Irish America August / September 2014

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HEALTHCARE & LIFE SCIENCES 50

SPECIAL ISSUE

Gina McCarthy

The Administrator Environmental Protection Agency head on why climate control is the most important issue in healthcare today

Wounded Warriors: Rockaway Weekend Like Father Like Daughter: Doctors in the Military Waiting For the Wounded: An Irish Doctor in WWI Holy Wells & Sacred Places: A Healing Journey The Rise Foundation: Supporting Families Dr. Garret FitzGerald: The Science of Discovery

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 CANADA $4.95/ U.S. $3.95

“For the sake of our families health and for our kids’ future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate change.”

My Father’s Strength: Living with Parkinson’s Serious Fun: A Camp in Ireland for Children With Serious Illness Nuns Who Care: Serving the Poor Human Rights First: Irish Trained Doctors Imprisoned in Bahrain Multiple Sclerosis: How Diet Improves Quality of Life Dr. Brendan Buckley: On the Clinical Trials of the Future The Perils of Being Pale: Actor Donal Logue on Saving His Irish Skin

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August /September 2014 Vol. 29 No. 5

Contents

90

32

68 94

36 60

74

Features Soldiers from Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center visit Rockaway for four days of restorative watersports.

32 wounded warriors

Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is interviewed by Patricia Harty.

A camp in Kildare, Ireland, provides recreation programs for children with serious illnesses and their families.

68 serious fun

Two Irish nuns who help provide services for the poor. By Kara Rota.

72 nuns in service

Spending time in nature’s sacred places can bring balance to the whole self. By Rosari Kingston.

36 cover sTory

74 sacred places

45 healTh care

78 The rise foundaTion

Saluting the top Irish-American leaders across pharma, biotech, medical care, and research.

& life sciences 50

Dr. Garret FitzGerald, a scientist at the cutting edge of biomedical and public health research, talks to Adam Farley.

60 Building Bridges

Dr. Peter Green, an expert on celiac disease, talks to Patricia Harty.

64 celiac disease

Actress Roma Downey and businessman Tom Moran on why they volunteer.

66 why They do iT

COVER PHOTO: JOHN LOOMIS

Frances Black talks to Adam Farley about helping people cope when family members have addictions.

Dr. Francis O’Donnell and his daughter Mary speak with Sarah Buscher about life in the military.

90 miliTary docTors

Patricia Harty writes about her grandfather who was a battlefield doctor in the Great War.

94 grandfaTher’s war

Brian Dooley writes about Irishtrained doctors imprisioned in Bahrain.

98 human righTs firsT

Personal Essays Crohn’s Disease

Darina Molloy writes about living with Crohn’s disease. p. 22

My Father’s Strength

Mary Beth Keane on her father’s battle with Parkinson’s. p. 84

The Perils of Being Pale

Actor Donal Logue on his brush with skin cancer. p. 88

Living with MS

Sharon Ní Chonchúir on how diet has helped her. p. 100

Gramdma at 100

Bryce Evans writes about his grandmother’s long life. p. 114

departments 6 8 12 24 104 106 108 112

first word readers forum news & hibernia irish eye on hollywood sláinte poem Books Those we lost

PLUS: Dr. Brendan Buckley on the future of clinical trials.

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Vol. 29 No. 5• August/September 2014

IRISH AMERICA Mortas Cine Pride In Our Heritage

Founding Publisher: Niall O’Dowd

Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief: Patricia Harty Vice President of Marketing Kate Overbeck Art Director: Marian Fairweather Deputy Editor: Adam Farley

Copy Editor: John Anderson

Advertising & Events Coordinator Tara Dougherty Contributing Editor Matthew Skwiat

Financial Controller: Kevin M. Mangan Editorial Assistant: Mary Egan

IRISH AMERICA

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6 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

{the first word} Let’s Talk About the Climate...

’m reminded as we go to press that in Ireland we always talk about the weather. “How about the weather now?” was an oft heard refrain of my childhood, one that brought the answer, “The weather is up.”

The weather is up! Or should we say, something is up with the weather. It’s too darn hot – with my pale Irish skin and light eye color, I’m constantly running for cover. And it’s getting hotter.

Growing up in the Irish countryside, you were always on the watch for rain (drying laundry on a line required special attention), and the winter of 2013/14 was the wettest on record in Ireland.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is experiencing record heat waves, droughts, and torrential rainfall.

And wildfires. “The earth is on fire,” astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot the space shuttle, told me when I interviewed her in 1995 about her observations from space. And so it is. As we go to press, wildfires are burning in five states.

