Sir, - There are limits to most campaigns but clearly not to that of Kevin Myers of The Irish Times to diminish and to denigrate Irish freedom-fighters. Month after month in the columns of your newspaper he attacks, mocks and defames those who struggled to end foreign rule in our country. I leave it to others to identify his motives.
On June 3rd he repeated some of the wilder allegations he made on December 2nd, 1998, about Eamon de Valera's family background. Mr Myers then suggested that Eamon's father, Juan Vivion de Valera, did not truly exist but was somehow invented. He put forward the theory that Thomas Atkinson, a landowner's son in Bruree or nearby, was Eamon's father. He now peddles another tale, that the father was John Gubbins, a Limerick horse-breeder.
I appreciate that newspaper standards have fallen in recent years and, in particular, in recent weeks. Still, even by prevailing standards, this is pretty low. It is a nasty attack upon Kate Coll, who is not in a position to defend herself.
Kate Coll, Eamon's mother, arrived in New York on the SS Nevada on October 2nd, 1879. Eamon de Valera was born at the New York Nursery and Child's Hospital on Lexington Avenue on October 14th, 1882. Her pregnancy would have lasted at least three years if either of Mr Myers's suggestions were to be accepted.
Kate Coll was married to Juan Vivion de Valera by Father Hennessey on September 19th, 1881, at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church at Greenville, New Jersey. Fred Hamilton and Lily Brady were the witnesses.
Mr Myers's difficulties with names such as "de Valero", "de Valeros", etc., seem to be of his own making or based on simple errors by others.
Juan Vivion de Valera, son of Juan Manuel de Valera, was born in 1853 in Cuba where his family had apparently lived since 1827. Cuba was then regarded as a province of Spain. These de Valeras originated in Vizcaya in Spain; San Antonio de Valera was the name of the area they owned in the south of Matanzas province in Cuba.
Juan Vivion de Valera most certainly existed and was the father of Eamon de Valera according to all reliable accounts and available documents. - Yours, etc., Proinsias Mac Aonghusa,
New Park Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.