For Immediate Release: May 21, 2002
Further information: Ann Scanlon 617-514-1662
Boston, MA- Larry Lucchino, CEO of the Boston Red Sox and son of Italian immigrants, addressed 103 new Americans today as they took the naturalization oath at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. The Honorable Nancy Gertner, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Massachusetts, presided over the ceremony. The U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service sponsored the event.
John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, introduced Judge Gertner. The Kennedy Library gave each new citizen a small American flag and a special, commemorative edition of the Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, in which the 35th president called upon all Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
The nation’s first Irish Catholic president, John F. Kennedy took the oath of office as President of the United States on his great-grandparents’ family bible on January 20, 1961. The Fitzgerald family bible is on display in the Museum. One of the Museum’s exhibits highlights the Irish heritage of the Fitzgerald and Kennedy families and shows video footage and artifacts from President Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Ireland.
The Fitzgerald family was from western Ireland in the rural County Limerick village of Bruff. Between 1846 and 1855 during the Potato Famine, members of the Fitzgerald family migrated to America. During that same period of time, Patrick Kennedy left his ancestral home in Dunganstown, County Wexford, for the United States. In 1849, Patrick Kennedy married Bridget Murphy in East Boston. Nine years later, she was a widow with four small children, the youngest of whom, Patrick, would become John F. Kennedy’s grandfather.
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation , a non-profit organization