Frank Durkan:Frank Durkan, who over five decades was a pivotal figure in every important US court case linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, has died in Connecticut aged 76. Born Francis Patrick Durkan in 1930, he was a member of the extended family from Bohola, Co Mayo, that was to give New York a mayor, a city council president and the Irish half of one of the city's leading law firms.
He was a nephew of Mayor William O'Dwyer and New York City Council president and civil rights lawyer Paul O'Dwyer.
Durkan, whose parents were both teachers, arrived in New York by ship in 1947. His first night in his adopted city was unusual. He was put up in Gracie Mansion, official residence of New York's mayor and home at the time to William O'Dwyer.
As quickly as he was installed in Manhattan's most prestigious address, Durkan was ousted at the behest of his other New York uncle, Paul O'Dwyer. The new arrival from Mayo, it was decided, would have to pay his own way in his adopted country.
The young Durkan did this by way of a variety of jobs and also by pursuing an education that would result in his becoming a prominent litigation lawyer. He obtained an arts degree at Columbia University before graduating from New York Law School.
He joined the Manhattan firm of O'Dwyer and Bernstein and it was there that he progressed through a career focused on malpractice and, most famously, on cases linked to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
It was with the North as the legal spur that Durkan appeared in courtrooms all over the United States representing accused individuals and groups such as the "Fort Worth Five" and "Brooklyn Five," the latter including fellow Mayo native, IRA gunrunner George Harrison.
In 1982 Durkan successfully defended Harrison - a man who openly admitted his links to the Provisionals - by linking the operation in the minds of the jury to the Central Intelligence Agency.
This was accomplished with the help of testimony from former US attorney general Ramsey Clark. Clark testified that the CIA routinely denied its role in covert arms shipments as a means of covering up its actions.
When a CIA witness denied any involvement with Harrison, the jury interpreted this as an admission of the agency's actual participation.
The case took on a note of dark levity when Durkan at one point complained to the judge on behalf of his client. Harrison, Durkan said, was insulted by the judge's contention that he had been running guns for six months. He had in fact been doing so for 25 years.
Durkan's career as a lawyer was matched by his political activism and also support of organisations linked to Ireland. At the time of his death, he chaired Americans for a New Irish Agenda, a leading advocacy group backing Sinn Féin and its participation in the peace process.
Durkan was also a central figure in Irish-American involvement in the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore. This Irish-American lobby within the Democratic Party played a guiding role in the evolution of President Clinton's groundbreaking Irish policies during the 1990s.
Durkan was a member of the Mayo Society of New York, and a trustee of both the Irish Institute of New York and Mayo Foundation for the Handicapped. He represented the New York Mayo Football Club as a delegate to the Gaelic Athletic Association and also served as its president.
He was also active over the years in the cause of securing more US visas for his fellow Irish and was a board member of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.
He was not afraid to champion causes not always popular with other Irish-Americans. When openly gay men and women were excluded from Manhattan's St Patrick's Day parade, he refused to take part. In 2004, Newsday reported that he marched instead in a parade of gay men and women in the New York borough of Queens.
"The Constitution says everybody is equal," he said in an interview. "I don't have to know much more."
At a concelebrated funeral Mass last Monday at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Durkan - who had eulogised Paul O'Dwyer in the same church eight years ago - was in turn eulogised by his cousin, and Paul O'Dwyer's son, Brian O'Dwyer.
"Frank's concept of friendship was fixed and steady and never wavered, no matter where the winds, personal and political, were blowing," O'Dwyer told a large congregation that included former New York mayor David Dinkins, Irish consul general in New York Tim O'Connor, and journalist and author Jimmy Breslin.
Frank Durkan is survived by his wife Monica, daughters Ashling and Mary Louise, and two grandsons.
Frank Durkan: born 1930; died November 16th, 2006