📍Bruree, County Limerick, Ireland
1882 – 1975“I was born Éamon de Valera on the 14th of October 1882 in New York City, the son of a Spanish father and Irish mother, and was sent to Ireland as a child to be raised by my grandmother in Bruree, County Limerick. The Limerick countryside — the small farm, the Catholic faith, the Irish language that was still spoken in the area — gave me the Ireland of my imagination that I spent my life trying to build. I survived the Easter Rising, survived the War of Independence, split Ireland over the Treaty, fought the Civil War on the losing side, and eventually came to power through democratic politics. I served as Taoiseach and later as President for most of the mid-twentieth century. The Ireland I built was conservative, Catholic, and Gaelic — not everyone's Ireland, but the Ireland I had been formed to believe in.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Ferriter, D. Judging Dev (2007), Royal Irish Academy; Longford, Earl of & O'Neill, T. Eamon de Valera (1970), Gill & Macmillan