43_4 by Harp and Shamrock Society of Texas

Est. 1966

Harp Strings

The Official Newsletter of the Harp & Shamrock Society of Texas Volume 43

Issue 4

August - September 2009

3rd Annual Halfway to St. Pat’s Weekend

Golf at any time of the year is a good time. But with fall in the air September is the best time. The rain will keep the green actually green. Friday Sept. 18 take a half day off from work and go golf. The application is on page 7 and online. I hope to see some members come out. Make sure you get to Casbeers Saturday September 19 from 2 to 6 p.m.. The entertainment line-up includes: 2-2:30 p.m. San Antonio Pipes and Drums; 2:30-3 p.m. St. Gregory School Irish Dancers; 3- 3:30 p.m. The Kelly Singers; 3- 4 p.m. Inishfree School of Irish Dance; 4-? p.m. Robert Doyle. There will be door prizes.

The Kelly Singers at a recent performance at the Beethoven Maennerchor Gartenfest. A very big Texas-sized thank you goes to our new director Tom Ewing. If you are known as the karaoke king or queen(and some of you know you are!) why not come out and join the fun!

And Now A Word From Your President...

Hello All, It has been sometime since I brought the society up to date as to what has been happening since our last newsletter. In June the society co-hosted with the Irish Echo Newspaper the first ever Texas Irish Leaders Awards at the Menger Hotel. This event brought representatives of the Irish Community from throughout the state from Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. MC of the event was Irish Echo editor, Ray O’Hanlon and from the Belfast Media Group owner of the Irish Echo, Connla Lawlor. CEO of the Irish Echo Mairtin O’Muilleoir had an accident running and was unable to come to San Antonio for the Event. There were many members of the society present for this as well as visitors from throughout the state. The City of San Antonio’s International Affairs Department, represented by Beth Costello and Jose Vega, were present and helped yours truly

with a presentation of the Alcalde Award to Martin Rouine, Irish Consul General at Chicago who flew in for the event. Music before the dinner was provided by Campbell and Wilson with Irish Dancing by the Inishfree School of Irish Dancing. Her Majesty’s Honorary Consul, Andrew Morrison was also in attendance. I went to Ireland shortly after the event and attended the Galway Regatta at Dangan near the Menlo Strait. I sponsored a trophy that the late Willy Fahy had given in memory of his father to the Galway Rowing Club sponsors of the Regatta. Also there was Richie Quinn of Quinn Jewelers who provides us with our Cuchulains and our chaplain, Rev. Bill McNamara. The winner of the Willy Fahy Shield was a young lady rower from the City of Derry Rowing Club. It was a lovely day even more so to see some of Willy’s

www.harpandshamrock.org

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Please make a note of the dates:

HARP & SHAMROCK

September

18 - 3 Annual Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Scramble 1p.m. start Olympia Hills Golf Club 12900 Mt Olmpus, Universal City 19 - 3rd Annual Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day Hooley 2p.m. to 6p.m. Casbeers @ the Church 1150 South Alamo

I ET

Y OF TE

Est. 1966

HARP AND SHAMROCK SOCIETY OF TEXAS, INC P.O.Box 15306 San Antonio, TX 78212

PRESIDENT Joan Moody 210-656-2666 VICE PRESIDENT Terence Peak 210-829-3920 2nd VICE PRESIDENT Kevin P. Dowd 210-845-4424 TREASURER Wayne C. Faught 210-699-1362 SECRETARY Eileen Faught 210-699-1362 CHAPLAIN Fr. McNamara 210-635-8539 BOARD of DIRECTORS Mary Jo Quinn 210-4961778 Tish Villegas 830-885-2096 George Tracy 210-493-0818 Victor Villegas 830-885-2096 Bill Merriman 210-259-3482 Shirley Donohue 210-344-9057 Melissa Schulz 210-445-2777 Melinda Britten 210-699-8632 Carolyn Dowd 210-896-1598 Darryl Britten 210-215-9952 Patrick Clarke 210-257-0462 Diana Jordan 210-872-7092 Bob Burke 210-534-6648 Steve Mattick 210-212-7800 IRISHMAN OF THE YEAR Robert Slattery- 2008 Editor in Chief Kevin Patrick Dowd 210-845-4424 Staff: Terry Peak Joan Moody Pat Peak Eileen Faught Carolyn Dowd John McCarthy Taz Stanfill Mariee Pilkington

