Kirk O'Donnell died while jogging near his holiday home on Cape Cod over the Labour Day weekend. He was 52. He was best known in Ireland, north and south, as Speaker Tip O'Neill's Chief Counsel.
President Clinton was en route back to Washington from Ireland when news of Kirk's death broke. He issued a statement which said, inter alia: "Kirk O'Donnell was a gentleman and a patriot who brought wit, common sense and a genuine humanity to his public and private life. He was a very good man and left us much too soon."
The Wall Street Journal headed its obituary: `The Loss of a talented, decent and honourable man." The Boston Globe heading was: "He stood for politics at its best."
Ireland was fortunate to have Kirk O'Donnell as a friend. No one was more influential in forming US policy on Ireland from the mid-1970s onwards. He was central to the coming together of the "Four Horsemen" - Speaker O'Neill, Governor Hugh Carey and Senators Ted Kennedy and Patrick Moynihan. Subsequently he was the developer of the Friends of Ireland in the US Congress, a body whose positive contribution to Ireland continues to this day.
In 1977, Kirk O'Donnell was the key Congressional figure in crafting President Carter's Irish policy in which the principle of Washington's non-intervention in Irish affairs was finally breached. The significance of his achievement can best be measured by recalling that Parnell and de Valera had tried but failed to achieve this.
Practical man that he was, Kirk O'Donnell also ensured that Carter's policy included an undertaking that, in the event of a Northern Ireland political settlement, the US would back it with financial support. Thus it was that, following the Thatcher-FitzGerald Agreement in 1985, the US moved to support it through the International Fund for Ireland.
Kirk O'Donnell was, first and foremost, a patriotic American with a deep devotion to his country and to his native city of Boston. His love of Ireland was not far behind and was always fully informed and intelligently displayed. Most of all, we remember his contribution to peace. Without his carefully constructed foundations, this year's achievements would not have been possible. But we also remember his wise counsel and practical support on other Irish issues, including immigration and economic matters.
Kirk O'Donnell was born in Boston and graduated from Boston Latin School, Brown University and Suffolk Law School. He is survived by his wife Kathryn, daughter Holly and son Brendan, to whom our deepest sympathy is extended. S.D.