Seattle-Galway Sister Cities Twentieth Anniversary Celebrations
By JOHN KEANE
SEATTLE - The City of Galway's Mayor Brian Walsh and Senior Executive Officer Joe Considine were in Seattle the last week of April to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Seattle Galway Sister City agreement.
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GALWAY MAYOR Brian Walsh at Seattle City Hall with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. (L-R) John Keane, Mayor Walsh, Mayor Nickels, Galway City Senior Executive Officer Joe Considine, Mary Shriane, Frank Shriane.
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While here, they met with various city and state officials in Seattle and Olympia, and were guests of honor at a reception at Seattle City Hall and at a 20th anniversary reception and dinner at FX McRory’s.
In 1982, the Seattle -Ireland Sister City Association was jointly formed by the Irish Heritage Club, the Friends of St. Patrick and others, in order to bring about a sister -city relationship with a city in Ireland.
That September, a group of 18 people travelled to Ireland and met with the mayors of Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, and Cork, and even included a visit with Lord Iveagh, the head of Guinness!
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GALWAY MAYOR Brian Walsh and King County Executive Ron Sims at the Seattle Galway Association's 20th Anniversary Dinner at FX McRory's.
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They also travelled to Galway arriving in the middle of the Galway Oyster Festival, and had a meeting with Galway’s Deputy Mayor Mary Byrne. That was the first official Seattle Galway Sister City contact.
Among the people who travelled to Ireland that year were Seattle Deputy Mayor Tom Keefe; Ed Devine, then Counselor to Washington Governor John Spellman; Mick McHugh; Mary Shriane; Fr. Bill Treacy; Rich Malia; Alf Collins; Lynne Berry; Robert Julien (Jake O’Shaughnessy’s “Singing Bartender”); and John Keane.
Upon their return from Ireland, the group’s consensus was that Galway was the city they wanted as an Irish sister city. Of all the cities visited, they thought that Galway had the most in common with Seattle – both were lively university cities and both were on the west coast.
Like Seattle, Galway also had a fishing fleet; Galway was the gateway to the Americas, while Seattle was the Gateway to the Orient; Galway was close to wild and beautiful Connemara, while Seattle was close to the wild and beautiful Olympic Peninsula and Rainier National Park, etc. The group members believed there were tremendous similarities between the two cities that argued for a formal relationship.
Follow -up contacts were made with Galway to investigate the possibility of a sister -city relationship, but the consensus in Galway appeared to be that, while they’d love to “twin” with Seattle, it was just too far away!
However, in 1984 Galway was celebrating its Quincentennial, 500 years as a Mayoral City and as part of their celebrations, Galway Mayor Michael Leahy and his wife Bridie, City Manager Seamus Keating and his wife Eileen, and UCG Professor Tom O’Neill, came to the United States on a Quincentennial 12 -city tour.
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AFTER MEETING with state officials at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, Galway Mayor Brian Walsh and Galway City Senior Executive Officer Joe Considine met with Patrick Woods from County Meath, Tom Quinlan from County Tipperary, and Finian Rowland from County Mayo. Tom Quinlan’s grandson Logan is in front and the Capitol Building dome can be seen in the background.
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Their original travel plans did not include a stop in Seattle, but at the last minute, strings were pulled to convince them to drop Los Angeles from their itinerary and replace it with an overnight stay in Seattle.
The group arrived in Seattle on a lovely sunny March day in 1984, had a great time, met hundreds of people including Seattle Mayor Charley Royer and Washington State Governor John Spellman, and they were sold on Seattle! They were surprised by the warmth and friendliness of everyone they met, and went back to Galway extolling the virtues of a sister -city relationship with Seattle.
That relationship was formally established two years later in 1986. Mayor Bridie O’Flaherty travelled to Seattle that March and spoke at a meeting of Seattle City Council which promptly approved establishment of the formal relationship with Galway. Seattle Mayor Charlie Royer and Galway Mayor Bridie O’Flaherty signed the official documents on March 11, 1986.
Two years later, in 1988, an official Seattle delegation led by Governor John Spellman went to Galway to formally sign the documents there. In 1993, to further mark the relationship, a stone monument designed by Don Scott, a Seattle artist, was unveiled in Galway by Seattle City Council President George Benson and Galway Mayor Padraig McCormack.
The large limestone monument carries on a bronze marker the geophysical data of Seattle – its longitude, latitude, distance and time difference, and arrows pointing in the true direction of Seattle both overland and directly through the earth.
A similar stone monument was unveiled in Seattle in June, 2001, and it carries the geophysical data of Galway. Thus, the two monuments point directly at each other. Similar to the waterfront location of the Seattle Stone in Galway, the Galway Stone in Seattle is located on Seattle’s waterfront, opposite Pier 66, beside the Bell Street Trolley Stop.
As a consequence of the Sister City relationship, many connections have been established between Seattle and Galway, and over the years, there have been many exchanges and official visits.
While some Galway mayors have been to Seattle more than once, Mayor Walsh is actually the fourteenth different Galway mayor to travel to Seattle, and officials from Galway now regularly participate in Seattle’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
Visits in the other direction are also common. In the last six years alone, a group of 20 Seattle -area artists and painters visited Galway in 2001 for a Millennium Exhibition of their works. That was a reciprocal visit to the one by artists from Galway and Belfast who came to Seattle in 2000 for an exhibition of their works and those of other Irish painters, printmakers and fiber artists.
In 2002, a group of Seattle Girl Scouts visited Galway as did an over -50s soccer team from Seattle. A Seattle Business Mission led by Seattle’s then City Council President, Council member Jan Drago, visited Galway in 2004.
An annual Law Fellowship program will this summer see two University of Washington law students spend two months in Galway working at a Free Legal Advice Center there. Most people in Seattle look on Galway as representing the best of Ireland and it’s a rare visitor to Ireland from the Seattle area who doesn’t make a conscious effort to include Galway on their trip.
The future of the Seattle Galway relationship is bright and there is great interest in further growing the ties of friendship that already exist between the two cities. To get involved in the Seattle Galway Sister City Association, contact John Costello, Treasurer, telephone (206) 725 -9543, email SeattleGalway@irishclub.org, or visit www.SeattleGalway.org.
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