25 - Installation Banquet, Republic House(fomerly Hungry Horse) 12333 West Ave, SA, TX

October

2nd & 3rd Feis San Antonio Hilton San Antonio Airport Hotel www.inishfreetx.com

March

05 Friday - Shamrock Golf Scramble, Location TBD 13 Saturday, 41st St. Patrick’s Day Street Parade, 11a.m. 17 Tuesday, The Alamo St. Patrick’s Day Wreath Laying, Noon 21 Saturday, 26th Annual Fun Run, Brackenridge Park, 8:30a. m. Your Gaelic lessons:

Backup, backup, backup! Cúltaca, cúltaca, cúltaca! My hard drive died. Mo tiomáint crua bás.

From the Laptop  of Your Editor

It seems that nothing is Texas-proof. The hard drive on the MacBook died. Too much dry Texas dust. Somewhere between our new house and moving in and other assorted matters the publishing office didn’t get setup. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I remember my first Pleasanton Cowboy Homecoming parade. Uncle Pat was as excited as I. Longhorn cattle being herded right down the main street of town. Now there was something you’d never see in the Bronx. Well 35 years has brought a lot of growth to Pleasanton and longhorns on city streets are long gone. But the fun and excitement is still there. As far as we know this is the very first time that our society has been in the Cowboy Homecoming parade. I hope we’ve started something! Next year we’d like to make a return visit and maybe enter other parades. We had a great turn out and a special thank you to the Inisfree School of Irish Dancing. The dancers were a hit especially in the heat. What troopers. Special thanks to Mike and Christina Dodd. Kevin Patrick Dowd shamrockeditor@aol.com www.harpandshamrock.org

From your President continued from page 1

former Galway neighbors. As is the Society’s custom we took off in July. The Society supported the first fund-raising Ceili of the Inishfree Dance School Booster Club at the Cove on July 18. We had our first meeting in August on the second Thursday and members please realize that you are welcome at the Board meetings, which are held at Casbeers (1150 S. Alamo) at 7:30 pm. On August 15 the Pleasanton, Texas homecoming parade was held with a lunch following at the Dowd’s home. On August 18 there was a member mixer at TGIF at the Forum that also served as a sign up party for the Halfway events and this brings us up to the present. The Halfway Golf tournament is September 18 with registration at 11:30 with bagpipe start at 1:00 pm. The Hooley is at Casbeers on September 19 from 2 until 6 pm. with music song and dance. Food and drink will be available at Casbeers. On August 27 several society members attended a fund raising concert sponsored by the Scottish Society of San Antonio, whose president Ellis Buchanan is also a member of the Harp and Shamrock Society. The featured singer was Isla St. Clair and the San Antonio Pipes and Drums accompanied her. Anton Hajek, Peggy Obringer, Joan Moody, Eileen Faught, Margaret Burke and Mr. and Mrs. Jim Stelling represented our Society.

Regarding the future of the parade. There will be one in 2010. Terry Peak and I met representatives of the city (Paula Stallcup, Felix Padron, Officer Jenkins and Captain Murnin) in mid August. Terry presented a PowerPoint presentation on the history of the Irish in San Antonio from 1760 to the present. I can’t speak for Terry but I think they were surprised. The city has given us $3000 towards the barricades and a possibility of working with Luminaria. Officer Jenkins mentioned a possibility of a further reduction in costs if we change our line-up, which will be discussed. All this means our line-up will go back to what it was in the 90’s when we marched in front of the St. Anthony Hotel and the reviewing stand was across the street. Instead of 8 police we will only need 4, which will be a considerable savings over what we are paying now. Perhaps in the 2012 budget we can go to city council and ask to be included in their parade schedule. That is open to us and so we got some benefit from this meeting, not what we wanted but a portion, which is better than nothing. We will try to keep in contact

