Former US ambassador to Ireland dies

REGULAR VISITOR The late Walter Curley.

Anton McNulty

The death took place recently of the former US Ambassador to Ireland, Walter Curley, who had a residence near Newport and was a regular visitor to Co Mayo
Ambassador Curley’s family own a property in Rossyvera, Newport and he was a regular visitor to the area for over 50 years. He was present in Westport when the current Ambassador to Ireland, Kevin O’Malley, made his first official visit to Mayo in April 2015.
Mr Curley was extremely well-known and liked in the Newport area and was a keen golfer and regularly played golf in Mulranny golf club. He stayed in Rossyvera House which was built in the early eighteenth century and he spoke of how the family would go to the house to ‘escape the rigours of duty’ during his time as Ambassador in Dublin.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1922, Mr Curley was a graduate of Yale University and married to Mary Walton Curley, whose grandfather William Larimer Mellon was a founder of Gulf Oil Corporation. They spent much of his life in New York and had four children, but their son John died at the age of 50 in 2003.
After serving in World War II, he entered the oil industry and worked in India and Italy before returning to New York to work in venture capitalism. In 1970, John Lindsey, the then Mayor of New York, requested his services in municipal government which opened the path to being appointed Ambassador to Ireland, serving from 1975-1977.
A long-term friend of former US President George Bush, he was appointed Ambassador to France from 1989 to 1993.