With the weather in mind, I headed to Washington, D.C. in July to interview Gina McCarthy, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. I was seeking reassurance that someone was on top of climate change, and I came away from my meeting convinced McCarthy has a firm commitment to reducing the U.S.’s carbon emissions, one of the main causes of global warming.

Other topics that affect our health and wellness are covered in this issue. If you can’t have good health without a healthy climate, you certainly can’t have good health without good health care. And, with this in mind, we have profiled 50 Irish and Irish-Americans who are on the cutting edge of biomedical research and health care.

Over the course of medical history, it is interesting to note that many advances in science and medicine occurred following major conflicts.

The centenary of the Great War gave me reason to ferret out my grandfather’s photo albums to see if I could better understand his experiences as a battlefield doctor, which “from a medical standpoint was a miserable bloody affair,” as one historian wrote.

Indeed, it was the first conflict to see the use of deadly gases as a weapon.

World War II brought advances in the use of penicillin, while the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have forced the medical world to push forward advances in prostatics and the treatment of brain trauma.

And while recent news coverage has exposed the inability of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to keep up with the medical needs of all the returning soldiers, we bring you an uplifting story from Adam Farley who traveled to the Irish enclave of Rockaway, Long Island, where for a decade now, every July wounded warriors from Walter Reed Medical Center are treated to a weekend of family fun and water sports. Meanwhile, Sarah Busher profiles two doctors, a father and daughter, about their service in the military from the Gulf War to the present day.

In this issue, we also have an enlightening personal-essay section on living with chronic diseases, with contributions from Mary Beth Keane, Darina Molloy, and Sharon Ní Chonchúir. Also, a story on RISE, an organization founded by Irish singer Frances Black to help families dealing with addictions. We learn that Frances has a special healing place – Ratlin Island – the very remoteness of which offers spiritual sustenance.

There’s an abundance of these places in Ireland. As Rosari Kingston, writing in this issue, reminds us, our physical well-being can be greatly enhanced by enriching our spiritual health through visiting nature’s sacred places. Yet another reason to protect our environment from the damaging effects of pollution. To quote Gina McCarthy, if we act now, “we can stop it from getting worse for our kids, and that’s really our moral obligation.”

I

Mortas Cine,

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{readers forum}

Irish troops at the Battle of the Somme, 1916.

Tom Deignan’s poignant story about the Connaught Rangers regiment of the British Army reminded me of another story.

In 1970, I walked into my boss’s office at the NYS Crime Control Council and found him deep in thought looking out on the hole that was once the World Trade Center. He explained he was thinking about his father, Valentine Delaney from Logboy, Co. Mayo. In 1920, his father was a member of the 1st Battalion of the Connaught Rangers and based in Jullundur, India. News of the murdering “Black and Tans” enraged 70 of the Rangers, who were led in mutiny by Private James Daly of Tryrells Pass, Co. Galway.

Delaney was one of 13 soldiers sentenced to death. Only Daly was executed in Dagshai prison. The other death sentences, including Delaney’s, were commuted to life imprisonment. Delaney spent time in the Maidstone Prison, Kent, before making his way to New York City. In 1970, Daly’s remains were returned to Ireland. My boss, John V. Delaney, had just retuned from J.F.K. Airport where he had watched his 73-year-old father snap to attention in tears as he saluted Daly’s coffin as it was transferred to Aer Lingus.

Thus began my education about British rule in Ireland.

The Irish and The Great War

– Michael John Cummings, via email

I’d say Paul Ryan doesn’t know Irish or U.S. history as well as he should. But even so, at some point [taking care of the poor] is a moral issue and not just a question of knowing historical events.

Certainly many members of my own Irish American family don’t like the idea of welfare as a long term solution to poverty. But they never opposed it on an emergency basis – with their definition of emergency often applying to developed world poor and not just those facing a serious 19th century famine in an impoverished colony.

In the end, every group of people on earth has jerks in it.

Being personally oppressed or having persecuted ancestors like most of us did, is no guaranteed preventative. But thankfully, the Paul Ryans are a minority of Irish Americans – who are actually the most liberal “white” gentile ethnic group in the U.S.

Does Paul Ryan Have Irish Amnesia?

– Amy Scanlon Posted online June 6

When reading the history of the Famine, a person has to be completely ignorant to [agree with] the arguments of the contemporary right regarding policies to alleviate poverty and malnutrition in the U.S., and not make the connection to the poor relief policies that Trevalyan forged as a malicious method of grabbing what Irish land was left, and ridding Ireland of the so-called surplus Irish population.