with those who are arguing with the city over first amendment rights of association and speech. Right now it should go before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and we will watch that carefully. Speaking for myself I will not let the parade die as that and the Alamo Ceremonies are too much who we are and what we are about. If I have to be an activist, then so be it, there will be no more silence. Watch for details of installation banquet on September 25. There will be a DVD from Ireland sometime this month on a program filmed here in March about the Irish connection with San Jose Mission at which yours truly was interviewed. Bob Slattery was also interviewed. The company Deargfilm Productions does work for the Irish language channel TG4 so this show will be in both languages. Closer to the time I will have Terry Peak put details on the website. I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year and for those who don’t come as often please let us see you more often. Slan Joan Moody

Mixin’ Members News

An Update from the Social Committee. In this past year, there have been several times when we needed a hall where we could hold a private meeting for Harp and Shamrock and host a covered dish dinner, including bar availability. The cost associated with renting some of these locations were overpriced - or the sizes of the halls were way too big (or too small) for our group. When I first joined the Social events committee, we did a tally of the membership and zip codes where members lived. I recently joined the American Legion at Austin Highway and Lanark so that we could have access to a private hall that met our requirements. This location is centrally located and easy to reach coming off Rittiman or Walzem from 35 or coming off Perrin Beitel or Harry Wurzbach from 410 or coming from the Alamo Heights/Olmos Park/Terrill Hills area. Melissa and I are working together to plan more mixers. Watch the newsletter, website and your e-mails in the months ahead for updates on planned events. Taz Stanfill

www.harpandshamrock.org

Members Mixers Making Merry!

Skip Flachsbarth with Bob and Sue Brannon enjoy the fun at TGIF.

Barb and David Patrick and Social Committee Co-Chair Taz Stanfill

44th Annual Pleasanton Cowboy Homecoming Parade

The Irish cowboys all had a grand time along the parade route.

www.harpandshamrock.org

Irish American Leaders Awards @ the Menger

A grand night was had by all as the Irish Echo Newspaper came to Texas.

Our night at the Menger Hotel got full coverage in the centerfold of the June 10-16, 2009 issue. To keep up with the Irish and Irish-American news logon to:

www.irishecho.com.

Honoree Neill Reagan is all smile with his local Inishfree School of Irish Dancing students. www.inishfreetx.com/ www.harpandshamrock.org

News from and about Ireland

Back in January Joan Moody and Bob Slattery were interviewed on San Antonio’s Irish past by an Irish TV crew. Joan was interviewed at San Jose Mission National Historic Park, it is known as the “Queen of the Missions.” Joan said they did most of their filming at the Alamo and interviewed Bob at Waxy’s. You can view it on line after the 10th of October at: http://www.tg4.tv/channels/FaisneasArchive.aspx# The Irish are set to take over the 35th season premier of Saturday Night Live. U2 will be the musical guest. But more importantly the hottest Irish American actress Megan Fox will be host. Set your dvrs or wait for the highlights on youtube.com.

If you came to our March parade then you met our newest friends from Ireland the Dublin Bus tour group. According to RTE.ie they are affected by the world economy. Dublin Bus lost EUR15m last year due to falling passenger numbers. To address the shortfall, the company reduced staff numbers this year by 220, 170 of which were voluntary redundancies. However

Book

Review

By Joan Moody LIFFEY RIVERS The Secret of the Mountain of the Moon By Brenna Briggs Here we are in the third of the Liffey Rivers books about Liffey and her interest in Irish Dancing. Liffey is at a feis ( Irish dance festival) in County Sligo and one of the vendors looks suspiciously like her late mother and she tells her father that. He, a lawyer from Chicago, makes her go over and over the videotape of the feis to see if she can see on the tape what she has been describing to him. In any case she has been able to get in touch with this mysterious “Mary” via email and has agreed to make contact with her in Ireland.

