An Irish-born U.S. Army sergeant who was killed while helping save his comrades during the Korean War is finally making his last journey home to Co Tipperary after 76 years.
Sergeant Thomas J. “Tom Jo” O’Brien, deceased.
Sergeant Thomas J. “Tom Jo” O’Brien, from Emly, Co. Tipperary was just 23 when he lost his life in North Korea on October 26th, 1950. He had emigrated to New York three years earlier before joining the U.S. Army, serving with Headquarters Battery, 90th Field Artillery Battalion, 25th Infantry Division.
O’Brien was reported missing in action and presumed dead after his unit came under attack from Korean People’s Army forces near the Taeryong River. According to his family, he drew enemy tank fire towards himself, allowing 10 comrades to retreat safely. He was killed by tank fire.
For his courage and service, Sergeant O’Brien was posthumously awarded several honours, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, National Defence Service Medal and Korean Presidential Unit Citation.
After the war, no body was recovered. Hiwever, in 1954, during Operation GLORY, [latter an American effort to repatriate the remains of United Nations Command casualties from North Korea], North Korea returned remains to the United Nations Command. One set, later buried as an unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, was believed to possibly be that of Sergeant O’Brien, but identification could not be confirmed at that time.
That changed decades later. In 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred the remains for further study. Using modern scientific testing, DNA evidence and circumstantial records, Sergeant O’Brien was formally identified on September 27th, 2024. A rosette was placed beside his name at the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu to show he had been accounted for. His niece Shivaun said the family had promised her late father Michael, Thomas’s brother, that they would continue searching for him and bring him home if he was found. Michael, who died in 2014, had provided DNA to assist the identification effort.
“My father would be elated and pleased that we are finally bringing his brother home,” Shivaun said. “It is bittersweet. We all wish he was alive to witness this.”
Sergeant O’Brien’s mother Sarah, who passed away in 1957, had his name engraved on the family headstone in St Ailbe’s Graveyard in Emly, hoping he would one day be brought home. In 2003, Sergeant O’Brien and 27 other Irish-born men who died while serving in U.S. conflicts were granted posthumous American citizenship. His brother Michael attended that ceremony in Washington, D.C. Sergeant O’Brien’s remains were brought from Hawaii to Los Angeles on June 8th, where they were received by family members before cremation. His relatives are now accompanying him back to Ireland. He will be laid to rest with his family in St Ailbe’s Graveyard in Emly at 3:00pm next Monday. His family said they hope many people from Emly and across Tipperary will attend to honour a young man who left Ireland, served bravely, and is finally coming home.
Every time a vaccine is given, every time an anaesthetic is injected, every time a patient receives insulin, antibiotics, chemotherapy, adrenaline, morphine, or life-saving fluids through a line, there is a quiet piece of Irish history at work and it begins in Co. Dublin.
Long before modern hospitals, vaccination centres, intensive care units, emergency departments, operating theatres, and community clinics became part of everyday life, doctors faced a simple but enormous problem; how could medicine be delivered precisely into the body, beneath the skin, where it could act quickly and effectively? For much of medical history, treatments were limited by the routes available. A patient could swallow a medicine. A substance could be rubbed onto the skin. A wound could be dressed. But getting a measured treatment through the skin and into the tissues, close to the source of pain or disease, was a different challenge entirely.
Dr Francis Rynd, (1801-1861) and his hypodermic hollow needle invention.
That challenge was answered in Ireland. The late Dr Francis Rynd, (1801-1861), an Irish physician and surgeon working at the Meath Hospital in Dublin, developed a hollow needle that made hypodermic injection possible. In 1844, Rynd used his new instrument to treat a woman suffering from severe neuralgia, a crippling nerve pain that had resisted the treatments then available. Rather than relying on medicine taken by mouth, he introduced a pain-relieving solution beneath the skin, close to the affected nerves. The effect was remarkable. A patient who had been suffering intensely finally experienced relief.
It was a small procedure by modern standards, but its consequences were vast. With that act, medicine crossed a threshold. The skin was no longer an almost impenetrable barrier between doctor and disease. The body could now be reached more directly, more precisely, and often more quickly.
Dr Rynd’s newly developed instrument was not the modern disposable syringe we know today. It was a pioneering device, developed at a time when medicine was still learning how to control pain, infection, and dosage. But the principle was revolutionary; a hollow needle could carry fluid into the human body, and from that principle came a medical transformation.
Left -Right:Meath Hospital nurses photographed in 1872 and named as Fever Nurse Ms Hodgens; Night Nurse Ms Spring; Surgical Nurse Ms Murray, and Accident Nurse Ms Brazil.
