Her mother was an Irish rebel, and her father a good cop who could spot a phony a mile away. These inherited traits turned Maureen Dowd into an award-winning columnist and author.
Somewhere in Australia there’s an Irish lad called Rowan McCormick who broke Maureen Dowd’s heart. When she went back in the early 1970s to visit her homestead in County Clare, hard by the majestic Cliffs of Moher, she met him and fell madly in love.
Her older sister Peggy remembers that she was seriously worried they might never see Maureen again. “She was totally in love. We didn’t think we would bring her back,” Peggy remembers.
The Dowd family had traveled over with their mother to keep her company. Their dad, Michael, was national chairman of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the annual convention was being held in Ireland. Sadly, like most summer romances, Dowd’s didn’t work out, and her beau departed for Australia. But when she was Down Under a few years back on a book tour she put out an all-points bulletin and he came running. Alas, he was married now and settled down. Dowd still sounds disappointed.
It is quite an image – Maureen Dowd, scourge of every president since Poppy Bush and, arguably, the most powerful journalist in America thanks to her must-read column in The New York Times – talking of the road not taken, living a quiet life as a barkeep’s wife back in Clare.
Maybe that image isn’t so fanciful, though. Spending a few hours in the back of a midtown Manhattan restaurant with Maureen and her sister Peggy is akin to catching up with relatives in a snug bar in the west of Ireland.
After lunch the theater crowd drifted away to the matinee performances and left the world to us. The Dowd sisters are very close, finishing each other’s sentences, adding a detail here and there.
The talk is soon of Ireland. Peggy is the family historian, and the stories flow like a familiar river.
Peggy has her Irish passport; Maureen covets one. The focus is memories of their father Michael, a son of Ireland who bestrides their lives still, though he is long gone.
Michael from Clare was the son of a poor farmer in a poor country, the second child in the family named Michael after the first died. He was booked on the Titanic in 1914, but his mother cried all night and he couldn’t leave her.
The woman who took his place in the doomed liner survived and they met up years later. Though still a young woman, her hair had turned pure white from the fright of that awful night, or so says the family lore.
Michael eventually came to Washington, D.C., and despite a rudimentary education made it into the police force where he quickly climbed the ladder. Soon after he made detective, he met Peggy Meenehan, whose father managed the family bar.
The cop and the barkeep’s daughter were both champion Irish step dancers. In 1934 they married; the age difference was 18 years. They raised five kids together – Maureen, the youngest, Michael, Martin, Kevin and Peggy.
Maureen’s father was 61 when she was born, but he wrote his age as 50 on the birth certificate.
“It was hilarious that he lied,” Maureen says now, “and as a policeman, he was lying on an official document.”
The Dowds had it rough. Years later when Maureen would sometimes romanticize the 1930s, her mother would wag her finger. “Those were tough and mean times,” mother would tell daughter.
Now Maureen says she knows what she was talking about. “We’re back there,” she says referring to the current economic crisis. “We’re back in a soup can economy.”
The sisters describe Michael as the cool, clean hero, devout and chivalrous to a fault, a man adept at sizing up people and situations like no other. Peggy says Maureen had the same gift from an early age and that she got it from her father.
He loved to read, especially newspapers. “He’d grab a morning, an afternoon and evening paper every day,” says Peggy.
Their strongest memories are of Michael engrossed in the newspaper sitting under a portrait of JFK, one of his heroes. So it is not surprising that Maureen felt the pull to write from an early age. There were already other powerful role models in the family pantheon. Tommy Corcoran, married to a Dowd relative, was FDR’s closest confidant, known to the president as “Tommy the Cork.” He drafted much of the New Deal legislation and reputedly coined the phrases “nothing to fear but fear itself” and “rendezvous with destiny.” Roosevelt’s son Elliott wrote, “Apart from my father, Tom (Corcoran) was the single most influential individual in the country.”
So being around power was also an early experience for the Dowd clan. And Ireland permeated the family’s early years.
Maureen is pictured in the Washington Post at age 2 in 1954, plump and pretty in a shamrock-bedecked dress, posing on St. Patrick’s Day. Typically she critiques her first media appearance – “Look, they had to give me potato chips to make me smile.”
Like Maureen, her dad had political favorites – Truman was one.
“Dad tended to judge politicians by whether he thought they were phonies or not,” says Maureen. “I think that’s one thing I inherited, besides wearing sunglasses indoors.”
