In a week when the next president of the USA appointed an official to oversee an expulsion of undocumented migrants, Galway City councillors were celebrating the life of a man who dedicated his to regularising illegal immigrants in America.
The monthly full city council meeting was suspended on Monday, and instead councillors and senior officials paid tribute to the untimely death of a Freeman of the City, the late Billy Lawless, who passed away in Chicago, last Friday, aged 73.
A book of condolences was opened in City Hall and online for the former independent senator and publican, who had a string of political, business and charitable accomplishments to his name, but who was also a Tribesman to his marrow who never failed to assist Galwegian compatriots visiting Chicago, Galway’s sister city.
Family friend, Mayor Peter Keane (FF ), led the tributes, and received an unanimous request from councillors to represent the city at Mr Lawless’ funeral at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Chicago next Thursday. It will be broadcast on the Facebook page of The Dearborn, one of Mr Lawless’ six restaurants in Chicago.
A memorial service will be held in Galway Cathedral on Saturday, December 7, at 4pm.
Councillor Donal Lyons (Ind ), who in 2014 proposed Mr Lawless to become a Freeman of the City – Galway’s highest honour – recalled first meeting a bare-chested Lawless carrying stone lintels up a ladder in the 1980s when he was renovating The Tribesmen Bar (now Taaffes ) on Shop Street. He also owned Trigger Martyn’s on Mainguard Street (now Tigh Cóilí ), and The Twelve Pins in Barna (now The Twelve Hotel ).
“He was a big, big man, and big hearted too,” said Lyons, adding that Lawless, as the one of the most prominent Irish businessmen in America from the 1990s “opened many doors for Galway people” in the US. “It is unknown the number of undocumented he helped,” he said. US media reports suggest 7,000 immigrants directly, and millions more indirectly, especially by winning the right to obtain a driving licence.
Former mayor Declan McDonnell (Ind ) recalled Mr Lawless recounting an after-hours raid on The Gallows, Lawless’ pub in Prospect Hill (now Mary Mullen’s Bar ), where patrons were forced to sleep overnight, while gardaí refused entry stationed themselves outside for a whole day. “He was a true friend of anyone who ever sat in the mayor’s chair in this chamber,” he said. “It was unreal the amount of work he did for the undocumented Irish in America.”
“A good man, as well as a great man,” was Independent Councillor Terry O’Flaherty’s pithy summary of the married father of four, appointed to the 25th senate by former taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2016 to represent the Irish diaspora. “He was the type of man who liked to see people get on,” added Councillor Eddie Hoare (FG ). Councillor Josie Forde (FF ) gave a heartfelt tribute to Lawless as her late father Declan Forde’s friend, and referenced his lifelong interest in rowing.
Councillor Frank Fahy (FG ) recalled Lawless, who grew up on a dairy farm at the edge of Rahoon, visiting by boat a site for sale in Menlo; sealing the deal in a nearby pub, and building a home there which became a “visiting house” of the area, where groups of locals were often entertained by a man who called the Obamas close friends. “He was a politician to his core, yet had great time for everyone… as an immigrant himself, he acknowledged the issues.”
Fahy remarked that Lawless is famed for influencing immigration visa legislation in the US, but as a senator here he changed the law so pubs could open on Good Friday. “When pubs looked likely to be closed for a year during Covid, Billy reckoned he had displeased someone ‘upstairs’, and this was the result.”
Lawless ran unsuccessfully for Galway City Council for Fine Gael in 1991. His friend and neighbour in Bushypark, near the family farm which Lawless sold in the 1970s to pay his way into the pub trade, Michael D Higgins, topped the poll for Labour. Lawless emigrated to Illinois in 1998.
President Higgins awarded Lawless the Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2021 in recognition of his accomplishments for the diaspora. “Billy Lawless will be greatly missed. I hope that the deep affection in which he was held by the Irish community in the Chicago area, and across the US as well as in Galway, will be some consolation to his family and to all who knew him,” he said in a statement.
William ‘Billy’ Lawless is survived by his wife Anne O’Toole (m 1980 ), and children Billy, Clodagh, Amy and John Paul.
