Mayo man’s emotive letter comes full circle

A LEGACY FOR PEACE Mary Robinson and George Mitchell are pictured with Michael Gallagher and his daughter Aisling in Ballina last Thursday. Pic: Henry Wills

Edwin McGreal

The night after the Omagh bombing in 1998, Ballycroy man Michael Gallagher got out his pen and paper.
He was writing to the then US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, urging the USA not to forsake the peace process after the horrific atrocity in Omagh.
Gallagher, who is a well-known journalist with The Western People, wrote evocatively about wanting a different Ireland for his daughter Aisling, then 20 months old.
“Dear Ambassador, you may not know me. You may not even get this letter. But after yesterday’s tragedy I wanted to do something. I’m 29 years old, an Irishman to the very core of my being. But, throughout my life, there has never been peace on this island. I never realised how precious peace could be until my wife gave birth to our daughter, Aisling, 20 months ago. We don’t want her to grow up in a society that is constantly waiting for the next atrocity, the next batch of young lives snuffed out by hatred and fear,” he wrote.
The full letter went further than Gallagher could ever have imagined. When US President Bill Clinton addressed the victims and bereaved families of the Omagh bombing in the town in September, 1998, he cited Gallagher’s letter at the core of his speech.
The following March, when bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on George Mitchell, Clinton referred to the letter again.
Nineteen years after Gallagher’s letter, George Mitchell was in Mayo for the first time and Aisling Gallagher is now a 20-year-old student of politics in University of Limerick, growing up in a peaceful Ireland forged by the skill of George Mitchell.
A meeting of George Mitchell and Aisling Gallagher was arranged for last Thursday, as good a way of any of demonstrating Mitchell’s legacy on this island.
“I’ve known about that letter all my life and have grown up knowing that the President of America wrote two speeches about myself and Dad and I never really thought too much about it,” Aisling said on Friday last.
“I never expected that letter to have any impact on my life at all but yesterday changed all that. It has opened up huge opportunities for me and made even me even more determined to follow a career in politics. To be honest, it was only with 15 minutes left to the CAO deadline that I picked Politics in UL, but after yesterday I know it was the best decision I ever made.
Yesterday showed me that ordinary people really can influence the most powerful people in the world and it was just amazing to see that in reality.”