As a rule, Irishmen only cry at football games. But on a recent walk around New York City, I ended up publicly emoting, with nary a football in sight.
In the middle of downtown Manhattan’s financial district, was a springtime Irish hillside, complete with a tumbledown stone cottage, bracken and grasses.
It was a tiny park, the Irish Hunger Memorial, containing stones from every county in Ireland.
During the Great Famine of 1847 and the exodus that followed, as one and a half million died, and two million more fled, many found shelter on these very quaysides of the Hudson River in New York City.
(READ the tribute to the Irish in New York City, on Irish Central )