– Sandra Quinn, posted online July 13

Why do Irish men and women the world over, and Ireland in particular, describe [the Great Hunger] as a famine? To teach our children thus is an insult to our ancestors. It should be known as the Great Hunger or An Gorta Mór. Famine it was not. It was mass starvation [that happened] as grain, bread and other food-stuffs – fish, meat – were exported from Ireland, and relief was blocked at ports. It is shocking. I tell my children to always tell the truth when we say how it happened.

Please, Taoiseach Kenny, change the name officially.

What’s in the past is gone and it’s great we have peace, but to keep telling this lie is awful.

May all the Irish souls who perished [through starvation] and forced emigration be together in heaven.

– Stiofan Mac Giolla Bhui, posted online July 20

The Countess [Constance de Markievicz] is a true Irish hero.

It’s an honor to read about her and her stand against British imperialism.

Constance de Markievicz

– Ronnie Austin, posted online July 15

This is a great story, but I have one correction: Leadville’s altitude is 10,152, not 10,052. Another great Leadville story is that of Jesse F. McDonald who also came to Leadville in search of riches, found his fortune and became governor in 1905, after the state’s most corrupt election. It is an honor to live in the grand house he built here in Leadville!

Oscar & Doc in Leadville

– Jo Ann Stuever, posted online July 3

While Guinness is often called the Irish gift to the world, it is good to see that Ireland realized the full value of possibly the most widely known Irish brand when it really counted and saved our neutrality at a crucial time.

How Guinness Saved Ireland

– David, posted online June 5

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{contributors}

Those of you wondering what happened to Deputy Editor Sheila Langan will be pleased to learn that Sheila has taken over as editor at IrishCentral.com.

We are very happy to announce Adam Farley as our newly appointed Deputy Editor. Adam has been serving as Assistant Editor since the beginning of the year as he finished his master’s degree in Irish studies at N.Y.U. Special thanks to Contributing Editor Matthew Skwiat for his many contributions and his invaluable assistance during the transition period.

readers forum continued from page 8.

– Patricia Harty, Editor

Sarah Buscher, who writes about father and daughter military doctors in this issue, is a former assistant editor at Irish America. She now lives with her husband and four children in Washington D.C. where she teaches fifth grade.

Kit deFever is a California-born, Midwest-raised, New York photographer. When not photographing for his fashion accounts, Kit is usually found in Ireland or Alaska. He photographed the Wounded Warriors for this issue.

Adam Farley, Irish America’s deputy editor, has contributed several pieces to this issue, including “Wounded Warriors in Rockway,” and interviews with Dr. Garret FitzGerald and Dr. Brendan Buckley. He is a Seattle native.

Mary Beth Keane is the author of The Walking People (2009) and Fever (2013), about the life of Typhoid Mary. In 2011, she was named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35. She writes about her father’s battle with Parkinson’s disease in this issue.

Rosari Kingston writes in this issue about Ireland’s “Sacred Healing Places.” She is a qualified medical herbalist based in West Cork, Ireland. In addition to running her practice, Rosari lectures, writes, and carries out research.

Darina Molloy is a former assistant editor at Irish America and former arts editor at The Irish Voice. Darina swapped the sidewalks of NYC for the footpaths of her native Mayo in 2000. When she is not compiling crossword puzzles or making the occasional contribution to this publication, she works as a librarian and tweets about books (and other stuff) @drimoley.

Sharon Ní Chonchúir, who writes about living with M.S. in this issue, is a journalist from the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. She writes about health, education and the people, places and the changing culture of Ireland.

Visit us online at Irishamerica.com to leave your comments, or write to us: Send a fax (212-244-3344),

e-mail (submit@irishamerica.com), or write to Irish America Magazine, 875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Letters should include the writer’s name, address and phone number and may be edited for clarity and length.

10 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Celtic Argentina School of Irish Dance

I would like to point out that in the late 1950s up to the early 1970s there was in Buenos Aires a large Irish dance group called The Cross & Shamrock Association which danced at all the Irish Argentine get togethers and festivities such as St. Patrick’s Day. The Cross & Shamrock was headed by a Passionist priest Fr. Fidelis Rush. Its members came from the Irish Argentine community which settled in Argentina during the second half of the 19th century.

The Irish in Argentina

– Richard McLoughlin Coster, Bella Vista, Argentina, posted online July 3

The article on Lola Montez has one glaring error for me: the Lola Montez House in Grass Valley is not in Nevada but in my lovely Nevada County, California. Love the magazine.

Lovely Lola

– Margaret Phelan Stevenson, via email

Thank you for the vital information you published on Celiac disease. (Irish America “Health” issue, 2013).

I was finally diagnosed at age 66 years of age.

My entire Irish/Scottish relatives have been sent a copy of my tests with the warning that they should be tested.

