Steve Huenneke says that ‘things in America are going horribly’ and that moving to Ireland was one of the best decisions of his life
Moving to Wexford was a happy accident. Dublin was unaffordable and living in Donegal or Sligo was impractical for a man who didn’t drive. And he always wanted to live by the sea. “I have not regretted it for a second.” Steve says that saying farewell to America, the country he knew and once loved, was like a funeral and a divorce at the same time.
He graduated from the University of Missouri – Columbia’s renowned journalism programme in 1978 and eventually returned to education and received his Ph.D. in economics from the Kansas State University in the early 1990s.
“When I was a reporter, I covered everything from fires and crime to city council meetings and doing larger feature stories. I learned some things about life. Going to contentious city council meeting and meeting people who carried guns, happened a lot.
“I learned how to be in the middle and write to harmonise the issue and explain to people what was going on. The idea was to be objective.”
It was when he was appointed as business editor of a small newspaper that he decided to study economics. At this point he was 28.
Looking in
The criticism that he has about President Trump, is that he no longer plays by the rules that have been the foundation of the world’s most powerful office, since its inception. He says that one of George Washington’s rules was to always show respect for everybody in the room.
US president Donald Trump (Alex Brandon/AP)
“I’m looking at Trump and he almost never does that. When he comes in, he insults somebody, or he’ll post something on social media. In my mind he is not a real president.
“It is like somebody saying, ‘I play hurling’, but they don’t play by any of the rules. When they are supposed to run down the field, they run sideways. But they still say that they are a player.”
Ironically, given how Trump’s MAGA movement has utilised wearing hats to communicate a political message, Steve has taken a similar approach. He pointed to the ‘Not My President’ hat that he was wearing while we spoke and said that he had “totally rejected” Trump as a president of his native country. In addition to teaching economics, he took an ethics class and was enlightened by what he learned.
By 2017, Steve had decided to retire from teaching and started the long process of taking up his Irish citizenship. In April of that year, he delivered a searing address at the Academic Honors Convocation at William Woods University. By this point, President Trump was in the early months of his first term, but the cracks which have divided American society now, were already visible.
Steve told the university students who were just about to graduate, “when and if you are involved in politics, show humanity and compassion to the other side. It is, after all, only a game.
“How many times in your life have you been to a sporting event where a player on the visiting team gets knocked out on the field? Play stops. The officials, the trainer and maybe some medical personnel come out on the field, and hopefully, revive the player and help him or her off the field.
“Do you know what builds faith in humanity. When the home crowd gives that visiting a player on the other side a round of applause.”
The core of his point was that being opposed to somebody, does not equate to being their enemy.
Red Books owner Wally O’Neill and Steve Huenneke at the launch of Farewell to America.
Moving over
“I would have never left America because of politics. I mean, I didn’t agree with Ronald Regan, but I was a young guy, and I didn’t even think about it. Politics is all about disagreement, but polity is all about agreement.”
When he told his friends and family that he was emigrating to Ireland he says many of them were envious. “What I have come to understand is that I really am Irish and I feel Irish. Your ancestry speaks to you in so many ways.”
This year, Steve launched his book, “Farewell to America” which is on sale at Red Books in Wexford town.
“I’ve got some good friends at Red Books, and I thought to myself, people are going to ask me, what is going on in America. I started writing haikus after I left. The reason why I wrote this book was to tell people what I was thinking and remembering from my time in the US.
“Wally O’Neill is a great friend to me and all of Wexford and to people who write. I was able to convince him that maybe there is a book here. We went from there.”
In the latter part of our conversation, Steve reflects on the behaviour of US golf fans at the 2025 Ryder Cup in Bethpage Black as being more than just inappropriate or wrong, but a consequence of the Trump presidency.
“I was shocked and not shocked. I was shocked that a Trump rally assembled itself on that golf course. There are no boundaries anymore. They just yell expletives at people they don’t even know, who are trying to line up their shot. I was appalled.
“Things in America are going horribly. If you have a half-hearted acquittance of the American constitution it is being violated all over the place. As far as being afraid for America, we live in a world where there really aren’t any borders for this stuff, so I am worried for the world.”
For Steve, there is a sad irony when his country faces the turmoil it does, and he is experiencing one of the most enjoyable periods of his life.
“I guess with this book, I was actually saying farewell in two different ways. In one way, there was the America that I loved and believed in, and saying goodbye to that country was like being at a funeral.
“Then there is the other America, who I don’t like at all and feel alienated from. Saying goodbye to that country was more like a divorce. This book is like a divorce and a funeral at the same time and farewell is the proper word in both cases.
