Mayo man has key role in Joe Biden's US presidential inauguration next Wednesday
Ceremony organiser has roots in Ballyhaunis
By Tom Gillespie
A DEMOCRATIC Party official with several Mayo and west of Ireland connections has the prestigious task of organising the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday week next, January 20.
Conor Edward Freeley is the ticketing and operations coordinator with the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC).
He will have responsibility for the public ceremony which will be held on the West Front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Conor, from Boston, who works with the 59th PIC, is a cousin of Joe Freeley from Hazelhill, Ballyhaunis.
Speaking to me from Philadelphia, Conor said: “We have some great people on the team and we will put on a really good and safe inauguration.
“I work in the operations department which is overseeing all of the logistics for the event, making sure we have a whole health and safety team and making sure that people are sufficiently tested.
"I am working with the health and safety team to get things like credentials printed and to make sure there is a safe amount of people at the event.”
Conor continued: “I started on the Democratic campaign in New Hampshire in January last in the primary before President-elect Biden, who has Ballina connections, was the nominee. Then I went to South Carolina where we won that primary and it turned things around.
“My next stop was Illinois where we were all sent home on March 13 because of Covid. We all had to work together to figure out how to build a successful virtual campaign.
“It was tough at first but we really hit our groove there once everything got built up and it obviously worked out. It has been a good experience.”
Referring to his Irish roots, Conor continued: “The Freeleys come from Ballyhaunis. Freeley is not a common name in America and I don’t think it is particularly common in Ireland either.
“The Freeleys have been in Boston since the 1800s and growing up in Boston you get very connected to your Irish heritage, even more so than you might in Ireland. Even being just a few generations removed I felt I was only first generation because growing up in Boston you are in touch with your Irish heritage.
“My grandfather, sometime in the 1980s, met by a complete chance a Freeley cousin at a wake in Boston and the two of them got talking and eventually they figured out there was this whole Freeley clan in Ireland and in Boston that had never really interacted with each other and my grandfather and Joe Freeley and a couple of other cousins planned a big family reunion in Ballyhaunis.
"Sometime in 1985 they got everyone together and we built a family tree that goes back to the 1700s and even further back.
“We discovered that we have some distant relations to St. Colmcille and some of the ancient kings of Ireland.”
He added: “My mother’s great-grandmother was from Ballina and emigrated from Ballina. When I joined the Democratic campaign my grandmother was especially excited because she knew that President-elect Biden’s family was also from Ballina.
“I’m sure at some point back hundreds of years ago the President-elect's ancestors and my ancestors might have hung out together.
“My grandfather’s family - the Freeleys - are all from Mayo and my grandmother’s family, which is a little bit closer, are from Ballygluin in Co. Galway.
"I grew up with all sorts of Irish music coming from them and with Irish traditions. In my grandparents kitchen there are Mayo and Galway street signs.
“When I graduated from High School and turned 18 they took me to Ireland. We flew to Dublin from Boston and we did a big circle around the coast of the whole island - to Dublin, down south to Cork, Kerry, up through Galway, up to Derry in the north and through Donegal.
“As someone who grew up with so much Irish culture and influences it was cool to see Ireland at first hand and to meet some of my cousins in Galway who still live on the same farm that my great-grandmother emigrated from.
"I have a horseshoe in my room that came from my great-grandfather’s work bench.
“I studied abroad in Berlin when I was in college and I went to visit one of my friends who was studying abroad from UCD and I got to see a little more of Dublin.”
It is Conor’s hope to get back to Ireland post-Covid.
The presidential inauguration will be the 59th but will be limited because of Covid-19.
The live audiences will be restricted to members of the US Congress and a guest of their choosing, resembling a State of the Union address.
President-elect Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, were confirmed by the Electoral Congress on December 14.
On his inauguration, Mr. Biden will become the oldest president at 78 years and 61 days, older on taking office than Ronald Reagan, who left office at 77 years, 349 days.
He will also become the first president from Delaware, although he was born in Pennsylvania, first, and, to date, the only president to be born during World War II.
Meanwhile, Vice-President-elect Harris will become the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American Vice-President.
Joe Biden can trace his Irish roots back to both the Blewitts from Co. Mayo and the Finnegans from Co. Louth.
His great-great-grandfather, Patrick Blewitt, was born in Ballina in 1832. Patrick left Ireland in the autumn of 1850 to settle in America. He did return to Ireland the following year though, to bring his parents Edward and Mary and his siblings to America.
The Blewitts settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Patrick became a mining inspector, often working in South America.
Patrick had a son, Edward F. Blewitt, who was born in New Orleans in 1859. He was named after Patrick’s father who died in a drowning accident in 1872.