Preparing for Boston Mayor’s return ‘home’ to Connemara

Peter O’Malley is painting – upstairs and downstairs. He is expecting visitors, but not strangers. Many of the visitors, including the man who will be the centre of attention, have been here many times before.

But this time it will be different. It is guaranteed to be an occasion of colour; the flags will fly – Irish and American. The Mayor of Boston is coming. It will be summer – the month of May.

Peter O’Malley is an uncle of Marty Walsh, on the Mayor’s mother’s side. He keeps the old family home in Ros Muc alive and sparkling. He divides his time between Ros Muc and Boston. Now, as springtime finally beckons down by a quite by road in the townland of Ros Cide, Peter is preparing the way. This will be the main abode for Mayor Marty Walsh when he spends a week in Connemara – his “homecoming” after his historic victory in the Boston Mayoral contest last November.

“Our pride in Martin’s victory here in the parishes of Ros Muc and Carna knows no bounds,” says Peter.

“His late father, John Walsh was from Callowfeenish in Carna and his mother – my sister, Mary – is from here in Ros Cide in Ros Muc.  She will be coming back here with him. In the midst of all this there is a sadness too; the Mayor’s father, John, is no longer with us. He would have been such a proud man coming home to his native Carna and Connemara this May”.

Peter O’Malley is often referred to as the Mayor’s right-hand-man. He plays that down.

“Look, there were hundreds and thousands who fought a massive campaign to elect Marty Walsh as Mayor of Boston – I did a bit myself”.

That is putting it mildly. Peter must have been privy to most of the decisive moments in the campaign: he drove Marty over a number of months all across the city of Boston at all hours. They talked a lot. Peter must have heard a lot of interesting conversations?  He laughs “I did” in response to that question.

He expands a little on that: “Well, many conversations are about the campaign but some stuff is private and it stays like that. The candidate must trust you”.

Peter says this was one of the issues taken into consideration when Mayor Walsh appointed Police Sergeant Winnie Cotter as his driver. She is the Mayor’s first cousin on his father’s side – a daughter of the late Kate Walsh-Cotter from Carna.

“A few questions were asked about that by the media but not much. Kate is fully qualified for the job; the Mayor trusts her. The Mayor has a detail of four policemen, whom he selected personally, for security cover; there is always at least one of them on duty wherever the Mayor is.”

Will members of his Boston security team be coming to Ros Cide and to Connemara?

“Well, I’d say that Winnie – Sergeant Cotter – will certainly be coming. Anyhow, her mother is from Carna. There may also be at least another member of the team in Ireland.”  

Peter says that the Brendan O’Connor RTE television programme is looking for the Mayor.

“I think he will do that,” Peter says, “but I know that he wants to spend time around quietly as he always used to do. He has been coming here since he was a young lad; we must give him a chance to relax and take it easy, too.”

When Peter emigrated from Ros Muc in 1973, his little nephew Martin Walsh was five. He got to know the little boy in Savin Hill in Boston. But soon life took a rough turn.

“I knew this particular day that Martin was at the hospital but I did not think it was serious. Then somebody said we should go up there. I met my sister Mary – Marty’s mother – crying in the hospital.

“She said ‘Martin has cancer; it has spread’. I was shocked and I asked where was John – Martin’s father – and she said he was out in the car. I went out and John was bent down and I saw that he was saying the rosary. It was a shocking time”.

Marty fought it off and went on. Peter watched him make his way, despite other difficulties from time and time, until he became the First Citizen of Boston. Peter O’ Malley goes back across the Atlantic in a few weeks.

The next time he comes to the homely, freshly painted house in Ros Cide, the Mayor will be alongside him. Connemara people will reach out to welcome one of their own – Marty Walsh. And close by somewhere there will be a hardy and dapper man who runs marathons and cycles miles, the right-hand-man.