Eulogy for Emmett O’Connell

Delivered by his son, Óisin Ó Conail
18/September, 2024. St Aidan’s Church, Clongeen, County Wexford

A daoine uasal, representatives of the Order of Malta, Col. Steven Howard, Public Representatives.

For years, whenever anyone would ask my father, “How are you doing, Emmett?” he would respond, “Stayin’ ahead of the posse.” Well, Dad, it looks like the darn posse finally caught up with you.

The late, great American community activist Saul Alinksy was the original outside agitator, troublemaker, and left-wing rascal even to this day misunderstood by both his detractors and supposed followers.

He once mused on the unlikely similarities between a successful stock market investor, and a successful community activist, as a way of discerning these qualities present in any free, creative person, whether an educator, or in the arts, or in any part of life. He muses briefly, and without a firm answer on why one becomes an organizer instead of something else, having to do with personal elements, relationships, or perhaps an accident of history.

Anybody who reads my father’s curriculum vitae, which my sister-in-law Lynnie found, might ask themselves, how on earth this man combined so many personal elements, and relationships; what accidents of history and personal choices led him to such a genuinely diverse life.

I have here the names of the companies he founded… but listed like this, it’s so dry.

It’s the stories that make these names come alive – and there are so many, too many to tell right now. But, for example: Gránuaile was a pirate queen, Osceola was a great American Indian leader and fighter, Bryson was an Irish Republican, and Eglinton – that was just because they were completely out of time and needed a name and he spotted the street sign outside in Dublin.

Great Western Mining – that my brother Robert Emmett is still involved in – was inspired by the papers left him by an old Nevada prospector called Dan Bracket, and was facilitated in its early days the sole inhabitant of a desert ghost town, Emmett Kelly.

When my father first arrived in Ireland, thanks to this lady here, he was more known for his political pamphleteering and speech-making with his intellectual fellow travellers – such as Anthony Coughlan and Muriel here present – and his output was quoted decades later for its prescience. But one night after a public debate, declaiming further at the bar, a farmer asked him: “if you know so much about economics, how come you’re driving that rustbucket?” The minister, after all, had a mercedes. It really stung. And that right there is one of those accidents or elements that Alinski mentioned, with one important caveat: while on that night, he determined he was going to make money, he never sold out his principles, never lost his radical edge which was his heritage.

And on that. Sometimes you have a lightbulb moment, when former elements that don’t seem to have much to do with each other, or that contradict, suddenly click into place as a functioning whole. That was for me in understanding my father, when I was reading about his father, in a book by my Aunt Geraldine called Children of the Far Flung. Within the first pages she declares of their father – my grandfather – in New York: our Dad was a communist, but he was that particular type of Irish Catholic Communist who went to mass on Sunday, not out of deference to arbitrary authority, but just because he wasn’t going to be told what to do. And suddenly, the lightbulb went on.

Emmett O’Connell: Knight of St Gregory the Great. Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. Knight of St John of Malta. Gold Medal of Jerusalem. Honorary Lt Colonel and aide de camp to the Governor, Alabama State Militia. Honored by the Accademica Tiberina Rome. Three times nominated one of the top 100 Irish American Businessmen by Irish America Magazine – and then inducted into its Irish America Hall of Fame – hosted here in New Ross at the Dunbrody Emigrant Ship.

But wait: there’s more, not of the same. This is the man once described by a government minister as “a well-known member of the lunatic fringe” – the same politician later on, did a good turn for my father by receiving a delegation from the former Soviet Republic no one in the West had even heard of. Our father was like that: he could talk to anyone, he could win over even opponents by gregariousness and good humour, and just sheer persistence. Muslim, Jew, Protestant, Freemason, ex-Orange Order, retired British Naval officer, and so many Irish Republicans, we had our house raided – when that was still a thing. He could talk to, deal with, and befriend them all.

He grew up in the South Bronx – Fort Apache, as the movie styled it in the 70s – and he wore that as a badge of honour above all else. His CV lists his different times at Hunter College, Pasadena, University of California – Berkeley, even the University of Uppsala for one semester. But he was most proud, of coming from St Jerome’s Parish school, and Cardinal Hayes High School, South Bronx – which is why he wore this graduation ring, his whole life. In that neigbourhood you had to know who you were to survive, but didn’t have the luxury of living in a bubble and had to learn to deal with people different from you, to survive and thrive.

I’m going to speak now, in his own words:

Our early years shape and form you without your knowing it. As soon as you become conscious that they are shaping you, they no longer are. One of the major formative influences in my life would have been being born and raised in New York City and in particular in the South Bronx. There was a unique micro-society there. The older people were almost entirely immigrants — Irish, Polish, German, Jewish or Italian. Though you were an American you were not the same kind of American who was growing up in Iowa or Nebraska or Texas. European ideals and morals and ethos were shaping you…

You had to work those years because the competition was so keen in New York City — eight million people with two million in the Bronx, every colour and creed under the sun. Whatever you were doing — sports, literature — you were in against keen competition. It was through athletics that I got, for the first time, out of New York, west of the Hudson. The space, the green fields, the lack of people were a stunning revelation. I couldn’t believe that this could be the same world and, boy, when you brought the competitiveness and discipline of the Bronx out there, you went like a hot knife through butter. I was a long-distance runner, a cyclist and a skater. I lost sixteen races in a row and then went on to become state champion, regional champion and two- and five-mile national champion in skating.

