February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The flag standing nut inches away is not that of Texas, the United States, or even Mexico, which is in fact third in the row of four flags.
The first flag is in fact the tricolor of Ireland.
The Alamo is a truly international place. The Irish flag is actually one of seven national flags on display that salute nations that fought alongside Texans and Americans from many states in the 1836 battle that laid the foundation for the Republic of Texas, and later the great state of Texas.
One of the seven is indeed Mexico’s flag as Mexicans fought Mexicans in the siege of the Alamo.
The Irish and Scots Irish role in the battle against the army of Mexico is better known. But perhaps less well known is the part played in the Alamo story by an Irish American woman, Clara Driscoll, who paid with her own money to save what was left of the mission compound when it was designated as a site for a future hotel in 1903.
Driscoll became known as the “Savior of the Alamo.”
If the Alamo needs saving from anything these days it is the feet of massed ranks of tourists that make it one of the most visited historical places in all the United States.
Last Friday, the mission formed the backdrop for the Irish Echo’s inaugural salute to top Texas Irish leaders which was held just across East Crockett Street from the Alamo in the Menger hotel, the place where Theodore Roosevelt formed his “Rough Riders” at a bar made in Ireland back in the 1880s.
The awards event, like the battle of the Alamo, drew support from all over Texas and beyond, further proof if it was needed at all that Texas was, and is, a place that draws ’em, and holds ’em.