Administration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., 2021 Remarks at a Virtual Irish Community Event March 17, 2021
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Administration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., 2021 Remarks at a Virtual Irish Community Event March 17, 2021 I'm delighted to see you all. And I can see some familiar faces up there, and thank you for all you've done. Look, you know, I—we all—I spent a lot of time with the Taoiseach today, and he was pointing out to me that my win for the Presidency was more popular in Ireland than it was in United States. [Laughter] And that's not too far off. One of the things that happened is that, when I was Vice President, I'd spent a lot—I've been to Ireland many times as chairman of the European Affairs subcommittee. But I'm going back and forth, looking at you guys; I should look straight, I know. The—but one of the things that happened was I would host—some of you know because you attended them—I'd always host a breakfast for the Taoiseach when I was chairman in the United States Senate. But when I became Vice President—— [At this point, the camera shifted.] I'd leave that alone, guys. Okay? Tell them not to move that, all right? I'm having troubles here. Okay? But here's the thing: One of the things that I did, I would host a breakfast for the Taoiseach. And then, I would take him in to meet the President, and then we'd go up to a thing that Tip O'Neill started when he was the Speaker, and host the—on St. Patrick's Day—host the Taoiseach and his delegation. And then, I'd always find some excuse to get to the Irish Embassy. But toward the end of our term as Vice President, the Taoiseach came in and said, "Barack, let the boy go back to Ireland." And I've been to Ireland many times, but he said: "Let him go back and bring his family and spend some time. He's not ever looked up his relatives." So they went and did a genealogy. The Irish Times had done—which I had already known— but had done the genealogy for Barack, as well, to identify his great-great-great-grandfather. And they did one for me as well. And it's interesting that my great-great-great-grandfather Finnegan left for Ireland from County Louth—and he was a shoemaker—within a week of the time that Barack's grandfather left, and he was a shoemaker. And so when I got to Ireland, they pointed out to me—they had done the genealogy—that the likelihood that, as small as the population was and as close as they lived together, the idea of boarding two ships out Newry within a week of one another—actually 6 days—and then not knowing one another was highly unlikely. And as they say in parts of Claymont, Delaware, "Who woulda thunk it" that two guys getting on what were thought to be coffin ships in 1847, making their way to United States, would produce a President and Vice President of the United States of America? And that's how the trip started. But one of the things that I learned growing up was that, you know, that old Irish expression, "May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty." Now, the truth of the matter is, of all the joys and honor in my 8 years as Vice President, it was hosting those St. Patrick's Day breakfasts, and the—with the Taoiseach in his visits to Washington. 1 And while our—while, you know, the celebration has been virtual this year, we're able to continue that tradition with the Shamrock ceremony that you probably—I'd explained to you started back with Harry Truman. The Taoiseach would always send a crystal bowl with—full of shamrocks in it. And it was—the Taoiseach would always send his best from, quote, "the home sod." But like many of you, I grew up hearing all these stories about Ireland from my ancestors. And I had a maiden aunt named Aunt Gertie—Gertrude Blewitt. And she was the older sister of my grandmother, Geraldine Blewitt Finnegan, who married my grandpop, Ambrose Finnegan. And her father was the first Irish Catholic elected to the State Senate in the State of Pennsylvania, in 1907, I believe. And he served there for some time. And the unusual thing was: He was—back in those days, if you lived in Scranton or the coal mining area, and you were Catholic, you didn't get much of an opportunity to go to college. It was not something that was— there wasn't a whole lot of love and affection between the British who owned the mines and the Irish. And—but my grandfather graduated from—my grandfather, Blewitt—Edward Francis Blewitt—graduated from college and—as a mining engineer. And I—they got—I was—I spoke at Lehigh University, and they showed me a picture of him in his letter sweater of '69—1869. And so, for the longest time, I'd hear these stories about my grandfather and what he had done and what he hadn't done. And one of the things that I found out was that he—supposedly, I had this—back to my maiden aunt now: She lived with my grandmother and Grandfather Finnegan, and they had five children: four boys and my mom. And she lived in the house with them on North Washington Avenue—which, by the way, they've renamed, after I won to every precinct in Scranton—they renamed "Joe Biden Way" in Scranton—[laughter]—which is kind of interesting. Anyway, what happened was that she did two things better than anybody else. When my dad lost his job, we went to live with my grandpop for a year while he came to Wilmington, Delaware, to get a job and get started again. He came home every weekend and—but I'd always—Aunt Gertie's room was on the third floor, which—half was turned into a nice bedroom. And I'd always go up in Aunt Gertie's room because she had two things better than anybody else. One is that she was the best backscratcher in the world. And, two, no offense to the Greeks, but she made the best rice pudding in the world. And you go up, and you'd lie with Aunt Gertie when I was 7, 8 years old, and she'd tell these stories about how the British burned down the— [inaudible]—and what they did to the Irish and all the persecution that took place. And she—as if she'd lived through it all. She had never been to Ireland. And I remember I—when my—I tell the story about the night she said to me: "It's not your fault. Your father is a good man anyway." And I never thought my father wasn't a good man. And she went on to tell me: "It's not your father's fault that he has English blood. It's not his fault." And so I tell that story a lot. And my sister Val, who's my—both my keeper and smarter than me—my sister said: "Joey, stop telling that story. I don't remember that. I don't think it's true. I think your memory is wrong, and the press is going to jump all over you for saying that one of these days." And so I stopped saying it because I thought: "Well, maybe she's right. Maybe my memory is not correct." And so my mom, when my dad passed away, moved in with me in Wilmington, Delaware, in our home. And when she died, I never had the courage to go through all her boxes of material that I had moved up to the third floor. And when I decided I was going to redo the third floor for 2 my granddaughters, I figured, "I'd better go through"—this is a year later—"go through the boxes and find out what's in the boxes," even though it was very emotionally difficult to do. And the first box I opened had, on top of it, 112 or -13 pages—typewritten pages—that look like parchment. Literally, if you bent them, they would snap; they'd break. And they were poems my great-grandfather Blewitt—Senator Blewitt had written. And he was a poet. And I—he—first poem on top of everything else was a poem entitled—and I have this all in my office. I should've brought it and showed you. I have these all bound. And it says—the title of the poem was "My Mother's Land, Aroon"—A–R–O–O–N. And it started off the following paragraph: "Oh, how I hate to learn that—how I learned to hate the British at my mother's knee. They bled poor Ireland dry until . ." Then, she goes on and on and on. Immediately called my sister to tell her that was the case—what was—that I was—my memory was correct. But it's amazing the stories you hear when you're growing up if you're Irish, you have Irish grandparents or parents that have some knowledge of the past. My grandfather, Finnegan, was an all-American at Santa Clara, graduated in 1807. He was a newspaper guy. And he was the— Irishman of rectitude. He wouldn't wear funny hats or do crazy things on St.