New Yorker thanked for annual floral tribute

US EMBASSY:A WOMAN who has marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks every year with a floral tribute at the US embassy in Dublin has been thanked by US ambassador Dan Rooney.

Mr Rooney became curious to discover the identity of the person who had been leaving a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers outside the embassy in Ballsbridge.

Eithne Boland, a New Yorker who has been living in Ireland since 1965, was tracked down this year at Mr Rooney’s request. “I was astonished to get a lovely phone call . . . it’s kind of overwhelming really. I’ve always known that the people in the embassy really appreciate the flowers being laid there and I love doing it,” Ms Boland said.

“The origin of it was September 11th, 2001, and on the day after, this place was an acre of flowers. So I just kept on bringing flowers because I’m from New York and I remember the Twin Towers being built.

“There was a lot of controversy about them being built at the time and you could see them from almost anywhere in Manhattan. It was amazing,” she said.

Mr Rooney was keen to thank Ms Boland in person and publicly recognise her dedication to the memory of those who lost their lives that day.

Every year, Ms Boland asked permission, for security reasons, to leave flowers along with a poem and her name and address.

“They have to put the flowers through security – that’s just the way it is,” she said.

Her mother brought her to Ireland as an infant and she returned to study art history and English at UCD in the mid-Sixties. “And I stayed. I didn’t set out thinking I’m going to spend the next several decades here ...I think maybe if you set foot on Irish soil you’re kind of fated to come back.”