Today, the hollow needle is so familiar that we often forget how extraordinary it is. It is present at birth, in childhood immunisation, in dental surgeries, in ambulances, in cancer wards, in diabetes care, in blood tests, in epidurals, in emergency medicine, in intensive care, and in operating theatres across the world.
The story became even more powerful during our recent COVID-19 pandemic. When COVID vaccines were developed and rolled out at historic speed, the world focused on the science of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), viral vectors, immune response, public health logistics, cold-chain storage, and global vaccine access. All of those mattered enormously. But the final act; the moment science became protection, depended on the needle. Billions of times, in clinics, pharmacies, sports halls, hospitals, GP surgeries, care homes, schools, airports, and temporary vaccination centres, a tiny hollow needle carried a vaccine from vial to arm. That simple delivery system helped protect people from severe illness and death on a scale almost impossible to imagine. Over 13 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally. Each one was a modern event, shaped by cutting-edge immunology, global manufacturing, public health systems, and data science. Yet each one also belonged to a much older story: the story of a Dublin doctor who showed that medicine could be placed directly beneath the skin.
The same is true of countless other vaccines. Measles. Polio. Tetanus. Diphtheria. Influenza. HPV. Hepatitis. Pneumococcal disease. Childhood immunisation programmes across the world depend on the ability to deliver vaccines safely and reliably into the body. The needle is not the whole story of vaccination, but without it modern vaccination would not look the way it does today, and that is why Francis Rynd deserves to be better known.
Ireland has given the world poets, revolutionaries, scientists, teachers, nurses, doctors, inventors, and reformers. Among them stands a Dublin physician whose invention became one of the most important tools in the history of medicine.
While most people know the feeling of a needle; very few know the name Francis Rynd. But his legacy is everywhere. It is in the child receiving a routine vaccine. It is in the older person receiving a seasonal COVID or flu booster. It is in the patient being prepared for surgery. It is in the diabetic injecting insulin. It is in the emergency doctor administering adrenaline. It is in the cancer patient receiving treatment. It is in the drip beside a hospital bed.
A hollow needle may look ordinary. In truth, it is one of the great medical inventions and it began in Ireland and the world should remember the name Dr Francis Rynd.
History does not repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes in the ways hatred is excused, renamed, or redirected.
In the autumn of 1941, a ravine on the edge of Kyiv became one of the most devastating killing sites of the Holocaust. German forces had occupied the city on September 19th, and within days the Nazi campaign of persecution turned into mass murder. Notices appeared ordering Kyiv’s Jews to report with documents, clothing, money, and valuables. Many believed they were being deported or resettled. Instead, they were being led to Babi Yar.
On September 29th and 30th, Jewish families moved through the city in long, fearful columns. Parents carried children. Elderly people walked beside relatives. Others brought small bundles containing whatever remained of their lives. At the ravine, they were stripped of their possessions and clothing, forced toward the edge in groups, and shot. In only two days, 33,771 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered there, making Babi Yar one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.
Section of bodies photographed at the mass grave in Babi Yar, Ukraine, by Soviet researchers, three years later in 1944.
The killing did not end with those two days. During the Nazi occupation, Babi Yar continued to be used as an execution site. Jews who had survived or hidden were later brought there and killed. Soviet prisoners of war, Roma people, resistance members, civilians, and others targeted by the occupiers were also murdered in or near the ravine. What had once been a natural landmark became a mass grave and a symbol of the “Holocaust by bullets,” the campaign of open-air shootings carried out across Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.
After the war, Babi Yar’s memory was itself subjected to silence. Under Soviet rule, public commemoration often avoided naming the Jewish victims specifically, presenting the dead mainly as Soviet citizens. For survivors, relatives, and historians, this omission deepened the wound. The ravine held not only the bodies of the murdered but also a history that official memory struggled to acknowledge.
Soviet POWs being used by Germany to cover the mass grave after the massacre, on October 1st 1941. Pic: Johannes Hähle.
Today, Babi Yar stands as a place of mourning and warning. Its story reveals how quickly ordinary streets can become routes to destruction when hatred is organised by the state and human beings are reduced to targets. Behind the number 33,771 were families, neighbours, children, workers, students, grandparents, and entire communities whose lives were ended together at the edge of a ravine. To remember Babi Yar is to restore their humanity against the machinery that tried to erase them.
That silence also speaks to the present. History does not repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes in the ways hatred is excused, renamed, or redirected. Anti-Semitism rarely begins with violence at the edge of a ravine. It begins with language that turns Jews into a collective blame, with suspicion cast over Jewish identity, with the idea that Jewish fear is exaggerated, or that hostility toward Jews can be justified by events elsewhere. In Ireland today, where public feeling about Israel and Gaza is often intense, there must still be a clear moral line; criticism of any government is legitimate, but blaming Irish Jews for the actions of the Israeli state, intimidating Jewish people, distorting Holocaust memory, or treating Jewish belonging as conditional is antisemitism.
