The Kennedy family joined members of the Irish government on Saturday to commemorate the late President John F. Kennedy's visit 50 years ago, throwing in a daylong block party that concluded with the lighting of Ireland's "eternal flame."
The European Nation celebrated "JFK 50: The Homecoming" in the County Wexford town of New Ross-it was from this town that Patrick Kennedy moved in 1848 during the potato famine to raise his family in Boston.
In June of 1963, CBS News reported, Patrick's great-grandson John went back to the town as America's premiere and sole Irish-Catholic president.
JFK went on a four-day tour throughout his great-grandfather's homeland. The European nation was so taken with the former president that, even today, his photo still hangs in homes in Gorey, New Ross and Inch as testaments to Irish success in America.
Over the weekend, Ireland's prime minister Edna Kenny stood next to JFK's lone living sibling, Jean Kennedy Smith, along with his sole surviving child, Caroline Kennedy. They three stood holding three torches, lighting a flame surrounded by a small iron globe.
Before the event, loved ones and politicians carried the flame as if it were an Olympic torch from JFK's cemetery plot in Arlington to Dublin, Ireland on a plane. Later, an Irish navy vessel transported the torch up the length of the River Barrow to the New Ross dockside. This was the first time that a Kennedy eternal flame had been moved with such great care.
"May it be a symbol of the fire in the Irish heart, imagination and soul," Kenny announced in her speech to more than 10,000 people who congregated on the side of the river.
Ireland's Special Olympics team also helped transport the torch from the Irish naval vessel to the site of the ceremony.
Caroline Kennedy requested her son Jack complete the ceremony with a speech.
He told the crowd gathered there that he wanted to get into politics after graduating from Yale, following in his grandfather's footsteps and carrying on the family's legacy.
"We have been told over and over that America is no longer the great country that it was when my grandfather was president," he said, referencing today's world problems, including rising sea levels, the national debt and international conflict.
But he finished his speech by acknowledging Ireland's resilience-coming up from years of poverty and social ailments-and the manner in which it reflected Kennedy-esque ambition.
"The glow from this flame can truly light the world," he said.
