Rocks against reds helped lift the green on Tipp Hill(Irelands Ahern in America)

"A number of recent incidents involving paramilitary activity and criminality - including the brutal murder of Robert McCartney on the 30th of January - would suggest that some people have yet to fully embrace the agreement's requirements for peace and democracy," Ahern said.

"The issues of paramilitary capability and activity, including all forms of criminality, will have to be conclusively dealt with if there's to be any prospect of restoring partnership government in Northern Ireland," he said.

"For our part, my government will continue to make every effort to ensure that we succeed in finishing the job of fully implementing the agreement and getting its political institutions up and

running," he said. "The people who voted for it in 1998 and our many friends and supporters here in the United States expect and deserve no less."

Among the key players in the peace process, Ahern said, was his host for the day, Rep. James Walsh, R-Onondaga. Walsh chairs the Friends of Ireland, which coordinates congressional involvement in Irish-American affairs, co-chairs the U.S.-Irish Interparliamentary Group and is principal sponsor of the Irish Peace Process Cultural and Training Program.

The prime minister's speech concluded a convocation at which Le Moyne conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree on Ahern, the republic's taoiseach (pronounced TEE-shock), or leader, since 1997.

That ceremony,in turn, followed a lunch at the college's Student Center. There, the Rev. Charles Beirne, Le Moyne's president, gave Ahern a crystal dolphin, the school's mascot. Maryanne Desmond, president of Le Moyne's Student Gaelic Society, presented him with a hooded sweatshirt, and Alex Dawson, co-captain of the women's soccer team, gave him a jersey.

After the speech, Walsh and his wife, DeDe, accompanied Ahern to Tipperary Hill, the historic home of Syracuse's Irish community.

They posed for pictures under the green-over-red traffic light at Milton Avenue and Tompkins Street, and Walsh explained the significance of Stonethrowers Memorial at the intersection.

The prime minister's motorcade then headed two blocks to Coleman's Authentic Irish Pub, where Ahern sipped from a pint of Harp beer and greeted several dozen well-wishers.

Among thosefirst in line to greet him was an Irish citizen, Tom Beerman, a native of Galway, Ireland.

Beerman handed his 3-month-old son, Ryan, to the prime minister for a quick photo.

"That photo is going to go above the fireplace in my granny's place in Ireland," a beaming Beerman said moments later.

Beerman, who now lives in Florida, said he met Ahern about a year ago in Ireland. But nothing could top Tuesday's photo with his baby.

"This made the whole vacation," said Beerman, who was visiting with his wife, Lara, a Syracuse native, for the St. Patrick's Day weekend.

Syracuse was Ahern's first stop in a U.S. trip that includes visits to New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

He will present President Bush with a bowl of shamrocks on St. Patrick's Day Thursday, upholding an annual tradition, and meet with congressional leaders before returning to Ireland on Friday.

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Ken Davis wasn't there Tuesday for Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's visit to Tipperary Hill in Syracuse.

He wasn't there to see Rep. Jim Walsh guide Ahern into the intersection of Milton Avenue and Tompkins Street, where the two men stood beneath the green-over-red traffic light.

Ken died 10 years ago, but his wife, Rita, is going strong at 89, and she's pretty sure of how her husband would have responded when the prime minister described the light as "terrific":

"He would have lost his bearings," Rita said.

Ken was a "stone thrower." The story goes that in 1925, exactly 80 years ago, the city put up a new traffic signal with the green light on top, a salute to the Irish requested by city Alderman John "Huckle" Ryan.

The trouble began when city officials reversed that decision and put the green light on the bottom. At that point, Ken and his young friends supposedly got involved, using stones to break the red light every time it went on top. Eventually, city leaders wore down. Tipp Hill received the only traffic light in the nation where the green shines over red.

"It's become a landmark for the Irish all over the world," said Pat Ahern, a leader in the local Irish community who showed up Tuesday to greet the prime minister, who is no relation.

If the light truly went up in 1925, there was a strange period of silence before it became a well-loved community institution. Almost certainly, for example, there were two John Ryans involved in putting the green on top - "Huckle," the city alderman, and John M. Ryan, who ran the city's traffic signal system.

Both men died in the 1940s. Yet the Tipp Hill traffic signal, which would become one of the most famous landmarks in the region, wasn't even mentioned in their obituaries.

Indeed, the first reference to green-over-red in The Post-Standard was apparently in 1949, when the paper reported that Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York City stood beneath the light to greet the famous Walker triplets - two sets of triplets who grew up in the same family.

Rita Davis and her friend Mary Dorsey, 91, another widow of an original "stone thrower," have a pretty good idea of why it took so long to celebrate the light. For many years, they said, their husbands were reluctant to share tales about their days of throwing stones. They had mixed feelings about breaking the law, even as boys.

"Everybody knew everybody in the West End," Rita said, "and no one was going to take a step forward on a thing like that."

In the 1930s and 1940s, there might have also been a pragmatic reason for the silence: Tipp Hill regulars feared if they crowed about the light, the city might decide it was time to switch the colors, once again.

"The city didn't like it - not at all," said Mary Dorsey, who happens to be the aunt of Jim Walsh.

With almost no written records, the light sometimes slips into the realm of urban legend, where it is difficult to separate history from myth. Despite a multitude of stories, for instance, there is no evidence that John F. Kennedy ever visited the light. His brother Bobby, however, drew a big crowd when he shook hands at the intersection in 1966.

Several news accounts in the past 30 years have also claimed the light went up on Nov. 3, 1925 - even though John Copanas, city clerk, says no civic document seems to support that date.

One of the key players in the tale was "Dinty" Gilmartin, a one-legged Irish immigrant who ran a grocery store at that Tipp Hill intersection. The stone throwers used to hang around Gilmartin's store, and The Post-Standard in 1960 referred to Dinty Gilmartin, then 90, - - as the "guardian of the famous green-over-red traffic signal."

"I heard all the stories," said Bob Gilmartin, 80, Dinty's grandson. He was told that the stone throwers didn't stop at breaking glass. They also targeted trolley cars passing near Gilmartin's store, and they found a way to push the cars off the tracks as another means of forcing the city to put the green light back on top.

Almost 80 years later, all the stone throwers are gone. Even the original light has been replaced. Jim French, a public works foreman with the city, said the existing signal probably went up in the 1960s. Instead of light bulbs, it uses low-energy "emitting diodes" that produce bright colors of green, yellow and red, in descending order.

The greater meaning of the light all depends on whom you ask. "Huckle" Ryan's 1947 obituary noted that he was succeeded as Democratic leader in the neighborhood by John "Bocko" Young, whose son Tom eventually become the city's mayor. Tom Young said his father always maintained the real power of the light came from lifting green, a symbol for life and hope, to the top.

To Pat Ahern, the longtime Syracuse Hibernian, the light represents the Irish spirit of defiance - against the British, against the devastation of the great famine, against the struggles of adjusting to life in a new land.

As for the boys who started the whole thing? Whatever their motivation, it is difficult to believe any of them could have imagined the scene Tuesday on Tipp Hill, where the prime minister of Ireland came to smile at what they did by throwing stones.

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