Behold the man

Alinsky maintained the key question every organiser had to ask was this: Do you like people? Not abstractly, ideally – but in the real, with the rough edges and the crooked timber of which no straight thing is ever made. Our father could be one of the most joyously politically incorrect people you would ever have the good fortune to meet; not to disparage actual people, but to mock the pretension and box ticking that too often substitutes empty words for the real world action of actually dealing with people as they actually are – as Alinsky would say – not as you want them to be. You just have to keep asking: do you actually like people? And Emmett loved actual people – and if he didn’t like you, he’d let you know.

On one of his final business-related train journeys, he was waiting at O’Hanrahan station in Wexford on his own. There were a couple of young teenage hoodlums acting up, and he told them to knock it off, and one insulted him, and he responded in a thick South Bronx accent that came out in such situations: “you’re a real little knuckle-head, you know that?” (He didn’t say “knuckle”, but, we’re in a church.) Where are you from they asked? Where’s that? Why are you here? What’s your name? Who’s Robert Emmet? “Who’s Robert Emmet?” my father asked astonished. He then preceded to give his audience an impromptu condensed master class on Irish history to his now engrossed audience and appreciative pupils, and when I picked him up and he told me what had happened he ended almost with a sigh, and said “you know, I really liked talking to those kids.”

My sister Róisín – always been the super organiser, certainly so in the last few days, was he maintained, his lucky charm that turned all his fortunes around.

Robert Emmet – his fellow prospector and adventurer, the rock he could depend on, who continues the family tradition.

And Me – despite all these other accomplishments, I remember that he was the one actually got me to eat, which I wasn’t doing when a child, with what we called “cowboy food” brought back from America. Actually it was Mexican which makes me suspect he played a role in my subconscious choice of future wife.

And he had faith in us all. Even when we didn’t really deserve it, or had done nothing to earn it – he had faith.

He had hope – hope or dream power, for the future, of things that were not but that might be; he had an inexhaustible mine of this, even when it was hard to chisel out.

And you know, if you’ve ever listened to a sermon or two or read the good book, there is faith, there is hope, and then the greatest of these is love.

Our mother, Raphael – please don’t call her Mary, that’s a perfectly good name but her brothers used to tease her “Mary Mary quite contrary” – Our mother Raphael was won over when she first encountered him at a dance when he was visiting Ireland at about the age of 24, and when her sister asked how her date was with the actual fellow she was going out with, she said, he was nice – but she wouldn’t mind the other fellow he was with. That was my dad, and the other fellow, was I suspect involved in some conspiracy here. Because my dad went back to America for a year, and when he came back to meet my mother at another tennis club dance, after the whole night of dancing he asked her: “will be my girl?” and she said “yes.” And that was it. He won over her slightly sceptical mother by singing Kelly the Boy from Killane. 6 weeks later they were married, and stayed that way for the next 63 years.

My dad was once being interviewed by the business section of a newspaper, and he was asked what was one of the most important pieces of advice he could give to anybody, and he just said: “marry well.” Boy, did he hit the jackpot! It is no exaggeration to say, that my father could not have done the things he did, could not have gone to the places he travelled – Canada, USA, Colombia, Europe, Russia, Asia, Iran – he could not have achieved the highs he did, could not have survived the lows, and could not have persevered on behalf of all of us, without his wife, our mother, Ray. Since his health troubles began – first after surviving the suitably exotic “Rocky Mountain Fever,” and then a couple of years nearly not making it through gall-bladder sepsis and removal – his short-term memory was punch-drunk as though he had barely survived a match with one of his childhood boxing heroes. But he did survive, although he began his physical and cognitive decline, which was like watching a once proud castle crumble and fall into ruin, like a lost land slowly sinking beneath the waves.

My mother was single-mindedly devoted to him and his care then, she still is devoted. She gave us quite a scare recently in the aftermath, and when one of the hospital nurses inquired if there was anything wrong with her heart she said: yes, it’s broken. People offer prayers to St. Benedict and Blessed Virgin Mary for a happy death, and they must have been looking in, because on the couple of days prior to his death he was visited by neighbours, by helpers – and on the day by his children. He was surrounded by people who loved him, and when Karla told him this before, he gave a great big smile, because even though everything else was rapidly slipping away, he was surrounded by love, he was in love, he still emanated to the last, just love. The last moments of his life, were in his bed, in the home he provided, with the love of his life, and they were singing lines from an old love song which you will hear: “I love you, yes I do.”

Marc, Lynnie, Karla, thank you for your love. Thank you Fionn, Enya, Oscar, Caoimhín, Aoibhinn, Maedhbh, Kierán, Erin, Breandán. We love you, yes we do.