As part of his job Michael Dowd guarded FDR and Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare. He loved Truman but didn’t like Bobby Kennedy, who let the side down by not hiring some Irish who needed work on the Hill.
Michael won a medal for bravery and befriended high people, and saw places a young Irish emigrant had no right to dream of. He rose through the ranks of the Ancient Order of Hibernians to become head of the largest Irish organization in America.
Her mother was an Irish rebel. In the 1970s, Peggy Dowd led a demonstration at the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday when 14 were shot by British forces in Derry. To her eternal satisfaction, the then British ambassador had to sneak in through the underground garage.
Maureen and Peggy agree she would have been “delighted” that President Barack Obama recently got rid of the Churchill bust that George W. Bush kept in the Oval Office.
Their parents’ biggest fight occurred on a trip to Ireland. Being a Clare man, Michael Dowd wanted to go to Eamon de Valera’s grave. His wife wanted to pay homage to Michael Collins. The Irish Civil War was almost reenacted.
On another occasion Mike Dowd arrived back in Ireland with an American car, a roadster. The locals were gobsmacked at the likes of this prosperity.
“They thought he was a ‘millunare,’ as he pronounced it,” Peggy says, laughing.
Their father had tried to set up an AOH museum in Washington for Irish artifacts. A priest in Massachusetts sent a holy medal that he had received from the mother of Michael Collins. He swore Collins wore it the day he died in the republican ambush at Beal na mBlath outside Cork city. The medal remains one of the Dowd family’s greatest treasures. Maureen wants to talk to the Irish Government about it.
Their father died in 1971. On her own deathbed many years later in 2005, Peggy Dowd talked out loud to him, leading Maureen and the younger Peggy to believe he was waiting for her. Their mother was hale and hearty for many years before succumbing to old age at 97. She was going blind towards the end. Maureen would go over to her and turn on the daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.
Her mother loved Tim Russert and Meet the Press. She confessed she hated going blind because it meant she couldn’t see Tim Russert any more. The late great NBC anchor returned the favor, often wishing her a happy birthday on air. Somewhere in a green swathe of heaven that TV twosome continues.
When Peggy died, the fulsome Washington Post obituary heading said simply: “Font of Advice.”
In many ways that has never changed. Maureen’s New York Times columns could be read in some ways as letters to the mother she still misses profoundly, full of the piercing insight and gossipy bon mots Peggy Dowd loved.
The old Irish rebel still lives on in her daughter. Mike Quill, the great union leader and 1920s IRA activist, is alleged to have told the immigration man letting him into America that “if there’s a government here I’m against it.” Sometimes it seems Maureen feels that way too.All these years later, the little girl that her father worried was too shy to get on in life has certainly proved him wrong.
Dowd’s meteoric rise to the top of the media pile was achieved through sheer dint of hard work and an unerring eye for the critical detail that everyone else was missing. Along the way she has ended forever the cozy view of women writers as softly-softlys who leave the meaty stuff to the men.
Sinn Féin Louth TD Gerry Adams this afternoon visited the New Lodge area of North Belfast.
Speaking at the New Lodge Youth Club, Gerry Adams said:
“I want to commend those public representatives who have stood firm in the face of thuggery and hooliganism.
“The community of the New Lodge has withstood the worst excesses of the old Orange state and military occupation and it is unacceptable that it was subject to the type of behaviour that was visited upon it in recent days.
“Be sure this disgraceful episode has nothing to do with remembering internment.
“Those who are exploiting these young people need to come forward and explain their rationale behind their actions.
“We will not abandon the young people. All our young people deserve the opportunity to fulfil their wonderful potential. Obviously parents and families have a responsibility but so too have public services and agencies.”
On the 9th of August 1971, at roughly 8:30pm, in the Springfield Park area of West Belfast, a local man was trying to lift children to safety when he was shot and wounded by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment. Local people tried to help the wounded man but were pinned back by the Parachute Regiment’s gunfire. Local parish priest, Father Hugh Mullan, telephoned the Henry Taggart army post to tell them he was going into the field to help the injured man.
Father Mullan entered the field, waving a white baby grow. He anointed the injured man, named locally as Bobby Clarke. Having identified that Bobby had received a flesh wound and was not fatally wounded, Father Mullan attempted to leave the field. At this point Father Mullan was fatally shot in the back.
