Henry the Eighth proves that dreams can come true

Date Published: {J}

Sometimes in life you’re lucky – and sometimes you just make your own luck, as with the makers of a wonderfully enjoyable documentary that went out on RTÉ last week, tracing the extraordinary story that ended with the President of the United States shaking hands with all-comers on the streets of a small Offaly town.

The Road to Moneygall isn’t just the story of a President re-uniting himself with distant Irish roots in the run-up to a re-election campaign – it’s about a man who had a dream and turned it into reality.

Only this wasn’t Barack Obama’s dream; it was the vision of his eighth cousin Henry Healy, who – in other circumstances – might have seemed a small bit touched, given his fairly loose links to a man who would be king.

As the opening narrative put it, in 2007 a tentative link was established between a tiny village in Co Offaly, a relatively unknown Senator from Chicago and a 22 year old plumber’s clerk who dreamed of bringing those two places together.

The reason they can tell this story is that the producers too bought into the dream, and the team from Macalla Teo were there to record every step along the way – from the first signs of Obama-mania through to the Democratic nomination to the White House and finally to Ollie Hayes’ crowded bar.

It was because they shot so much footage before anyone even thought Obama might make it all the way that meant this was so much more than a ‘cut and paste’ documentary to tie up the loose ends of a day that Moneygall, Offaly and Ireland will never forget.

And if the Chicago Senator himself had the drive to make his dream a reality, then the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to Henry Healy either.

Right from the first bizarre Obama fundraising night at the dogs – complete with the local soccer team racing each other around a track normally reserved for dogs – Henry had the belief that his distant cousin would one day come home.

Even after his trip to the Presidential inauguration, his words were prophetic: “I don‘t think the journey will end until Moneygall gets to have its long-long ancestral son back home … just for one day, just for one hour.”

Another man might have been afraid he’d be held up to ridicule over such outlandish promises, but it seemed that everyone in Moneygall liked Henry Healy. And if he wanted to go on about his cousin ad nauseum, sure what harm was in him?

But then Enda Kenny went to bring his shamrock to the White House last March, the President decided that he wanted to see the land that his ancestor Falmouth Kearney had left in times of another recession – and now the dream was within touching distance.

But suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the action and Obama had more Irish connections than the IMF – so Henry and his team had to protect their prized asset.

And if Henry was the star, then he had a strong supporting cast led by the local Church of Ireland vicar Stephen Neill and the cute hoors known as the Corrigan Brothers and their ditty about there being no one as Irish as Barack Obama.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.