Laidlaw Brothers Meet Irish PM on St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is supposed to be a celebration of all things Irish—and it’s hard to get more Irish than a personal chat with the head of Ireland’s government!

That’s the exclusive meeting that Laidlaw brothers Brendan Kane, 11, and Adam Kane, 7, managed to score on Saturday morning: a pep huddle and few minutes of friendly banter with Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, who was in Chicago for the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

As the treasurer of the Irish Fellowship Club of Chicago, dad Jack Kane, along with mom Kathy Marconi-Kane, had already managed a quick meeting with Kenny at the previous night’s Fellowship Club banquet, where Kenny signed programs for their (absent) sons.

But on Saturday morning at the Hilton Chicago, 15 minutes prior to the St. Patrick’s Day parade kickoff, Kenny’s combined entourage of Irish security and American Secret Service recognized the older Kanes from the previous night and acquiesced to a request for Brendan and Adam to meet Kenny.

Amazingly, Kenny not only agreed, he gave several minutes to the boys, surrounded by a circle of security personnel.

“He basically took five, 10 minutes of his time… because he wanted to have some time with these two guys,” said Jack. “He talked to them as if they were long-lost friends. He was charismatic, caring, really kind and passionate too.”

According to the Kanes, Kenny talked to the boys about life virtues and reflected upon their mixed Irish-Italian ancestry, talking about the current shared challenges facing the nations of Ireland and Italy, as well as soccer competition between the two nations.

“When we met him, he kind of had this big smile on his face,” Brendan said. “It was kind of cool to look how he was comparing how [Italians] like to drink wine, and Irish people like to go to pubs,” along with further distinctions between the nations about culture and sport.

Kenny also lightly teased Brendan and Adam—“Adamo” around the house sometimes—for the Irish/Italian duality in their names.

“He put our hands on top of each other, and then he said, ‘Italy and Ireland, you guys will always be good to each other,’ and then he flipped me up on his shoulders,” Adam(o) recalled. “Then he tried to lift Brendan up, but he was too big!”

The boys still carry their respective national allegiances, too, despite their admittedly identical genealogies.

“The Irish would probably win,” Brendan said. “They’re more lucky.”

Meanwhile, “Adamo,” while appreciative of the chance to meet the Taoiseach, wanted his favorite ancestral half recognized, too. “There has to be an Italian parade or something!” he declared proudly.

Kathy said that the Taoiseach went far beyond what anyone would have expected in his kind gesture of spending a few minutes with her sons.

“I was so shocked that he was taking that amount of time to explain all these different things, and he did go into being good brothers, and family, and country,” she said. “He really was very, very giving of himself to two strangers and their children. It was quite amazing.”

Perhaps most astonishing of all—this is the second time the boys have caught a lucky break to meet a Taoiseach on St. Patrick’s Day. They also got a few minutes with former Irish leader Brian Cowen in 2010 when he visited Chicago.