To remember Babi Yar is therefore not only to look back at 1941, but to ask what kind of society we are becoming now. The lesson is not that today is the same as then; it is that dehumanisation must be challenged long before it becomes catastrophe. A country can defend Palestinian lives and rights while also defending Jewish safety, dignity, memory, and belonging.
The measure of moral seriousness is whether we can hold both truths at once, refusing to let grief for one people become hatred of another.
The death of Edward “Ted” Howell in January 2025 brought renewed attention to one of the most influential yet least publicly known figures in modern Irish republicanism. While names such as Mr Gerry Adams and more recently, Ms Mary Lou McDonald have become synonymous with Sinn Féin’s political rise; Mr Howell operated largely behind the scenes. Yet those who knew the movement best often described him as its most significant strategists. His life also highlights one of the enduring tensions at the heart of Sinn Féin’s history: the complex relationship between the party’s political leadership and the legacy of the Provisional IRA.
L-R: Mr Gerry Adams; late Mr Ted Howell and seated late Mr Martin McGuinness.
Born in Belfast in 1947, Mr Howell became involved in republican activism during the early years of “The Troubles”. Public records and contemporary reporting show that he was associated with the Provisional IRA and was interned during the 1970s. Like many republicans of his generation, his political development occurred during a period of intense conflict, marked by violence, imprisonment, and political upheaval.
In February 1982, Mr Edward Howell and fellow republican Mr Desmond Ellis were both arrested by U.S. immigration authorities while attempting to cross illegally from Canada into the United States at the Whirlpool Bridge near Niagara Falls. Contemporary accounts state that the pair, accompanied by three Canadians, were carrying false documentation and what authorities described as a “shopping list” for weapons, including detonators and other materials associated with then IRA operations. U.S. officials refused them entry, placed them in immigration detention, and began deportation proceedings. Reports from the period indicate that Mr Howell, oddly, was accused of only attempting to enter the United States using false documents, rather than being criminally charged with weapons trafficking. During deportation arrangements via Canada and France, Howell reportedly escaped from escort at Paris airport before later being found located in Ireland. This incident however, then formed part of a now wider U.S. investigation into IRA fundraising and arms-procurement networks operating through Canada and North America during the early 1980s.
A lesser-known aspect of Mr Ted Howell’s political activity was his involvement in Sinn Féin’s international engagement. According to public statements by Mr Gerry Adams, Mr Howell accompanied senior Sinn Féin representatives on visits to the Middle East and took part in meetings with Hamas representatives. Sinn Féin stated that these discussions focused on sharing lessons from the Irish peace process and encouraging political dialogue as an alternative to conflict. The contacts attracted controversy because Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, the United States and several other countries. Howell’s involvement reflected Sinn Féin’s long-standing support for the Palestinian cause, a position that continues to influence the party’s strong criticism of Israeli government policies today and its advocacy for Palestinian statehood.
For critics of republicanism, the 1982 incident reinforced concerns about Howell’s involvement in the IRA’s international activities. For supporters, it became part of a broader narrative of a republican activist engaged in a struggle that they believed was political as well as military.
What is beyond dispute is that Howell emerged from the turbulent years of the conflict as one of Sinn Féin’s most trusted strategic thinkers. His relationship with Mr Gerry Adams was particularly significant. Adams was the public face of republicanism’s political transformation, but numerous accounts from journalists, former negotiators, and party insiders suggest that Howell was among the key advisers helping shape the movement’s long-term direction. He was involved in developing major policy documents during the 1980s and 1990s, including proposals that laid the groundwork for Sinn Féin’s engagement with the peace process. Unlike Mr Adams; Mr Howell rarely sought publicity. He preferred to operate away from television cameras and political rallies. Yet those involved in negotiations frequently noted his influence. He was regarded as an intellectual force within republican circles, someone whose opinions carried considerable weight despite his low public profile.
The transition from armed conflict to political engagement remains one of the defining developments in modern Irish history. Supporters of Sinn Féin argue that figures, such as Mr Howell, played a crucial role in guiding that transition. They point to his involvement in discussions that eventually contributed to the Good Friday Agreement and later political settlements. Critics, however, take a different view. They argue that individuals with IRA backgrounds continued to exercise influence within Sinn Féin long after the peace process had begun. For them, Mr Howell’s career raises important questions about accountability, transparency, and the extent to which former republican activists continued to shape decision-making behind the scenes.