On witnessing such events another young man of 19 years, Frank Quinn, came out of his place of safety to help Father Mullan. Frank was shot in the back of the head as he tried to reach Father Mullan. The bodies of Father Hugh Mullan and Frank Quinn lay where they were shot until local people could safely reach them. Their bodies remained in neighbouring homes until they could be safely removed the next morning.
Tension was rising in the community as local youths fought back against the army’s horrendous campaign. Families were fleeing their homes in Springfield park as they came under attack from loyalist mobs approaching from the direction of Springmartin. Parents frantically searched for their children. Local men were still being removed from their homes, beaten and interned without reason. All this and at the same time the people of Ballymurphy were trying to live a normal life. Local people had started gathering at the bottom of Springfield Park, an area known locally as the Manse. Some of those gathering included Joseph Murphy who was returning from the wake of a local boy who drowned in a swimming accident. Joan Connolly and her neighbour Anna Breen stopped as they searched for their daughters. Daniel Teggart also stopped as he returned from his brother’s house which was close to Springfield Park. Daniel had gone to his brother’s house to check on his brother’s safety as his house had been attacked as local youth targeted the Henry Taggart Army base located near by. Noel Phillips, a young man of 19 years, having just finished work walked to Springfield park to check on the local situation.
Without warning the British Army opened fire from the direct of the Henry Taggart Army base. The shooting was aimed directly at the gathering. In the panic people dispersed in all directions. Many people took refuge in a field directly opposite the army base. The army continued to fire and intensified their attack on this field.
Noel Phillips was shot in the back side. An injury that was later described in his autopsy as a flesh wound. As he lay crying for help, Joan Connolly, a mother of 8 went to his aid. Eye witnesses heard Joan call out to Noel saying “It’s alright son, I’m coming to you”.
In her attempt to aid Noel, Joan was shot in the face. When the gun fire stopped Noel Phillips, Joan Connolly, Joseph Murphy and many others lay wounded. Daniel Teggart, a father of 14, lay dead having been shot 14 times.
A short time later a British Army vehicle left the Henry Taggart Army base and entered the field. A solider exited the vehicle, and to the dismay of the local eye witnesses, executed the already wounded Noel Phillips by shooting him once behind each ear with a hand gun.
Soldiers then began lifting the wounded and dead and throwing them into the back of the vehicle. Joseph Murphy, who had been shot once in the leg, was also lifted along with the other victims and taken to the Henry Taggart Army base. Those lifted, including Joseph Murphy, were severely beaten. Soldiers brutally punched and kicked the victims. Soldiers jumped off bunks on top of victims and aggravated the victims’ existing wounds by forcing objects in to them. Mr Murphy was shot at close range with a rubber bullet into the wound he first received in the field. Mr Murphy died three weeks later from his injuries.
Joan Connolly, who had not been lifted by the soldiers when they first entered the field, lay wounded where she had been shot. Eye witnesses claimed Joan cried out for help for many hours. Joan was eventually removed from the field around 2:30am on 10th August. Autopsy reports state that Joan, having been repeatedly shot and bled to death.
10th August 1971
Eddie Doherty, a father of two from the St James’ area of West Belfast, had visited his elderly parents in the Turf Lodge area, on the evening of Tuesday 10th August to check on their safety during the ongoing unrest. He was making his way home along the Whiterock road, as he approached the West Rock area he noticed a barricade which had been erected by local people in an attempt to restrict access to the British Army.
A local man named Billy Whelan, known to Eddie, stopped him and the pair passed commented on the ongoing trouble. At the same time a British Army digger and Saracen moved in to dismantle the barricade. From the digger, a soldier from the Parachute Regiment opened fire. Eddie was fatally shot in the back. Local people carried him to neighbouring homes in an attempt to provide medical attention but Eddie died a short time later from a single gun shot wound.
11th August 1971
At roughly 4am on 11th August. John Laverty, a local man of 20 years, was shot and killed by soldiers from the British Army’s Parachute regiment. Joseph Corr, a local father of 6, was also shot and wounded by the same regiment. Mr Corr died of his injuries 16 days later. The Parachute Regiment’s account stated that both men were firing at the army and were killed as the army responded. Neither men were armed and ballistic and forensic evidence tested at the time disproved the army’s testimony.
Pat McCarthy, a local community worker who came to work in Ballymurphy from England, was shot in the hand on the same day as he was attempting to leave the local community centre to distribute milk and bread to neighbouring families. A few hours later and nursing his wounded hand, Pat decided to continue with the deliveries. He was stopped by soldiers from the British Army’s Parachute Regiment who harassed and beat him.
