De Valera, Eamon

(1882–1975)

   An Irish Nationalist and later prime minister and president of the Irish Republic, De Valera was born in 1882 in New York City of an Irish mother and a Spanish- Cuban father. At the age of two, he and his mother moved to Ireland. In the 1900s, he obtained degrees from several Irish universities and was appointed a professor of mathematics at an Irish Teachers’ College. During this period, he became enamored of the revival of the Gaelic language of the early 1900s, and this attraction led him to the Irish independence movement.

   De Valera became a member of the Irish Volunteers, an Irish Nationalist Army, and by 1913, rose to the rank of captain. He was subsequently initiated into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, the shadowy leadership group of the Irish Volunteers. He was one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion and avoided execution by the British only because of his American citizenship. He went on to be both the political and symbolic leader of the Irish nation for most of the mid-century.

   FURTHER READING:

    Coogan, Tim Pat. Eamon de Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland. New York: Harper Collins, 1995;

    Coogan, Tim Pat. Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland. Boulder: Robert Rhinehart, 1996;

    Dwyer, T. Ryle. Eamon de Valera. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998;

    Kee, Robert, The Green Flag. Bergenfield: Viking-Penguin, 1972.

   JOSEPH ADAMCZYK