Sinn Féin President Ms Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin vice president Ms Michelle O’Neill pallbearers at funeral of Mr Ted Howell. Above Photograph:Courtesy Liam McBurney.
These debates resurfaced after his death. The attendance of senior Sinn Féin figures at his funeral, including party president Ms Mary Lou McDonald, attracted considerable attention. Ms McDonald paid tribute to Howell’s contribution to the republican cause, reflecting the high regard in which he was held within the party. Alongside Ms Michelle O’Neill and Mr Gerry Adams, she helped honour a man whom many republicans regarded as a pivotal figure in the movement’s evolution.
For Sinn Féin supporters, these tributes were entirely appropriate. They viewed Mr Howell as a dedicated activist who helped steer republicanism towards democratic politics and constitutional engagement. They emphasised his role in peace negotiations and his commitment to Irish unity through political means.
But for others, particularly victims’ groups and critics of the IRA, the public recognition of Mr Howell revived painful memories of the conflict. Some questioned whether individuals associated with paramilitary organisations should be celebrated by contemporary political leaders. The sight of prominent Sinn Féin representatives honouring a former IRA member prompted renewed debate about how Ireland and Northern Ireland should remember “The Troubles”.
The relationship between Mr Gerry Adams, Ms Mary Lou McDonald, and Mr Ted Howell also symbolises a broader transition within Sinn Féin itself. Mr Adams represented the generation that led republicanism through conflict and into negotiations. Mr Howell was one of the key strategists working behind that transformation. Ms McDonald, by contrast, represents a newer generation of leadership seeking to position Sinn Féin as a mainstream political force across the island of Ireland. Yet the party’s history cannot be separated from the individuals who shaped it. Mr Howell’s life serves as a reminder that many of the architects of modern Sinn Féin came from a movement deeply intertwined with the IRA. Whether viewed as a peacemaker, strategist, activist, or controversial figure, his influence on republican politics is difficult to deny.
Ultimately, Mr Ted Howell’s legacy depends largely on the perspective from which it is viewed. To supporters, he was a committed republican thinker. To critics, he remained a figure whose association with the IRA raises unresolved questions about responsibility and remembrance. What is certain is that, despite spending much of his life out of the spotlight, Mr Edward “Ted” Howell left a significant imprint on Sinn Féin, on the republican movement, and sadly on the political history of Ireland.
Tipperary filmmaker Anne Williamson has won international recognition in Los Angeles for her short film Bridget, a powerful drama based on the life and death of Bridget Cleary, who was murdered in Co Tipperary in 1895.
Ms Williamson, from Mullinahone, Co Tipperary, directed and co-wrote the film, which revisits one of Ireland’s most haunting historical stories. Bridget tells of the murder of 26-year-old Bridget Cleary, who was killed by her husband, Michael Cleary, after he claimed she had been taken by fairies and replaced by a changeling.
The film was co-written by Williamson and Brian Clancy from Clooneen and was filmed by cinematographer Louis Buggy of Diceman Films. It combines a modern-day introduction, filmed in colour, with a striking black-and-white historical retelling of the events surrounding Bridget’s death.
Speaking at a recent screening of the film at the Abymill Theatre in Fethard, Co. Tipperary, Ms Williamson said the story had stayed with her since childhood. “It was always a story that fascinated me from listening to stories my grandfather told me when I was a child,” she said. “It was always a tale that tore at my heart strings — the fact that Bridget was burned and buried in the middle of the night with no mourners. It always got to me that she was wronged.”
Ms Williamson travelled to Los Angeles with cast members Vicky Maher, who plays Bridget Cleary; John Peter Morris, who plays Michael Cleary; and Deirdre De Búrca, who plays a local gossip. All three were present at the Regal Theatre in Los Angeles when Williamson collected her award.
The production features performances from members of the Fionn MacCumhaill Players from south Tipperary. The cast also includes young actor Cathal Fahey as Danny, Mark Fitzgerald as his father, and Eugene O’Meara as his grandfather, who introduces the story.
The drama includes an original ballad, ‘The Maid of Old Clooneen’, written and performed by Dublin folk singer Chris Kavanagh.
Local support for the film has been strong, with cast and crew members receiving messages of congratulations from across Ireland and abroad following Ms Williamson’s success in Los Angeles.
Fethard undertaker and publican Mr Jasper Murphy, who plays a priest in the film, said the award had brought great pride to everyone involved.
Bridget shines a new light on the Bridget Cleary story, seeking to restore dignity to a young woman whose death shocked Ireland and became known around the world. Through the dedication of local writers, actors, musicians and film makers, the film brings this tragic chapter of Tipperary history to a new international audience.
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