The last of 108 families of American firemen, police officers and Port Authority officers who died on September 11th, 2001, at the World Trade Centre in New York, visited Ireland this month under a programme organised by the US-Ireland Alliance. Conor O'Clery reports from New York.
The first family travelled to Ireland in the summer of 2002, said Ms Trina Vargo, president of the Washington-based Alliance, which is best known for providing the George J. Mitchell scholarships to Irish universities for future leaders of the US.
Ms Vargo said that nearly 550 people, who otherwise would not have travelled to Ireland, did so because of the family-visit programme, and that the value to the Irish tourist industry amounted to more than $500,000. The project was sponsored by the Irish and NI Hotels Federations, the Car Rental Council of Ireland and Aer Lingus, and most of the money to cover the flights was raised by the Garda Síochána, the Northern Ireland Police Service, the Ireland Golf Tour Operators Association, the staff and directors of Accenture, and the Woking and District Irish Association of Surrey, England.
Mrs Marian Fontana, wife of deceased New York firefighter David Fontana, was one of the beneficiaries of the programme.
"He felt so at home with a pint of Guinness in his hands, his cousins all around and the cliffs and rugged landscape in view. His family and I gathered in Ballycotton and took the long walk along the cliffs there down to a little beach where we said a prayer for him, wished him a happy birthday, and scattered his ashes to the wind," she said.
Mrs Fontana's husband died on their eighth wedding anniversary as a member of the elite Squad 1 unit, stationed in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they lived with their five-year-old son, Aidan.