Over the course of the next week, you will be regaled with anecdotes about the day the most famous man in the world came to Galway and how for one day, everything came to a standstill. And how the snapshots in our mind, whether they be colour or black and white were forever crystallised on those heady days and in the sad months that followed, as reality became legend and legend became myth.
In those Camelot days, when our own leaders seem dull and uninspiring, the perception of one of our own presiding over the most powerful nation in the world was an inspiring thought, brought crashing down to earth that winter with a incident that has stayed with those who remembered it for the rest of their lives.
And in Galway and in the other locations around the country that he visited, the shock was even more heartfelt because they had seen him in the flesh, they had caught a glimpse, however fleeting, of his great American hair as in those pre-Dallas days, he eschewed security concerns and stood high for all to see as his motorcade went through the country.
And although the ancestry of the current incumbent in the White House is perhaps the strongest of any Irish president, there was something about JFK’s trip that represented an end to innocence — his death and subsequent revelations exposed the frailties of the man portrayed as a hero. It came at a time when the Irish were looking to be absorbed in global culture and global culture was, and in many cases still is, American-dominated and influenced.
JFK came to a Galway very different from today — even just two decades later, the city had adopted a sense of its own far stronger than was the case at the time of the visit. Contrast the elation of the Kennedy welcome to that given to a president who had sat just a similar number of years when Reagan visited in 1984.
Can you imagine that there would be civic events and promotional events to mark Reagan 30 next year, in the same way that JFK50 is being promoted now.
In 1963, the world seemed a faraway place. Now, through social media we can read instantly what modern deitiies and celebrities are thinking; they no longer seem so distant, they no longer carry the same fascination. This week, the leaders of the most powerful nations on earth were just a two hour drive away, and yet it did not occupy the waking thoughts of many of us, in the same way that the papal visit in ‘79 or the Kennedy visit in ‘63 did.
Galway does not get many high profile visitors anymore — for a decade now since the visit of Nelson Mandela, not one foreign international leader of note has stepped on Galway soil.
For the moment, the most we can hope for is the odd visit of a Premiership footballer having his stag do in the Latin Quarter. Or a film star in for the Fleadh, visiting a city that sits comfortably with visiting celebrity.
That day in 1963 was just 50 years ago, but it may as well have been 100, such is the difference between the Galway and Ireland, of then and now.
