Briscoe's visit inspired another important launch: He's credited with resurrecting the Denver St. Patrick's Day celebration that the city still hosts today.
Briscoe was a lifelong politician who served as a member of the country's Lower Parliament and the conservative political party Fianna Fáil, which controls the Dublin mayor's office today. But in Denver, he's remembered best for his brief time as the lord mayor of Dublin, an office created in the thirteenth century. He completed two terms as mayor, a position that only offers one-year terms, from 1956 to 1957 and again from 1961 to 1962.
Briscoe first came to Denver by accident while he was mayor in 1956: His plane had to land to check on a bomb threat, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
His second visit was intentional. When he arrived in Denver on April 17, 1962, Briscoe had already been touring the United States for two weeks, meeting with President John F. Kennedy and Native American leaders, doing interviews for radio shows and visiting such cities as Boston, New York and Los Angeles. As the first Jewish mayor of Dublin, he also met with Jewish leaders across the country.
When Briscoe arrived at Stapleton Airport, he was greeted by a welcoming committee led by Lieutenant Governor Bob Knous and Bernard Duffy, owner of Duffy's Shamrock Tavern. They took him to the Brown Palace Hotel to meet with local business and industry leaders, and then Briscoe enjoyed a long lunch at the nearby Duffy's.
A large group had piled into Duffy's to see the Irish mayor; after he finished his meal, Briscoe joined Duffy and the crowd for a march around the block designed to reinstate the St. Patrick's Day Parade, according to the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade organizing group.
Denver had celebrated St. Patrick's Day with annual parades from 1889 to 1921, as well as a big ball that featured a thirty-piece orchestra. But they ended for "economic reasons," according to the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade.
While the ball remained just a memory, Briscoe's march outside of Duffy's is credited with bringing the parade back to life, even though it took place in April. A parade committee formed and met at Duffy's to plan the first official revived parade, which took place on March 17, 1963, with about seventy floats.
Twenty-five years later, in 1988, Briscoe's son Ben was elected the new lord mayor. In an effort to raise $15,000 to buy a new organ for the Dublin Concert Hall, Ben Briscoe came to Denver to host a lunch with leaders from the Irish and Jewish community, according to the 2012 book Irish Denver.
The two Briscoes were the only Jewish mayors and the only father and son to serve as mayor in the position's nearly thousand-year history. They were also the only two mayors of Dublin to visit Denver. Robert died in 1969, and Ben in 2002.
Robert Briscoe's visit is still one of the most notable by a native of the Emerald Isle. Then-President of Ireland Mary McAleese toured Regis University in 2003. And decades before that, Dublin-born Oscar Wilde came to Colorado. The author and noted wit visited Leadville, home to thousands of Irish miners in the 1880s. Wilde described a dinner there as "the first course being whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky," according to Irish Denver.
Johnston went to Ireland on May 14 with a delegation to "meet and engage with government, business, academic and civic leaders in Dublin," according to his office. And to take a direct flight on Aer Lingus, of course.
Johnston is the descendant of Irish immigrants who fled famine, a lineage he refers to when talking about the current influx of migrants, mostly Venezuelan refugees, coming to Denver.
