The Gerry Adams Spectator/Belfast Americans
Conlon, Edward
Belfast Americans by Edward Conlon E ven when it was in Gaelic, much of what Gerry Adams told the crowd was familiar: "We threaten the Unionists with nothing but democracy," and "Irish America is...
...Flannery, who opposed the cease-fire ("That's the problem with some of the old timers, they think we're fighting a conventional war"), would in fact die the next day...
...There were fiery speeches and rebel songs, sometimes intermixed (Assemblyman Brian Crowley was introduced as "not just a terrific lawmaker, but a great singer"), as there had been the day before on the steps of City Hall, where Mayor Giuliani praised Adams as a "harbinger of peace," and Matilda Cuomo took the occasion to remind the crowd that her daughter-in-law, Kerry Kennedy, was pregnant with twins...
...The conversations were like those at any Irish family gathering, except that the chat about who the baby takes after, or how well she looks at her age, was punctuated with references to Armalites, Saracens and C-4 (respective brand names for guns, tanks, and explosives), jail breaks, hunger strikes, and the hope of reprieve...
...It was a bit confusing...
...A signal absence from the gathering was Michael Flannery, the 92-year-old gun-runner and founder of Irish Northern Aid...
...The rest of the crowd soon followed, bit by bit, making their way home past the sleepy men on surveillance in the sedan parked outside...
...Cl 64 The American Spectator December 1994...
...Belfast Americans by Edward Conlon E ven when it was in Gaelic, much of what Gerry Adams told the crowd was familiar: "We threaten the Unionists with nothing but democracy," and "Irish America is up off its knees," and "This generation of children are not going to sell their mother...
...recalled Liverpool as much as Dublin...
...The crowd was working and middle class, ranging in age from their twenties through middle age, and the feeling was of familiar warmth, as if they had come together for a christening or an anniversary party...
...His scheduler, Richard McAuley, added that after a speech in Detroit, he had learned to avoid the Irish term craic, pronounced "crack" and meaning fellowship and conversation...
...The last stretch I did was '81, before the hunger strike, thank f--k...
...He sat at a large table in the back, sipping a pint and receiving visitors to pose for snapshots and tell of news from home...
...from Sen...
...A soldier with night glasses seen him get out of the car, and he had a leather jacket on and it rode up when he got out, and you could see the pair of automatics...
...Your man turns to him, gives him a look that would scalp you, and says, 'Can't you see I'm talking to someone?' `I'm sorry!' he says...
...No, not him," said another woman to a friend...
...He wasn't really involved, like," added her husband...
...Liz's brother Eugene also moves around—as a "red book" prisoner, senior and active in the IRA command—but in a narrower circuit, every few months from Port Laoise to Crumlin Road to Long Kesh, which are the Irish correspondents of Alcatraz and Sing Sing...
...After the Sheraton speech, Adams—a wiry, bearded man whose public manner is often of vigorous and practiced irritation, like a coach who has lost a call—relaxed with a few dozen friends and supporters at J's Grill on East 45th Street...
...Edward Kennedy, who greeted Adams at Logan Airport, to the congressmen and comptrollers who flanked him at the podium...
...I'm banjaxed," said Adams, meaning exhausted...
...His brother was the most notorious hit man in the IRA before he come over here...
...Keep the faith," said Farrelly, as he left the last stragglers...
...All right then...
...He was only there helping...
...B efore Joe O'Connor took up the refrigeration business in Ridgefield, New Jersey, he and his wife Liz lived in Belfast...
...He was the fella that was shot in the spine, and when his Da come home and seen him, he had a heart attack and died himself...
...Others carried on in the same manner, with casual references to atrocity and incarceration as if they were dull and daily events because, in fact, they are: "I know his wife, 'cause he was in at the same time as my Terry...
...He was a barman at some yuppie place, and a fella come up to him once, asked for two gin and tonics, what have you...
...It's a good thing, too, 'cause they done me for doing a screw's daughter...
...Be off with you.' I think he owns his own bar now...
...Was Terry done for membership or possession...
...Him over there," said the writer Patrick Farrelly, gesturing to a man in the far corner...
...When asked what Eugene was in for, Mrs...
...The hard rises and querulous stops of his Belfast brogue Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...Some of it was not familiar, even when it was in the plainest English: "Ian Paisley is one of our people...
...The latter drew a few gasps and some muffled applause from the fifteen hundred who went to hear the leader of the political wing of the IRA at the auditorium at the Sheraton, where the bleak acoustical tile and fluorescent-lit ceiling was enlivened with orange, green, and white balloons...
...Ah, one more and I'm scundered," said a Sinn Fein councilor, meaning a pint and too many...
...But turnabout was one of the themes of the day, from the IRA cease-fire to Adams's sudden embrace by American politicians, Irish and otherwise...
...Possession...
...As the evening wound down, Adams was led out by his bodyguard, a burly homicide detective named Brian McCabe...
...He said, 'In Boston, the craic was grand,' and got a big laugh," said McAuley...
...O'Connor's response was succinct and almost demure: "Making a thousand-pound bomb...
...Whatever that is...
Vol. 27 • December 1994 • No. 12
