“Dad! Brendan here . . . remember I was going to call you at 4.15pm,” the Congressman says into the speaker phone, but Francis Boyle picks up before his son has finished leaving his message. Philadelphia has been home since Francis Boyle left Donegal over half a century ago, yet the accent remains undiluted Glencolmcille, low spoken and clear as spring water.
On Sunday, the Boyle men will watch the All-Ireland final together. Francis has been riveted to the All-Ireland championship season, to Donegal’s ascent. Brendan set his father up with a season GAA pass so he has been watching all the games live. In the decades of more limited transatlantic communication, following the local and All-Ireland championships was an act of both imagination and perseverance.
“Well, there was a couple of ways,” Francis tells us. “The first way was the Democrat. You’d always read up on the games in the Democrat. The second way was to go up to New York and they’d always have the results of the games there. It was one of the things you always did at home. You followed the games. It was Michael O’Hehir when you were growing up. And you followed the local Glencolmcille team. That was the way.”
Brendan Boyle nods through this, listening intently. There’s a view of the Capitol from the window behind him. His office is spacious and comfortable, the walls decorated with photos of political highlights and, he later points out, a painting of the untamed coastline where his father’s home stands in Donegal.
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“I remember going with you to a bar in northeast Philadelphia in 1992 to watch Donegal win its first All-Ireland. And then sometimes the Irish Centre would show the games as well. As a sports nut as a kid, and to a certain extent still today, I would always pay attention. Still every Sunday I’ll get a text from him saying, oh Donegal won today. And now, so-and-so is on. And I’ll get the score from him. As kids, the radio was always on in the house on a Sunday. Or Dad would be on the phone with one of his siblings to get the scores. I think it is one of those things that maintained the link across the Atlantic.”
The Boyle story is at once the archetypal Irish emigration story, but also unique. Francis left school at 16 and then left Glen because there was little choice. Now, his son is the only member of Congress with an Irish-born parent. Philadelphia was an obvious city: his older sisters had made lives there and were in a position to sponsor him.
“My aunt and uncle were there 30 or 40 years before that. They were here during the Depression. When I came out here first there were an awful lot of people from Glencolmcille. Older people that I would meet at certain things. It was almost like everybody in the houses at home had somebody here. I remember going to the village one time home on holidays. And I met up with five or six people that had been over here and then went back and retired.
“And then I met a couple more who had brothers and sisters in Philadelphia. So even at home, people would talk about Philadelphia. And then here, I would meet people from home and we would talk about Glen. Wakes and weddings, you always ran into people from home.”
He met his wife, Eileen Boyle, the daughter of Sligo emigrants, in Philadelphia. She worked as a school crossing guard in the city. They’d been married for 36 years when Eileen died, aged just 61, in 2013. But she lived to see both of her sons, Brendan and Kevin, elected to the Pennsylvania state house, the first brothers to achieve that since William Penn presided over the first session in 1682.
Francis worked as a warehouse worker for decades. When that closed in 2000, he worked as a janitor for the Philly city subway company. His hearing isn’t the greatest on the phone; 50 years of noisy machinery and trains take their toll. Brendan was the first in the house to go to college, graduating from Notre Dame. He caused a national ripple of true Democratic sensation in 2015 by beating Marjorie Margolies, the mother-in-law of Chelsea Clinton, to win a congressional seat on Capitol Hill.
At 48, he remains one of the more youthful faces of the party. He is also one of the more prominent, clear-voiced Democratic consciences of the current administration and Donald Trump, whose impact, he says, has thrust American politics into “an alternate reality” since he was elected for a first term as president in 2016.
We talk for a while about the Irish-American experience. In summer times, the Boyles often headed to the Jersey shore. Brendan remembers his father chatting to the summer staff serving ice creams or behind cash registers: they were usually Irish.
“And he would find out where they were from, who he might know from their town. And by the early 1990s, that suddenly changed. All of a sudden, it was eastern European kids. And they haven’t been Irish since. Philly is still a city that is very proud of its Irish roots. But there is no question that basically in a generation or two, the numbers coming out is a trickle of what it used to be.
“That’s partly because Ireland has become so successful. But for those who still would like to come to America from Ireland, we have to make it easier. It has been far too difficult. We have been close to passing measures a number of times.”
Francis remembers that Jim McGuinness was out in Philly years ago for a football summer, in the 1990s. And he returned as Donegal manager in the autumn of 2012. Before they hang up, the Boyles agree to make a plan for Sunday. It’s a 10.30am throw-in on the east coast of America. They’ll be among tens of thousands watching. Both are hopeful, nervous.
“Kerry are sort of like the Yankees of Gaelic football, aren’t they?” the Congressman says with a laugh. “That tradition of theirs. Although I will say I have had the most blessed sports year of my life. It began with Notre Dame in January. Then the Eagles in the Super Bowl.”
“So,” he says, knocking on the desk, “hopefully Donegal can keep that going,” before rising from his chair, already late for a late afternoon meeting.