We have generations of Ulcerative Colitis (UC) in my family, which is often associated with Celiac disease. My daughter Amy McIntyre – of Irish and Highland Scots descent – has active severe UC. My son, Tom married a woman of Norwegian descent, whose grandfather was Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1939. He had re-occurring UC until his death.

All of my relatives are actively being tested for Celiac disease. The cure is simple: eliminate the offending foods.

It is much easier now because many restaurants and food stores offer gluten free menus and foods. Too bad the testing in the U.S. is years behind Europe in this. It’s a simple blood test and it is easy and inexpensive.

My grandmother Twomey-Tracy emigrated from County Cork in the 1880s. It is ironic that her family and my grandfather Campbell-McPherson ran a wheat farm [those with Celiac disease have an intolerance of wheat gluten] the main farm on the Midwest plains bordering Canada and the U.S. Our Canadian cousins raised wheat and rye and bootlegged whiskey and rye.

Celiac Disease – What You Should Know

– Mary Julia McIntrye, posted online May 31

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{ hibernia }

PEOPLE

| HERITAGE | EVENTS | ARTS | ENTERTAINMENT

A Decade of No Smoking

his past March 29 marked the 10-year anniversary of the smoking ban T in Ireland, a milestone that few thought they would see. In 2004, a law banned smoking in the workplace that extended to pubs and restaurants. At

the time the Vintners Federation of Ireland said the law was “unnecessary, unworkable, and unjustified.” Since then, the image of an Ireland filled with pints, music, and smoke is no more thanks to the success of the law.

Health ministry studies show 97% adherence to the ban. The law has also been a boon to the tourism and hotel markets in Ireland. Stephen McNally, president of the Irish Hotels Federation, recently told The New York Times that the “ban was a spectacular success,” adding “we used to come home at night and your clothes would have this horrible stench.

Now our restaurants, hallways, and bedrooms smell fresh.”

Not only are tourists flocking to a newly oxidized Ireland, but the ban has greatly improved the health of the Irish people.

The Tobacco Free Research Institute Ireland conducted studies in 2013 that saw a 26% post-ban reduction in heart disease and a 32% decline in strokes, suggesting that over the decade 3,700 lives were saved.

The news is not all good, however. Ireland’s Health Service Executive findings show the number of occasional and light smokers increased with the largest group of smokers coming from the 18-24 age group, beating out the 25-34 year olds who dominated before the ban. Still, most everyone agrees that the smoking ban has been a resounding success. It has created a domino effect around the world with countries such as Norway, New Zealand, Italy, Britain, Greece, Brazil, and most recently Russia this past July, all passing similar smoking bans.

Stanton Glantz, Director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, commented on the anniversary, saying, “Ireland did everything right. Because of Ireland almost all of Europe is smoke-free today. They all figured, if Ireland can do it, any country can.” – M.S.

IRISH PREGNANCY APP NOMINATED FOR WEBBY

groundbreaking and exciting new web application, Life in A the Womb from University College Dublin staff and graduates, was nominated for a Webby Award. Developed by The Science Picture Company, the application visually charts the process from conception to birth. It was originally conceived as a tool for prospective parents, but further innovations will make it an indispensable app for medical educators. The narrative of the app was written by UCD graduate and medical journalist Dr. Claire O’Connell. Dr. Rhona Mahony, Master at the National Maternity hospital praised the application saying, “Life in the

12 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

INNOVATION AWARD FOR BUBBLELESS AERATION SYSTEM

xyMem Ltd, was recently declared winner O of the overall “Innovation of the Year” Award at the 2014 Irish Times

InterTradeIreland Innovation Awards. The company, which has developed a breakthrough technology for wastewater aeration, was cofounded in 2013 by Professor Eoin Casey and Dr. Eoin Syron as spin-out from UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering. The company’s ‘bubbleless’ aeration system is typically four times more energy efficient than best in class solutions available today. OxyMem currently employs 12 people and is in the process of closing a €2 million funding round and plans to increase staff numbers to 35 by the end of the year. Wayne Byrne CEO, OxyMem Ltd said, “Looking to the future, we have major plans to revolutionize the wastewater treatment market globally. We have a turnover of €50 million within five years in our sights and receiving the overall ‘Innovation of the Year Award’ strengthens our position as pioneers in the wastewater industry and in the attainment of an energy and carbon neutral wastewater treatment plant.” – M.E.

Pictured with their award are John Geaney and Wayne Byrne of OxyMem.

womb is beautifully captured in this extraordinary app which depicts fetal development week by week. Stunning interactive imagery illustrates life’s most amazing journey. It is astonishing and anybody interested in pregnancy will love it.”