Eye witness’ watched in horror as the soldiers carried out a mock execution on Pat by placing a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, only for the gun to be unloaded. Pat suffered a massive heart attack and the same soldiers stopped local people from trying to help Pat. As a result Pat died from the ordeal.
John McKerr, a father of 8 and a carpenter from the Andersonstown Road area, was carrying out repair work in Corpus Christi chapel on the 11th August. John took a short break to allow the funeral of a local boy, who drowned in a swimming accident, to take place. As he waited outside the chapel for the funeral mass to end, John was shot once in the head by a British solider from the Army’s Parachute Regiment.
Despite the harassment of the British Army, local people went to his aid and remained at his side until an ambulance arrived. One local woman, named locally as Maureen Heath, argued with the soldiers as they refused to allow John to be taken in the ambulance. John was eventually taken to hospital but died of his injuries 9 days later having never regained consciousness.
Riot police have withdrawn from a republican area of north Belfast following clashes today over their efforts to prevent a bonfire constructed by local youths from being lit.
There was cheering as the PSNI pulled out, and tensions reduced further after the PSNI announced the operation had been cancelled.
A handful of anti-internment bonfires are still lit in some republican areas, traditionally to commemorate the introduction of internment without trial brought in by the British government on 9 August 1971. However, republican groups do not support their continuation due to sectarian displays which mimic and respond to the hundreds which appear on loyalist bonfires every July.
This year’s bonfire in north Belfast was again constructed by a so-called nationalist “hood community” in the New Lodge despite the intense opposition of Sinn Fein and a majority of local residents in the area.
Efforts to prevent the bonfire in recent weeks resulted in graffiti threats to those contractors hired to remove it, as well as a local community centre.
However, the PSNI decision to lay violent siege to the stack of wooden pallets early this morning came as a surprise. Over a dozen armoured vehicles were involved, and scores of riot police were deployed, some armed with plastic bullet guns.
Between one and three local youths remained atop the pile throughout the day, while others who attempted to join them were beaten away. There were repeated standoffs and missile throwing, as well as a full baton charge by the PSNI. One riot policeman fell to the ground after he was struck on the side of the head by a missile.
The standoff came to a sudden end this afternoon when the PSNI withdrew. PSNI Assistant Chief Alan Todd said the decision had been taken for reasons of public safety because of “risks to innocent bystanders”. However, he also blamed the presence of “older people” who he claimed had been “using women and children as shields” and were “probably related to violent dissident republican groupings”.
Republican groups have reiterated that they oppose the bonfire. The Republican Network for Unity said it condemned the “heavy handed tactics of the PSNI” in the New Lodge but also said it believed “the will of the local residents in the area should be respected and the fire should not take place”.
“For years 9th August bonfires were lit to mark the anniversary of Internment. In more recent years these fires have turned into a hub for antisocial elements to reck havoc on areas that the majority don’t even live in,” they said.
“As Republicans we need to work with the local residents in all areas to find a way of still remembering anniversaries such as internment without attracting antisocial elements into our areas.”
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly, who supported the PSNI operation in the New Lodge, strongly condemned those involved in the bonfire.
“This is a disgraceful situation because residents include people who are already vulnerable, some of whom have disabilities and other health related problems,” he said.
He added that “the vast majority of the community have told [Sinn Féin] they do not want this bonfire” and that it had been built “by anti-social elements who torture this district throughout the year”.
Mr Kelly added that the PSNI and youth workers had attempted to negotiate with the young people to come down from the pile of pallets so it could be cleared. “Residents are adamant the bonfire should not be lit,” he said.
The PSNI’s handling of the New Lodge bonfire is being compared with one in Avoniel last month, one of hundreds of loyalist bonfires constructed for the ‘Eleventh Night’. It was deemed illegal as it was constructed in the carpark of a public leisure centre in east Belfast.
After a peaceful negotiation with figures linked to the loyalist paramilitary UVF, the Avoniel bonfire was allowed to proceed by the PSNI, who blamed the threat of UVF violence.
Tensions are expected to remain high in Belfast over the weekend after an anti-internment commemoration march, planned for Saturday, was today ruled to be ‘illegal’. The Anti-Internment League, who are organising the march, said it would be holding a protest at Belfast City Hall instead.
