Dan Donnelly's arm goes to America
In a unique piece of Irish fighting history, Dan Donnelly's arm goes to New York this week to be part of a major exhibition about ‘Fighting Irishmen'.
Subtitled 'A Celebration of the Celtic Warrior', the exhibtion runs September through November in the Irish Arts Centre, and will be officially opened by Irish actor Liam Neeson.
The event is being curated by New York realty advisor Jim Houlihan, a patron of the IAC, and will include memorabilia from the great names of 19th and 20 century Irish pugilists and boxers, right up to Barry McGuigan.
Donnelly's arm was for decades a keynote exhibit in The Hideout pub in Kilcullen, close to where the fighter trained in the early part of the 19th century, and near Donnelly's Hollow on The Curragh where he famously beat the English champion of the day, George Cooper. When Des and Josephine Byrne retired from the pub business in the mid-nineties, they retained their ownership of the arm which had been presented to Des's father Jim in the early fifties.
"It was always Des's dream to bring it to America, where it has a very strong following," Josephine recalled this week as she prepared to bring the unique family heirloom across the Atlantic for the exhibition.
Unfortunately, Des passed away last December and his dream remained unfulfilled. But Josephine is living it for him in a way this week, and will be returning to New York in September with other members of the Byrne family as special guests for the official opening of the exhibition.
