Veteran Hollywood actor Mickey Rooney (86) visited Ballymoe, Co Galway, yesterday for celebrations marking the 90th anniversary of the founding by local man Fr Edward Flanagan of Boys Town in Nebraska.
The priest was a native of the nearby townland of Leabeg in Co Roscommon.
Mickey Rooney performed with Spencer Tracy in the 1938 film Boys Town, which transformed Fr Flanagan into an international name.
The actor flew into Knock airport yesterday morning from the UK where he is currently performing in a show at Blackpool.
At the Fr Flanagan Memorial Centre in Ballymoe he said Boys Town was his favourite film in which he had taken part, and because of it he was forever associated with Boys Town the place, set up by Fr Flanagan on December 12th, 1917.
Girls and Boys Town, as it is now known, is the largest privately funded organisation serving severely at-risk, abused, abandoned and neglected children in the US. It currently cares for more than 43,000 children.
Mr Rooney was presented with a bronze harp by Fidelma Croghan of the Ballymoe Boys Town Association.
Association chairman John Griffin said that Ballymoe had seen "great and difficult days". He said that 150 years ago it experienced the Famine and 100 years ago it greeted Michael Davitt of the Land League.
In 1946 it welcomed Fr Flanagan as a hero, he said.
Prayers were led by Dr Christopher Jones, Bishop of Elphin, and a portrait of Fr Flanagan was presented to the memorial centre by Fr Steven Boes, Fr Flanagan's current successor at Boys and Girls Town.
The portrait is by former Boys Town resident Paul Otero.
On his 1946 visit to Ireland Fr Flanagan was very critical of childcare in this State.
In her book States of Fear, Mary Raftery recalled that he said then that Irish orphanages, industrial schools and residential homes were "not fit for human habitation and were a disgrace to the nation".
The then minister for justice and Roscommon TD Gerry Boland castigated Fr Flanagan in the Dáil and told him to mind his own business.
The priest planned to return to Ireland in 1948 to deal with the matter but was sent by US president Harry Truman to establish orphanages in postwar Germany, where he subsequently died.
Mr Griffin said last night that it needed to be acknowledged that what Fr Flanagan said was true.
Now, when it seemed we had heard the worst about what happened in those institutions, such acknowledgment was also necessary if people were to move on, he said.
