(Left to right) John Foley President of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc. Amy O’Shea Vice President of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc. Connecticut State Senator Tony Hwang Dr. Christine Kinealy PhD founding director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute Gerry Forde President of the Gaelic-American Club.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians hosted breakfast at the Gaelic-American Club on Sunday March 6th and a total of $10,000 was donated to the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc.

Dr. Kinealy was the guest speaker for the event and was introduced by Amy O’Shea. The following was Amy’s speech.

“Good morning everyone. My name is Amy O’Shea and I’m delighted to be the very first speaker from Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield.

The journey you join us on today started when a few Gaelic-American board members joined the fight to reopen a shuttered museum in Hamden and it continued months later when we hosted an event there in the pouring rain in October.

What followed was months of quiet negotiations and representation of the Irish-American community in Connecticut.

Months of late night phone calls, text messages, emails and meetings in Hamden and Fairfield which lead us to this momentous decision by Quinnipiac on Friday.

The decision to transfer this great collection to the Gaelic American Club right here in Fairfield.

We are so very grateful that Quinnipiac is entrusting us with this incredibly important and prestigious collection and we fully understand and are prepared for the enormity of the responsibility we have undertaken.

The announcement has already been met with such an unbelievable outpouring of support from the Irish American community and we thank you for joining this small group at the beginning of our journey.

Over the coming months we will build something new and beautiful and we will show the world that Irish-America is as strong as ever. We will build on the story that Dr. John Lahey started and we will tell the story of our ancestors and how we got here.

Today I have the great honor to introduce someone who knows this great collection like no other and one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Great Hunger. It is truly my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Christine Kinealy.”

A total of $10,000 was donated to the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc. at the event.  Many thanks to Ted Lovely family , the AOH for matching their donation and those who donated anonymously.

(For more information visit https://www.ighmf.org/)