Life in the Womb was the only Irish application nominated, and beat out other rivals such as Disney Interactive and Scholastic Learning to secure itself a place in the top five finalists. It has been a favorite throughout the technology circuit having been nominated for the People’s Voice Award and winning best educational app, best overall tablet app, and the Grand Prix Winner’s prize at the Irish web application awards ‘The Appys’ last November. – M.S.

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{news from ireland}

Irish Collaboration with Mayo Clinic

collaboration between A team led by Dr. Mark Bruzzi Ireland and the Mayo of NUI Galway aims to design Clinic that could sigand develop a prototype device nificantly impact the for human clinical use, build on future of medical technology was animal studies conducted thus far, recently announced. and advance the therapeutic techEnterprise Ireland, the governnology towards a “first in man” ment agency in Ireland responsiclinical investigation. ble for supporting Irish businessOn the commercial side, NUI es in the manufacturing and interGalway will validate the market nationally traded service, will see and reimbursement model for the the commercialization of up to 20 device and support the exploitanovel medical technologies in tion of the commercial potential Ireland over the next five years Jeff Bolton, Vice President Administration, Mayo Clinic, of the technology in Ireland. with the aim of creating several Taoiseach Enda Kenny, and Keith O’Neill, Director of Investors Aisling Capital, New Lifesciences Commercialization Enterprise Ireland, pictured high-value medical technology at the signing of the $16.5M deal.

York and ACT Venture Capital spin-out companies. are currently advising the team at Taoiseach Enda Kenny was on hand to witness the signing of NUI Galway on the establishment of a spin-out company around the agreement between Jeff Bolton, Vice President Mayo Clinic, this technology. and Dr. Keith O’Neill, Director Life-Sciences Commercialization, Signing the agreement between Enterprise Ireland and Mayo Enterprise Ireland in Dublin.

Clinic, Dr. Keith O’Neill, Enterprise Ireland said, “this deal is a The Irish Government will provide up to $16.5 million for the win-win as it will seed as many as 10 spin-out companies in co-development and licensing of novel medical technologies at Ireland whilst bringing advanced medical technologies to patients the Mayo Clinic headquartered in Minnesota. These technologies and providing a revenue stream back to Mayo Clinic to enhance will then be brought to Ireland where they will be further develits mission. We look forward to working with Mayo Clinic to creoped and validated by research teams in Irish Higher Education ate new companies around these world-class technologies some Institutes, and where they will be introduced to investors to bring of which may, in time, establish a presence in Minnesota, close to the technologies to market.

Mayo Clinic, benefiting the local economy there as well as in The first project under way is at NUI Galway, internationally Ireland.” recognized for its expertise in Biomedical Science and Enterprise Ireland’s aim is to create 10 spin-out companies in Engineering. The device patented by the Mayo Clinic is for the addition to licensing/commercialization relationships in Ireland treatment of acute pancreatitis. for each medical technology. – P.H.

A

IRISH COULD BECOME THE FATTEST PEOPLE IN EUROPE BY 2030

new study conducted by the World A Health Organization and the UK Health Forum has issued a dire prediction

of the obesity rates in Europe, with Ireland predicted to become the fattest country in Europe by 2030.

The study found that 90 percent of Irish men and 84 percent of Irish women would be classified as overweight or obese by then. A lack of exercise and a diet high in sugar and fats are mainly to blame.

UK Health Forum’s Dr. Laura Webber said after the study was released, “There is no silver bullet for tackling this. We need a comprehensive package of approaches to support healthy eating and more physical activity in daily life.”

While these statistics are shocking, Webber believes the figures are underestimated as they do not include child obesity statistics.

This news comes after a global study conducted by the World Health Organization and University of Ulster gave Northern Ireland a D minus in physical activity levels for school children.

Of the 419 primary schools surveyed only 17 percent said their students were getting two or more hours of physical activity per week. Ireland itself rested in the middle of the pack, but Chair of the World Health Organization Health Enhancing Physical Activity Working Group Dr. Catherine Woods said, “this report will set a benchmark for the island of Ireland from which to work to further improve the opportunities offered to children to be active.”

If the answer to the obesity epidemic is to provide information about healthy ways of living, the Irish are fighting back with an ongoing Safefood campaign to spread

awareness of childhood obesity by limiting treats, increasing activity, getting sufficient sleep, and monitoring sugary drinks. And while initial research showed that 54 percent of parents with overweight children believed their weight was fine, the campaign seems to be working, as follow up statistics found 82 percent of the 400 people polled said that they were motivated to think about the food they were giving their children. – M.S. IRISH MEDICAL TIMES

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 13

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{news from ireland} New Clinical Education Research Building for Limerick

he president of the University of Limerick (UL) Don Barry said that the school’s €224 million Capital Development Plan would aim to deliver 12 major infrastructural development projects including a new Clinical Education Research building at University Hospital Limerick, and a city center campus that would include an academic building and student residences.

