From Chicago to Trinity, girls’ journey goes on

To Sasha Obama it looked like the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft.

To her big sister Malia, it was the room from the Jedi Archives of Star Wars. But the Long Room of the Trinity College Dublin Library is where these two girls born on the southside of Chicago got to see the pictures and books tracing their Irish roots.

There — in the treasure trove of Irish history which contains 500,000 manuscripts including a copy of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic — 12-year-old Sasha peered over birth records, old maps showing the family homestead, and other documents tracing the ancestry of her father, US President Barack Obama, to Co Offaly.

Malia, 14, examined a gold-framed portrait of John Kearney — a distant ancestor who, as chair of oratory in Trinity in 1781, might prove the source of her father’s great rhetorical flourishes.

The moment when the girls could “explore these shelves and trace their Irish lineage” was, according to first lady Michelle Obama, “very powerful for me as their mother and hopefully something they will cherish for the rest of their lives”.

Since visiting Moneygall in 2011, Michelle had promised to bring the girls back to Ireland. “Everywhere we went, we were welcomed with huge smiles, open arms, and lots of rain,” she said. “And when we left, we knew that our girls had to experience all the warmth and beauty of this place for themselves.”

Walking under the dark wooden ceilings of the Long Room and past the marble busts of writers and philosophers of bygone days, Sasha asked fewer questions than her more chatty sister. They both were said to have already known a lot about their ancestry and took a strong interest in the College Harp — Ireland’s oldest harp dating from the 15th century and on which the national emblem is based.

“What my girls are learning is that every day their home gets bigger and bigger,” Michelle said later.

“It is no longer just the southside of Chicago or Washington DC, but it is Moneygall, it is Dublin, it is the world.”

For now, they were only interested in bragging about their Irish roots. Distant cousin Henry Healy heard they were looking forward to telling their friends at home all about their visit. Both of them were “pretty amazed by” the certificates of Irish heritage he presented to them. “And competing with their friends, they said now they can prove they’re more Irish than them,” he said after their meeting.

Henry — an eighth cousin of the president — said the girls were “very down to earth” and excited about their trip. They were particularly impressed by plans for an Obama Park in Offaly. He presented Michelle with drawings of what it might look like. “They said, ‘Oh my God mum, I can’t believe they’re going to build a statue of you’.”

To Irish teens, Michelle must have looked like the coolest mom on Earth. “It’s good to be home. You all are amazing. And you’re pretty good-looking, too,!” she said to shrieks from teenage girls at the Gaiety Theatre before a performance of Riverdance.

“You guys, young people, you just have my heart,” she said. “Look, my girls know — I can embarrass them and love them to death — but young people, you guys move me in ways that you don’t even imagine.”

Michelle said it was important for her family to do something with young people during their stay in Dublin. “You have made my family feel right at home in Ireland, and you guys are pretty awesome,” she said, to which one boy shouted out: “We love you too”, leading to roars and cheers.

The first lady told the children to “think really big about who you want to be” and to allow their imaginations “soar high”. In words so inspiring that some even put down their cameras and phones, she said: “I hope you will dream about who you might become and where you might go.

“Because I know — and this is the thing I tell my girls every day; they’re so sick of it — that if you work hard enough — and it’s all about hard work — if you believe in yourself — it is so true — but more importantly, if you understand that the most important thing for you to do is to be able to pick yourself up when you fall — because most of life is falling and the real challenge is, how do you get back up? — that’s what you can do.

“And if you keep doing that, then you can make yourselves into anything you choose — anything. And together, you can make your country stronger and you can make the world better for all of us.

“I can’t wait to see who you all become.”