Dublin Bus has said that economic conditions ‘continue to be extremely difficult’ in 2009. Revenue still remains 97% less than 2008 despite the fact that the company implemented a 7% increase in fares. Muhammad Ali, the former world heavyweight champion, visited Co Clare for a host of events in his honor. The 67-year-old former boxer was visiting the birthplace of his great grandfather, Abe Grady, who left town in the 1860s. Ennis Town Council conferred on Ali the first Honorary Freeman of Ennis at a reception, where he also had the opportunity to meet four of his distant cousins. He also attended a charitable function at Dromoland Castle before flying back to his home in Kentucky. The Rose of Tralee celebrated its historic 50th anniversary celebration. Businesses in Tralee had a bumper week with thousands of visitors packing the town. Tourism interests say they had an increase of around 50 per cent on visitor numbers compared to last year’s festival and the majority of Tralee’s hotels were entirely booked out, according to Holiday Tralee. Readers of her previous books know that she is the nemesis of whom she calls “skunk man” and skunk man has been keeping “Mary” hostage all these years by drugging her. Up on the mountain containing the cairn of Queen Maeve, Liffey comes to grips that :Mary” is her mother and strives to help keep her alive while she fights to keep them both alive and from the evil “skunk man” who wants to kill them both. Liffey’s ingenuity is such that uses her cell phone to call her friend, Sinead, to get the Gardai ( police) and bring help. In the end “skunk man” is sent flying over the side of the mountain to his death and Liffey’s father, Robert, finds both his wife and child on that mountain. For further information on this book and others in the series: www.booksurge.com or www.liffeyrivers.com Liffey Rivers’ sweatshirt on the cover of The Secret of the Mountin of the Moon has three interlocked spirals, called a Triskelion. The spiral is an ancient Celtic symbol related to the sun, afterlife and reincarnation. It is one continuous line, suggesting a continuous movement of time. (From the web site)

Liffey pulled off a stunt at school that really got her into trouble with her father, she skipped out by means of a fire alarm and got a taxi driver to take her to O’Hare Airport so she could make it to Ireland. 6 www.harpandshamrock.org

3rd annual Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Scramble When: Friday, September 18, 2009 Where: Olympia Hills Golf Club 12900 Mt. Olympus Universal City, TX 78148

Registration includes: Green fees, cart and range balls provided Food & beverages on tournament day

Tee–time: 11:30 registration 1:00 bagpipe start Format: 4-person scramble

Pre-Registration: $ 90.00/player before Sept. 11th (After Sept. 11th $100.00/player)

Emerald Green Kelly Green Sponsor level (Check desired sponsor level)

Tee-Box Sign Information (Write on back if more than 2 signs)

$450 $225

Sponsorships

Includes 2 Tee-Box signs. 4 player fees Includes 1 Tee-Box sign. 2 player fees

Emerald Green Kelly Green

$450 (Enter information for 2 Tee-Box signs and 4 players Enter $450 in amount box & total box below) $225 (Enter information for 1 Tee-Box sign and 2 players Enter $225 in amount box & total box below)

Tee-Box

$75 each

Number of Signs:

Company Name: Address: Contact Name:

Phone No:

Message to be Placed on sign: Player 1:

Amount:

Name:

1: $_______

Address: Player 2:

Name: 2: $_______

Address: Player 3:

Name: 3: $_______

Address: Player 4:

Name: 4: $_______

Address: Check if you need to be paired

Total amount Enclosed: $ ___________

Contact: Tournament information: Bobby Jordan – 210-269-7508 Sponsorship information: Diana Jordan– 210-872-7092

Make checks payable to and mail application to: Harp & Shamrock Society of Texas P.O. BOX 15306 San Antonio, TX 78212

Proceeds to benefit charitable causes and our St. Patrick’s Day Events www.harpandshamrock.org

The Harp & Shamrock Society of Texas Newsletter Editor P.O. Box 15306 San Antonio, TX 78212

Planet Earth and the trees thank you!

www.harpandshamrock.org Email: Shamrockeditor@aol.com

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Mark Your Calendar

Halfway Events

Thanks To Our Sponsors

September

18 Friday -3rd Annual Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Golf Scramble @Olympia Hills Golf Club, 1p.m. 19 Saturday, 3rd Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day Hooley , 2-6p.m. @ Casbeers at the Church 25 Friday, Installation Banquet General Membership Meeting @Republic House, 6:30p.m.

42nd Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade! March 13, 2010

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