Longtime Board Director Charles U. (Chuck) Daly and his thirteen year-old son Charlie, recently visited areas of Northern Ireland. Here are his thoughts….

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy
which sustained him through temporary periods of joy."

For more that a quarter of a century, Yeats' words have summed up my own sad feelings about Northern Ireland; nevertheless, through the years of terror and bloodshed I have drawn hope from the work of The Ireland Funds.

In early March I revisited what now appears to be a transformed Northern Ireland. My young son, Charlie and I spent time on the Falls Road, the Shankhill, East Belfast and downtown. Neither he nor I saw a single soldier or even an armed policeman. The armored cars are parked and rusting, many of the watchtowers are gone. At the bars in the Crown and the Rex, in the Europa, within a community center and on the streets everything seemed no different than one would find in some other city with no legacy of recent horror.

"So is our work in Northern Ireland over?
How I wish that were the case.
But the ugly 'peace walls' that separate
the two communities are longer than ever before."

In the Shankhill, Jackie Redpath's beloved Rex has a sign that reads: 'No shooting', a reminder that Johnny Adair and his henchmen as recently as last year carried on gang warfare within that community, resulting in Jackie being more fearful than at any other time in his life, and in 9 innocents being shot within that pub.

Standing at the bar, watching my son hit a full house while playing the slots, I learned that only 2 percent of eleven year-old Shankhill youths go on to higher grammar schools and more that a few of them list 'ex-prisoner' as a career ambition. All this only a few steps away from the Spectrum Centre, a fine community center where through courses, activities and music a lucky few find improved self-esteem and a future. That center is withering from a lack of funds.

Breakfasting with Colm Cavanagh, who has spent his life struggling to gain justice and peace for Derry, we found the same sense of happiness that the guns are no longer apparent. Also, we heard that many deep sectarian divisions are at least as bad as before. In Derry, as in Belfast, schools and jobs could raise the whole community from a past where too many were taught to fail. Colm is working on a dream for development of the Derry waterfront, a dream that cannot become reality if he doesn't get help.

On both side of the divide, the artful wall murals praise the heroics of gunmen and preach hate. Looking at one mural showing the faces of dead gunmen and the masked heads of those who may become their successors, Charlie, aged 13 observed:

"Dad, children every day look at that mural on their way to school. Think about what that teaches them."

At the end of our visit, as our bus rolled southward through the mountains of Mourne, I left with a feeling that everyone connected with The Ireland Funds should be deeply gratified by the roles we have played in supporting Jackie and Colm and Paddy Doherty and Kate Kelly and all the others who have achieved so much with the guidance of Senator Maurice Hayes.

Now they face the even greater challenge of helping the communities join in turning from the simplicity of violence to the greater complexities of peace.

How fortunate we are to have such a challenge, one that could move all of us from Yeats to Heaney, to that vision making Hope and History Rhyme.

Charles U. Daly
Board Director, The American Ireland Fund

This article first appeared in Connect -Summer 2003 issue