[caption id="attachment_71855" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Ambassador Rooney with Taoiseach Enda Kenny. "]
The bags could be partly packed already. U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney, could be hanging up his diplomatic credentials in a matter of weeks.
Rooney turns 80 on July 20 and, reports the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: "His football team embarks on its 80th season shortly thereafter. And around that time the U.S. ambassador to Ireland should again be back at his former job as chairman of the Steelers."
Rooney himself has been reluctant to put a date on his return to U.s. soil and the family business of football.
Rooney, according to the report, has declined to name a date but the paper is happy enough to project a ballpark estimate.
"It looks as if that will be July, when he will trade in his ambassador's job for a chairman's in time for training camp at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe," the report stated, while including an assessment by Rooney himself of his job as ambassador, which brings with it an enviable address in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
"It's been very rewarding. It's work, not an easy thing but enjoyable. I find it as a real challenge," he said.
Several U.S. plenipotentiaries down the years have been rather advanced in age and have shown it, thus prompting critical comment to the effect that the U.S. ambassador's residence has been little more than a fancy retirement home.
Rooney, it has to be said, has belied his age and has been an active and noticeable ambassadorial presence in Ireland. And, should he return in the summer, expect him to be active and noticeable in the campaign to re-elect the man who sent him to Ireland in the first place, President Barack Obama.
The president, in turn, will have to consider a replacement in the middle of a campaign, something which may lead to a bit of scramble in which wannabe ambassadors to the old sod vie to be the bigger fundraiser.
One thing is for sure then: the next ambassador is not going to be drawn from the poor huddled masses.
AND ONE MORE
In time for Memorial Day there's a new name on the Irish in Korea memorial website and it's that of Private First Class William Sharman Douglas from Newtownards, County Down.
Douglas is listed as having been in the U.S. Army 21 Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He lived in Erie County, New York and was killed in action, aged 24, on July 11, 1950 near Chochiwon in South Korea. He is buried in Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, NY.
The band of lost Irish brothers from the Korean War, as lsited on the website, has now reached 30. 29 of them were in the U.S. Army, one was a Marine. The website address is www.illyria.com/irishkor.html.
