By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Growing up Irish-Catholic in Latter-day Saint Utah, I could never imagine that my longitude and latitude would even register on any map made in Ireland. Then I learned that one of the fathers of Irish independence found his way here twice during an 18-month tour of the United States.
Éamon de Valera—born in New York City in 1882 of an Irish mother and a Spanish father—served as prime minister and then president of the Republic of Ireland beginning in 1932. He died 50 years ago in Dublin.
Before all that, however, de Valera was a rebel with a cause and one of the leaders of the Irish independence movement of the early 1900s.
The cause of Irish independence dates back centuries, at least to the reign of the English Tudor monarchs. When he wasn’t marrying or beheading his six wives, King Henry VIII was busy expanding English control over the Emerald Isle to his west.
After de Valera’s father died when Éamon was just a boy, his mother sent him to live with her family in Limerick. He grew up attending Irish Catholic schools and studied at Trinity College in Dublin.
He got married and worked as a math teacher during his young adult years. He was drawn to the independence fight because of his great love for the Irish language and so when the Easter Rising erupted in April 1916, the 34-year-old de Valera was one of the leaders.
Although British troops quickly suppressed the armed insurrection, it did inspire further Irish resistance to English rule. After the rebellion, de Valera was imprisoned instead of executed, perhaps because of his American heritage.
The British released him from jail in 1917 during a general amnesty and Irish voters immediately elected de Valera to Parliament. He also assumed the leadership of Sinn Fein, a political party advocating Irish independence.
The British put him in jail again in England, however, a year later. His New York Times obituary described his clever escape:
“[W]hile serving mass for the prison chaplain, Mr. de Valera was able to procure candle wax to make an impression of a prison pass key, which was smuggled out of the jail. Then, a key made from the impression was smuggled into the prison in a fruit cake, and on Feb. 3, 1919, Mr. de Valera and several other prisoners escaped and returned to Dublin.”
His supporters then smuggled de Valera to the United States in the hold of a ship. He stayed for 18 months on a fundraising and public relations tour.
Why? As one London newspaper wrote that same year, “There is more Irish blood in America than in Ireland.”
The man known as the “Irish Lincoln” spoke to packed houses at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Fenway Park in Boston, and Wrigley Field in Chicago. He also faced anti-Catholic protesters in the deep South and was heckled by some who thought he was too sympathetic to Germany during World War I.
And he came to Utah twice.
On July 16, 1919, the tall young Irish leader stood in a car parked in front of Ogden’s Union Station and urged the assembled crowd to support Irish freedom. His entourage displayed—for the first time in Utah—the now-familiar but then-brand-new Irish green, white, and orange flag.
This all happened in my backyard just a few blocks from where I grew up, albeit four decades before I was born. After his Ogden speech, de Valera returned to his train and left for San Francisco to address the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Yet, de Valera returned to Ogden by train just over a week later on July 24. A welcome party took him to breakfast at the famous Hermitage resort up Ogden Canyon and then accompanied him to Utah’s capital city.
Salt Lake City rolled out the red carpet as if it was hosting a state visit. Governor Simon Bamberger met with de Valera soon after he arrived and proclaimed, “The great majority of the people of Utah are in sympathy with the Irish cause and believe that Ireland should be free.”
The Irish freedom fighter attended a special organ concert at the Temple Square Tabernacle. The Hotel Utah hosted a dinner and reception for de Valera attended by many local church and governmental dignitaries.
The whirlwind 24-hour Utah tour ended just before midnight when de Valera caught another train headed north to Butte, Montana.
When the American tour ended several months later, de Valera returned to Ireland. He survived cataclysmic events like the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Irish Civil War (1921-22).
When those terrible wars in Ireland ended, and with the goal of Irish autonomy and then independence largely accomplished, de Valera returned to politics. He served as prime minister several times and then was elected president in 1959.
He held that high post until 1973. While in it, he welcomed John F. Kennedy—the first Irish Catholic American President—to Ireland in 1963.
When de Valera died in August 1975, The Irish Times called him the “most influential Irish political leader of this century.” That such a man came to Utah just over a century ago may be compelling and comforting proof that my boyhood abode was not nearly as far from my ancestral home as I once feared.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
