On 27 June 1963, the Freedom of Wexford was conferred upon the thirty-fifth President of the United States.
At Redmond Place, along the quayside in Wexford town, ‘a special platform had been dressed in the national colours of America and Ireland’ for the occasion and ‘from its four corners the Stars and Stripes and Tricolour made a brave display in the seaside breeze’.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was ‘obviously moved’ as he leaned forward to sign the Roll of Freemen, making him only the thirteenth freeman of the ancient Irish borough. To ‘a tumult of cheering,’ the Mayor of Wexford, Councillor Thomas Byrne, handed the roll, placed in a silver casket, to the United States President.