The plans were announced at the UL President’s Dinner at Adare Manor recently. Niall FitzGerald addressed more than 200 key philanthropic and business leaders who attended the dinner.

FitzGerald, the former Chairman and CEO of Unilever, emphasized the interdependence of commercial and societal needs, saying, “I believe more and more companies understand that attending to their own business means also attending to the needs of society. The two cannot be separated. We live in communities of

AWARDS TO U.S. STUDENTS TO STUDY IRISH LANGUAGE

he Ireland-U.S. Commission for T Educational Exchange recently awarded 61 U.S. citizens the chance to

T

UL Foundation CEO David Cronin (left), Michael Flatley, and his wife Niamh.

citizens who are the consumers of our goods and service. If we betray their trust as citizens, we forfeit the loyalty of consumers.”

Guests were treated to a solo flute performance by Michael Flatley, and UL Foundation Chairman Loretta Brennan Glucksman presented a check on behalf of the foundation to Mary Davis, Worldwide CEO of Special Olympics.

UL Foundation CEO David Cronin said that friends of the university, such as Brennan Glucksman, FitzGerald and Flatley, ensure that the university will continue to distinguish itself on the education and philanthropic front. – M.E.

study the Irish language in the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland this summer including places such as Galway, Derry, and Kerry.

It marked the first ever group of 20 U.S. secondary school students to receive the Gaeltacht Summer Award, with 41 undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional U.S. citizens also receiving the award.

The awards are supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht and National Lottery whose minister Dinny McGinley was on hand to present the awards. McGinley commented, “I am delighted that the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in partnership with the Ireland United States Commission for Educational Exchange can bring 61 Americans to Ireland to further develop their proficiency in the Irish language and to experience the wealth of culture and heritage that the Gaeltachtaí have to offer.”

The awardees will have their course tuition and accommodations covered by the Commission and will have to pay their own travel expenses. – M.S.

IS SPECIALIZED NUTRITION THE KEY TO BETTER GOLF?

Dublin-based start-up company, Wyldsson, is partnering A with the University of Limerick using an Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher to investigate the impact of specialized nutri-

tion for golf performance. Wyldsson specializes in developing healthy food products for elite athletes.

Dave McGeady, of Wyldsson explains, “Hunger can be a serious issue for elite golfers, who can spend up to 6 hours straight on the course during a major tournament. There are few sports where such long periods of concentration and stamina are required. The margins are absolutely tiny in golf, so a good nutritional strategy can really make all the difference to a players’ per-

14 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

formance. However, very little research has been carried out on this area – so we wanted to take the lead.”

McGeady added, “Golf-pro John Daly is notorious for drinking Coke and munching on M&M’s during tournaments, however the parent of any young child will tell you after the great sugar rush comes a major crash – not ideal for any sports professional.

That’s why people like Tiger Woods eat natural snacks like nuts and trail mix, which have a much lower glycemic index.”

University of Limerick researcher, Dr. Mark Campbell, explains, “A huge amount of research has been undertaken in recent years to improve golf clubs and balls. However, there has been little work done in the area of nutrition and its effect on golf performance. This study will firstly, measure the typical energy expenditure of golfers undertaking a championship course round of golf. Secondly, physiological and psychological measures will be employed to measure golf performance. Finally, we then aim to recreate this round in our biomechanics lab and to evaluate the effect of feeding a nut and grain sustainable energy product on the maintenance of blood glucose and golf performance whilst undertaking a ‘simulated’ round of golf in the laboratory.”

The study will take place at Lahinch Golf Club and the University of Limerick’s biomechanics laboratory and will involve Professor Phil Jakeman and Dr. Mark Campbell. The study is being funded as part of the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher Scheme. – M.E.

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The Future of Clinical Trials

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ICON plc. is pushing the boundaries of what clinical researchers thought was practical. Here, Adam Farley speaks with Dr. Brendan Buckley, ICON’s Chief Medical Officer, about how it came to be and where it plans to go.

he view from Brendan Buckley’s office at the ICON headquarters is east by northeast over the Leopardstown Racecourse. If the building were taller, you could see the Dun Laoghaire piers and Dublin Bay. But if the building were taller, the office wouldn’t be in the South County Business Park, rubbing shoulders with Microsoft, Fónua, and VeriFone. It doesn’t get much more Irish office-park tech than this.

