Oh, Thank Goodness : A Chance to Help Heal His Homeland

In 1989, the Earth trembled, skies poured, killer winds howled, tankers spilled and revolutions swept the globe. In Los Angeles, gang violence claimed yet more victims and traffic seemed to grow ever worse. Still, amid the tide of oft-tragic happenings, small rays of hope keep shining through. Here are a few of many stories worth sharing on a day of feasting, family and friends. They’re enough to remind that it’s still worth saying: “Oh, Thank Goodness.”

Years from now, Northern Ireland’s children may walk safe from cross-fire and their homes will not be bombed and their parents will live to become grandparents because of one small group and believers like Ned Kelly.

Kelly was born in Newry, a Catholic ghetto between Belfast and Ulster’s bloodied border with Ireland. He still hears an early teaching: “In school, at the age of 7, I was told by the Christian brothers that it was better to be a pagan than a Protestant.”

But he escaped bigotry and its bombings. Kelly became an electrical engineer. He found success in England, Africa and the United States.

Then, for four years in New York and eight in Los Angeles, he inched back to his beginnings--as the North American representative of Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority.

Under Kelly’s counsel, more than 100 West Coast companies made purchases or investments in Ireland. He started to dream: “I believed that you find anarchy where you have unemployment because that’s when you have time to scheme and plan. Unemployment in Northern Ireland is between 20 and 25%. If we could ever get that down to an acceptable 5%, I think a lot of the anarchy is going to disappear.”

In June, Kelly, 58, left commerce for a world of human concern--Cooperation Ireland, the U.S. arm of a Belfast-Dublin effort to melt four centuries of Irish division and violence.

“Eighty percent of our work is a youth program,” says Kelly, executive vice president of the group and head of its West Coast office. “It involves cross-border, two-way exchanges on education, sporting and cultural projects aimed at building respect and understanding between the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

“One year we’ll take 25,000 Protestant youngsters from the north to live in Catholic homes in the south, and they will become part of the communities, assisting school cleanup or painting projects, sharing community functions. The next year, we will bring 25,000 Catholic youngsters from the south to live with Protestant families in the north.”

Cooperation Ireland is nonpolitical, nondenominational and to date, Kelly says, has gathered $50,000 in pledges from West Coast companies to assist work of the 10-year-old group.

Recently, it received somewhat different donations in long and encouraging letters from President George Bush, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey. “These letters give us prestige . . . they tell the world that we’re not just standing there holding a tin cup. . . .” Kelly says.

Today, he will give thanks. To philanthropic Americans. To growing respect and understanding between people of different traditions.

“I’ll also give thanks for this opportunity to do something that I should have done years ago,” he adds. “I’ve always felt guilty about not going back and doing something to dilute the brainwashing and polarization. Because that is my home. . . .”