Dawn of a new Eire

JFK in Ireland exhibition says trip sparked sense of optimism & confidence

- LARISSA NOLAN

JOHN F Kennedy's visit to Ireland - 60 years ago next week - was the dawn of a new age of optimism here, according to a leading historian.

His impact can be seen in an exhibition called Homecoming: JFK in Ireland, at EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

Its resident historian Catherine Healy said the US President's trip here in June 1963 changed the nation.

She explained: "He was emblematic of Irish ambition. We try to capture that sense of optimism in Ireland at the time he visited here.

"He was closing a chapter that began in the Great Famine. His grandparents emigrated in the 1840s and there is a sense of pride in newspaper reports at time.

"It was a homecoming no matter how removed he was from the average Irish person." Images from the exhibition show charismatic Kennedy greeting crowds at a GAA match in New Ross, Co Wexford, shaking hands with women in Cork and meeting schoolchildren in Galway.