy for economic growth is an excellent model for the Midwest. UWM is exploring options for learning more about Ireland’s model and developing collaborations, Santiago noted in his speech at the reception, and also in an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

In another connection between Milwaukee and Ireland, McAleese, who is the first woman to succeed another woman as a world leader, noted that when she was growing up, Milwaukeean Golda Meir who became Israeli prime minister, was one of her role models for leadership, "the only female president of my era." 

In her visit to UWM, McAleese viewed a number of historic literary and cultural items that are part of the university’s special collections, including a galley proof of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, with the author’s handwritten comments throughout the copy. John Gleeson, co-director of UWM’s Celtic Studies Center (nattily shod in emerald green tennis shoes) spoke movingly of the Irish immigrant experience.

UWM presented the president with Celtic-Milwaukee gifts, including a biography of Jeremiah Curtin, a 19th century Milwaukee Irishman who was a pioneer in Irish linguistics, folklore and music studies, and a biography of Douglas Hyde, first president of the Republic of Ireland, written by UWM professors Gareth and Janet Dunleavy. 

Appropriately, UWM also celebrated the president’s visit with word and song. Poet and professor James Liddy recited an elegy he had written in honor of the Dunleavys. And UWM student Brian Hart, who will be continuing his Celtic studies in a doctoral program in Galway, sang a seán nos for McAleese. 

McAleese, who came from an academic background before becoming president of Ireland, offered UWM a lilting tribute: "I came to say thank you to this university for the fidelity you have shown over such a long, long time to Ireland, to our language, to our culture, to our stories, to our literature…the love you have for it and the academic scholarship you bring to bear on it, which is very important …the way in which you share that with new generations, refreshing and reinvigorating all the time so that you created your own well here that feeds into those great wells of Irish heritage."