The only thing is, ICON, founded in 1990 by Dublin pharmacologists Dr. Ronan Lambe and Dr. John Climax, isn’t your standard Dublin tech company. It is one of the world leaders in clinical research, with 83 offices in 38 countries that employs approximately 11,000 people worldwide – with a mid-year guidance of $1.5 billion – that is driving innovation in the clinical development process. Brendan Buckley is ICON’s Chief Medical Officer.

Buckley was born in Cork in the 1950s. His mother was a scientist and his father worked for the civil service, but they were fairly non-interventional parents, he says. “They figured I’d find out what I wanted to do in due course. But I suppose I was good at science at school and the biology was more interesting than the raw molecules to me. I had good teachers who steered me and Brendan Buckley, M.D. they gave me the insight that gave them their enthusiasm. If that hits you, that’s it.”

“It,” for Buckley, now ranges from advising the CEO to risk assessment, and acting as an academic liaison because, he jokes, “I’ve got grey enough hair that on those occasions I can call myself ‘Professor.’” Buckley, of course, is also a professor and teaches 12-15 classes per year at University College Cork and other places, “to air my personal prejudices to the impressionable,” he says, discernibly less than half jokingly.

He is a measured and deliberate speaker with a bass voice more suitable perhaps to a meditation seminar than a Ted Talk, and our near two-hour conversation this past June ranged from jet lag to Kodachrome, soccer to Switzerland, and opticians to the mental health of GAA players. Somewhere in between such “shooting the breeze,” as he will call it, we managed to discuss the future of clinical trials, ICON’s role in medical research, and its devotion to maintaining what Buckley calls its “Irish ethos.”

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You joined ICON relatively recently in 2012. How did you come to be here?

I set up a business called Firecrest with a few guys from Limerick about ten years ago, which ICON bought three years ago.

Essentially what it does is what nobody else did up until then. It was the first company to focus on an online solution for training and supporting the staff who actually perform clinical trials at their hospitals and doctors offices. If you wanted to go to a place with a real buzz – it’s a kind of Silicon Valley/Google-type buzz in the office there – that’s where you go.

So Firecrest has a very young workforce, much like ICON.

It does. Really, it’s mostly young people trying to change the way medical information is spread throughout the industry. ICON recognized that the quality of work performed at sites could be substantially improved by providing on-demand, monitored, and certified training.

The conventional way was to fly people off to two days of death by PowerPoint somewhere, and it could be six months before you ever saw a patient for the trial. The Firecrest system basically allows the staff conducting the research at their own study sites to have any support they require, for example visit-by-visit guides for each time they see a patient on a trial, at their fingertips.

There is probably nothing like it still in the industry.

No, over the years I’ve been involved in other stuff. There were lots of failures. But you forget the failures and remember the successes, and Firecrest is probably the most disruptive success.

My background is essentially what you would call a “simple country doctor.” I’m a physician by training – an endocrinologist – and taught, and still do a little bit of teaching, endocrinology in UCC. I came into medicine indirectly. I did biochemistry first as an undergraduate and then did my doctorate in Oxford with a man I was very lucky to work with – Hanz Krebs, notorious for the Krebs Cycle, which has bothered students for decades.

Is that the first company you were involved in founding?

Largely the stuff I wanted to set up were itches I had to scratch.

What were some of your previous ventures?

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They were things that seemed so obviously required. We have to do clinical trials all the time because we need new drugs. And sometimes you have to ask questions which can only be answered in a clinical trial.

My first company was established to train and employ nurses to be sent to rural areas of Cork for a clinical trial I was conducting on the effects of statins in the elderly. That was in 1997.

The ICON headquarters in South County Business

So the companies arise out of medicinal, rather than business, needs.

I think in general patient autonomy is going to increase through the use of mobile devices. For example, I can do my cardiograph on my cell phone case now, diabetics can measure their blood glucose, and blood pressure is easily measurable. Why do you need to be seen in the clinic if you’re doing fine? The ability to hand over some degree of autonomy and self-management to patients will change the way patients are seen by doctors. And that will change how we can access whether and how drugs are working.

And where do you see the future of clinical trials going?

How do you think that will impact the way that clinical trials are conducted?

Well, let’s take diabetes for example. There are more diabetics than doctors can look after at the moment. The reality is that with present models your doctor will ask to see you twice a year or whatever is deemed necessary whether you are in trouble or doing fantastically well. Yet, the patient has infinite access to information on the internet, so in the near future, most diabetics are going to manage themselves at home and their cell phones are going to transmit their clinical measurements into a central server in the clinic. That means the ones who do actually need to be seen frequently will be and those who don’t can continue to manage themselves.