I was telling my kids – who had apparently had never seen me cry before – that it was ok, because there are bad hurts, and then there are good hurts – and this is the very best.

Aunt Gretta – thank you for coming all this way; Uncle Kevin – thank you for having the sense to not come, because we like having you around, and those plane trips were not doing you good.

Aunt Geraldine – thanks for the homework you did for Dad so he could go to skating championships (though he was disappointed by the one time he got a “B.”)

Thank you to the representatives of the Order and Knights of Malta. It has become a lazy criticism to unthinkingly disparage things like chivalry, Christian charity, loyalty, and humility. But there are indeed in this sometimes rotten world living exemplars of these and the various virtues; and as far as I’m concerned, all you need to know is: the stamp of approval, the makers’ mark, is that our father, Ray’s husband, was one of them.

Thanks to Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina, for being long and warm friends to our parents and extended, and to Deirdre, and a warm welcome to their aide de camp from Áras an Uachtarán, Col. Howard.

Thanks to our neighbours past and present – and please do forgive me if I don’t cover them all, because there are so many good people – people like Mrs Harpur, Catherine Reville – and the extended Crosby family recently, and specifically those like Barry and his Mam who gave aid and comfort to my mother and father literally to the final couple of days – and Dr. Ian Crosby who with the entire extraordinary team looking after our mother made sure she would get here in one piece.

And on that. Mam. We don’t want you to slam on the brakes. We don’t want you to stop – that would be bad, you need to keep active. But could you please, maybe, just ease off on the accelerator a little now and then? We love you, and Dad would want it.

Our father wrote an article once about how his own mother’s life – and his – was saved by her doctor who left his own wedding reception to make the delivery, with the help of a surgeon; both of whom my grandmother prayed for every day: in the words of my father – thanks be to God, to my mother, to the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jewish surgeon, and to Dr. Kubel.

Thanks to Dr Reardon and his wife Karen.

To Dr Aileen Byrne and colleagues at Fethard Medical Centre, formerly Dr. Cox.

Nurse Anne Young and Dr. Donovan formerly of Taghmon Health Centre.

Dr. McConway and fellow doctors and staff of Waterford Regional Hospital, both Emergency Ward and Medical 1 – with a very special mention to Drs Ian Crosby and Emer Henry.

The surgeons and staff of Blackrock clinic, and the cardiac unit of Wexford General Hospital.

The Alzheimers Association, and their Jennifer, a lovely person who unburdened my mother for a few hours every week, and cared for my father with music and walks and many things which he and we all appreciated.

The Grantstown Priory Day Centre – while for various reasons we never got around to appreciating their full services, their Dementia pop-up cafés on the last Friday of the month were helpful and informative, and reassuring, and we heartily recommend them.

Thanks to Ryan’s Undertakers, and to the paramedics who attended.

People who he missed, having passed over the horizon, include:

Daniel Kelly, James Stafford, Rory Brady, Jim Shannon, Deirdre and Luke Kelly.

People who cannot be here:

His old neighbourhood friends, recently reconnected – Ernie Bielfeld, Donn Calvano, former skating partners; his brother Kevin, who fortunately saw Emmett and Ray dance last at his own birthday party.

Frank Keoghan, Kevin McCorry, Daltún Kelly, Cathal MacLiam and other “usual suspects,” would really have liked to be here – but they’re all, right this moment, in their monthly protest outside the gates of Dáil Éireann. I told them to give ’em hell.

We have in recent days, frequently met people who have told us stories, of how he quietly aided them in various ways, over the course of his life. We’re sure we’ll meet more. This was in complete contrast to how he would talk, at length, about how the South Bronx was one of the greatest producers of great people – Beyoncé, US Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomeyer, George Carlin (his brother’s classmate), and, well, him. Again, by complete contrast we still don’t know exactly how he came about to be knighted, for example, because he just didn’t talk about that sort of thing. If pressed, he’d say something like he was just useful, a worker.

This is my father’s voice again:

I’ve never seen myself other than as a worker. I would like to consider myself a long-distance runner – staying with projects over a long period. That’s not to say that I stick with every project — for example, my role in some is as a catalyst, putting deals together and bringing individuals into a structure where they can play out their parts. That means not always having to be a member of the cast… The one guideline is, whatever you are doing, jump right into the middle of it and don’t hold back.

My father spoke often of Dream Power, how sometimes you have to imagine fantastical countries beyond the borders of the known world before you can actually discover what’s there.

Like, in my father’s words:

Prester John reigning over an invisible kingdom, a kingdom of the imagination, a piece of embroidery on the mappamondi of the time. That spark of the infinite reflected from our Maker has led us from the tall grasses of the broad African savannahs to the new Kingdom of Prester John, the Kingdom of the Mind.

There were two poems my father made an impression on me to read, one was Rudyard Kipling’s If – which he not so much followed as embodied, and the other was Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Ode: of which I leave you now with the first verse:

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Go raibh maith agat, a hathair. Fear mór a bhi tú, agus fear a dhílis. 

Beannacht Dé leat.