Natural marketeer who introduced shamrock to the White House

Dorothy (Dot) Mary Tubridy:

Born: November 1st, 1925

Died: May 13th, 2018

Dorothy Tubridy, who has died aged 92, in a deliberately understated career became one of the more influential and distinguished Irish women of her generation.

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Born into a farming and small-business background in Co Kilkenny in the early years of the State, one of 11 children, her early years were inauspicious. Following education at a local national school, followed by a brief spell at the Santa Sabina convent of the Dominican nuns in Sutton, Co Dublin, she finished her education in Northern Ireland with the Note Dame des Missions boarding school in Limavady, Co Derry, and seemed destined for a life of respectable obscurity.

Her meeting in her early 20s with a young Irish Army officer, Michael Tubridy, changed that radically. Tubridy, who had won an All-Ireland senior football medal with Cork in 1945, was also a renowned showjumper with the Army’s equestrian team, and became, in the late 1940s, one of the most renowned horsemen of his era. After their marriage, when Dorothy (always known as Dot to family and friends) was aged just 22, they travelled in 1949 to New York for an international showjumping competition, where she met, and became a life-long friend, of Ethel Skakel, later to marry Robert Kennedy of the famous American political dynasty of Irish origin.

Husband’s death

It was a friendship that was to transform her life. After her husband’s tragic death, aged just 31, in a riding accident in 1954, leaving her widowed with a young daughter, Áine, Ms Tubridy was offered a job by her husband’s employers, the McGrath family, owners of the Trimblestown stud in Co Meath which Michael had joined as manager after leaving the Army. The McGraths also were the principal shareholders in the Waterford Glass company, and Dot became their public relations representative in their most important market, the US.

She became friends with Bing Crosby, and persuaded him to use Waterford Glass trophies for his famous annual Golf Classics for charity

The job brought out a natural talent in Dot Tubridy, a beautiful woman with a faultless sense of taste. After spending some months recuperating from her husband’s death with Robert and Ethel Kennedy, she became a feature on US radio and television, appearing on popular shows promoting Waterford Glass and Donegal Carpets.

She became friends with Bing Crosby, and persuaded him to use Waterford Glass trophies for his famous annual Golf Classics for charity. Later, in 1961, having attended the US presidential inaugural ball after the election of John Kennedy to the presidency in 1961 – where she showcased Irish fashion by wearing a gown designed by Dublin-based Danish designer Ib Jorgensen – she initiated the now traditional presentation of the (Waterford Crystal) bowl of shamrock in the Oval Office every St Patrick’s Day.

Ingenious

Her product placement for Waterford was ingenious: she continued to organize the presentation up until the time of President Ronald Reagan’s period in office in the 1980s, during which she persuaded him to buy 200 Waterford Crystal biscuit bowls for friends.

As a result of her friendship with the Kennedys, Dot Tubridy had an influence on persuading John Fitzgerald Kennedy to come on his epoch-making state visit to Ireland in June 1963; there is ample evidence of this from letters sent by the former US leader to her subsequent to the visit.

Her work promoting Ireland, which included assignments for the State’s export board, Córas Tráchtála, and Bord Fáilte, brought her eventual recognition from the latter body as an “ambassador for Ireland” with a presentation by the board in Dublin in 1989.

Ms Tubridy played a significant role in the Northern peace process, becoming a founder member of the Ireland Fund in the US, and also of the organisation that became Co-operation Ireland. In 1990, she co-ordinated a meeting at the US Congress to support the attempts by the Birmingham Six for justice for their cause.

Very politically as well as socially committed to the Kennedy family, she travelled through 10 US states supporting Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for the US presidency in 1980.

At home in Ireland, Dot Tubridy became heavily involved in charitable causes including the promotion of the Special Olympics movement here. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Bobby Kennedy’s sister, had effectively founded this organisation in the US in 1961, and Dot Tubridy became a founder member of the Irish branch of the movement in 1978, and later helped to set up its sister organisation, Best Buddies – for relatives and helpers of Special Olympics athletes – in the 1980s. She was to accompany Shriver to the opening ceremony in Dublin of the World Special Olympics in 2003, and, when Shriver died in 2009, she was an honorary pall bearer at her funeral.

Charitable initiatives

Earlier, she had been honoured by the Kennedys when they appointed her a trustee of the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Foundation in 1990.

During the 1960s, Dot Tubridy was also involved in two significant charitable initiatives in Ireland. For six years in Cleveland, Ohio, she organised an annual Irish cabaret performance to raise funds for Crumlin Children’s Hospital in Dublin, and was also involved with the late Fr Scully SJ in his, eventually successful, attempts to build social housing for the elderly in Dublin.

Dorothy Tubridy was the fourth of 11 children of William and Julia Lawlor (nee Delaney, a native of Mounteagle, Ballyroan, Co Laois), of Crettyard, Co Kilkenny, and she is survived by two sisters, Kasha and Marie. Her only child, Dr Áine Tubridy, predeceased her.