Mrs. JOHSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, two hundred years ago, in May of 1798, the United Irishmen, whose ranks were made up of both
Catholics and Protestants, rebelled against the English Crown. In May
of this year, as word reached our shores of resounding voter approval of a landmark peace agreement intended to end 30 years of
Catholic-Protestant bloodshed, our former colleague, Senator George
Mitchell, who helped mediate the agreement, shared a stage at the
University of New Hampshire Commencement with a remarkable author, poet, actor, singer, story-teller and songwriter, Tommy Makem. On that sunny, breezy afternoon, each received an honorary degree.

Senator Mitchell, as was fitting, gave the commencement address; Tommy Makem, appropriately enough, sang a song he had written about the search for peace in Ireland. "Raise the cry for peace and justice; let the people sound the call: justice for our battered country, peace for one
and peace for all." So many of Tommy's songs, such as "Gentle Annie"
and "Four Green Fields" are so well known that they are often mistaken
for traditional folk songs and are standards in the repertoire of
folksingers around the world.

A native of Keady, County Armagh, Tommy is the son of the legendary
folk singer, Sarah Makem. He came to Dover, New Hampshire in 1956, and established himself as an actor in New York. There he teamed up with the Clancy Brothers: Liam, Tom and Paddy. In the early 1960s, following an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and a number of sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were perhaps the best known Irishmen in all the world. At the Newport Folk Festival, in 1961, he and Joan Baez were chosen as the two most promising newcomers on the American folk scene.

In 1984, Tommy joined the ranks of millions of Irish immigrants who
came before him and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Concord, New
Hampshire. He has received countless awards, among them the Gold Medal from the Eire Society in Boston and Stonehill College's prestigious Genesis Award. Irish America Magazine named him one of the Top 100 Irish Americans five years in a row. He was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award in the Irish Voice/Aer Lingus Community Awards.

While there is no mention of it in his biographical sketch, I am
personally aware of his support for "Project Children," a non-profit
organization that brings children from Northern Ireland to the United
States for a summer holiday away from the Irish "troubles," recruiting
them from neighborhoods in which Protestant-Catholic conflicts have
taken the heaviest toll. As of 1996, more than 11,000 youngsters from
Belfast, Armagh, Strabane, Enniskillen, and Derry can be counted as
"alumni" of the project.

History records that the rebellion of 1798 failed in the month of
August. Let us pray that peace will take hold in August of 1998 and
that in the coming years the children of Northern Ireland will visit the
United States as part of a cultural exchange, rather than for a respite
from sectarian violence.

Tommy's "Peace and Justice" expresses the hope that "understanding and forgiveness will dry all our country's tears" - something to be wished for on both sides of the Atlantic.

The 19th century poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy wrote of the world's
musicians:

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Ninevah with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Mr. Speaker, I sometimes wonder whether our society fully appreciates
the importance of our artists poets and songwriters. Tommy Makem's
journey to our shore, his work for peace and the music he has made
famous - including the folk songs of both North America and the British Isles - remind us that our nation has been enriched indeed by the men and women who have come here from other lands.

© 2002 Makem.com