St. Charles Finds Irish Sister City

For years, St. Charles residents have hosted visitors from Ludwigsburg, Germany in their homes. In turn, St. Charles students and adults have spent time exploring Ludwigsburg, St. Charles’ sister city.

More than 400 St. Charles students and some 600 German students have participated in the exchanges, an important part of the St. Charles Sister Cities Program.

“What’s special about it is you stay in the homes of people,” said Sandi Swift, president of the Irish Chapter of the St. Charles Sister Cities Program. "That’s how you learn from one another.”

As soon as next year, St. Charles students may be able to exchange visits with students from Ireland.

The St. Charles Sister Cities program has found a potential second sister city in Carndonagh, a small market town in the northwestern part of Ireland on the Inishowen Peninsula. The city itself has about 2,000 residents, but there are nearly 30,000 in the peninsula.

“It is today what you think of when you think of Ireland,” said Swift. “You go to Dublin, and you get a big city.”

Carndonagh has a community school that children from across the peninsula attend. Eventually, St. Charles students will be able to exchange visits with students who attend that school, Swift said.

Swift will present information about Carndonagh to the St. Charles City Council on Tuesday. In September or October, a delegation from Carndonagh is expected to visit St. Charles to formalize the agreement.

Swift said it’s appropriate that an Irish city will be the second sister city for St. Charles, following Ludwigsburg.

“In the St. Louis area, German is the No. 1 ethnic population, and Irish is second,” she said.

The St. Charles Sister Cities program was founded by Joe Daues in 1994. For years, St. Charles has had just one sister city in Ludwigsburg, Germany. The pairing was almost ideal. Ludwigsburg is a city of comparable size to St. Charles. It was located near Stuttgart, a sister city of St. Louis.

Members of the St. Charles Sister Cities Program have sought additional connections in Ireland, France, and Italy throughout the years without much luck. 

Swift took up the search for an Irish sister city about six years ago, she said.

She first looked on Sister Cities International to try to figure out which cities weren’t already matched with someone else.

“Otherwise it downplays what you are going to do there,” she said. “The big focus of our sister cities is student exchanges.”

Swift said she looked at cities that had a community school, as opposed to a private school. Then in 2009, she visited Ireland and went to Carndonagh. She checked out the school and spoke with members of the community.

“They don’t have a mayor in the town,” she said. “He’s the peace commissioner. He runs the local pub.”

Swift corresponded with a member of the town council, who was excited about the opportunity. Then in April, St. Charles Sister Cities board member Marilyn Geery spent a day in Carndonagh to get the paperwork signed.

"The people are really looking forward to giving this to the children and have them be exposed to more of the United States and see what the world is like," she said.

Geery visited on Good Friday when many of the shops, the restaurants and school were closed. A town person invited Geery and her traveling partner, Tom Marshall, into her home for lunch.

"They cooked us codfish with potatoes. The soup they had, everything was homemade. We sat down to dinner like it was a big, family affair," she said.

Members of the town council signed a letter of intent to partner with St. Charles. Geery, who started working on this project with Swift and Terri Gabler five years ago, said it's nice to finally have found the right city.

"To see something to total completion, it's a good feeling," she said.