That also means that if you want to trial a drug in diabetes, most of the participants won’t be coming in to see their doctor, and you get to hitchhike onto the informatics platform for that. So instead of the couple of measurements that are taken twice a year at clinic visits, you’re receiving four or five measurements per day direct from the patient.

That’s imminent. Those are things that are capable of being done soon. If you look out through social media, there is such a

How many years away from that do you think we are?

What is your greatest challenge as a medical professional?

Well, the kind of fun thing that provides the challenge, and the opportunity, is the conservative nature of the industry. Pharma companies are operating on relatively low probabilities of a drug getting to the market, so they are risk averse. Change and innovation inevitably carry an element of the unknown and is therefore perceived as being somewhat risky, even though it is recognized that the present way of doing things is probably less successful than it could be.

This can make it quite difficult for innovation to get a grip. A drug starting out in clinical development has about the same chance of success as picking a number at roulette.

Park, Leopardstown, which also houses a number of other innovative Irish tech companies.

Every day, every practitioner, every good practitioner, should be asking themselves questions. And sometimes you can go to the literature to get the answer, and sometimes the answer ain’t in the literature. And when the answer is not in the literature, it is to a degree incumbent then to ask, “Is that a question that I have any possibility of answering myself?” Mostly the answer is no, for many reasons. But sometimes the answer is yes, and if the window opens you have to go look through it.

drive now to autonomy and choice. And the challenge we have is to make that choice as informed as possible, and to help people find useful information in the morass of noise that is out there on the internet. One of the greatest challenges for patients is actually finding information that is useful as opposed to misleading.

Would you say trying to beat that wheel is the most exciting part of your job at ICON?

The best part is the varied nature of what I do. Any single week is very different from any other week. For example, to take the next ten days: in two days I go to Basel in Switzerland with an Irish trade mission with the aim of demonstrating the attractiveness of Ireland as a place for investment. I’ll spend the next day meeting various pharmacology people in town and maintaining the relationship. Two days after that I’m off to San Diego for the Drug Information Association annual meeting to speak about Big Data and give a seminar. Part of it is business development, and part of it is company networking. In between times, I will work on strategy and on ensuring ICON’s focus on patient safety and benefit.

In addition to our headquarters being in Dublin, there are qualities of Irishness that I think are helpful to the business. We are naturally very competitive as a nation. The reason that Ireland is so visible internationally in spite of being very small is because we shout very loudly and we’re intensely competitive, particularly when we go into any kind of international arena. That competitiveness is based on a strong sense that we succeed based on excellence. There is nothing in the Irish character that allows for complacency when it comes to a competitive arena; there’s no sense of entitlement.

In ICON, we translate traditional Irish esteem for education by bringing everybody who is at the level of manager or above to UCD to do an executive management course at the Smurfit Business School. We centralize this here in Dublin rather than devolve it because it’s part of our team process. Every business has to have a soul that resides in a place, and Ireland is the place where our IA soul resides.

Tell me more about the Irish ethos of the company.

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Turning Grief into Action

By Kelly Fincham

he Staunton family suffered unbe- stages. There has to be better identification lievable loss when their 12-year-old of sepsis, better diagnoses and better treatson was mis-diagnosed and died ment. Sepsis needs to be caught early and from sepsis, an infection that could easily caught aggressively.” have been treated with antibiotics, but they The conference will focus on new ideas have turned that loss into a medical and pub- for a fresh approach in the diagnosis and lic awareness in a campaign that has already treatment of sepsis. Orlaith describes the saved countless lives and achieved many current system as “failing.” “The current milestones. system is broken and the conference will exDr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Cen- plore new and better options for the care and ters for Disease Control, and New York Senator Charles E. Schumer (D) will both address the inaugural National Sepsis Forum in Washington, D.C., on September 17.

The forum, entitled “Defeating the Killer,” is jointly organized by the Rory Staunton Foundation and Long Island’s North ShoreLIJ Health System.

Orlaith and Ciaran Rory Staunton Staunton established the Rory Staunton Foundation to increase treatment of sepsis,” she says. “We have to awareness and detection of sepsis after the change the dynamic so that medical profesdeath of their 12-year-old son Rory who sionals rule out sepsis first. ‘Think sepsis died from undiagnosed and untreated sepsis first, not last.’” on April 1, 2012.

Kevin J. Tracey, M.D., President & Chief “Our son Rory should not have died and Executive Officer at The Feinstein Institute no other parent should suffer like we do,” for Medical Research, who will speak at the says Rory’s mother Orlaith. forum, told The New York Times, “We are The announcement of the conference co- with sepsis where we were with heart attack incides with new research published in the in the early 1980s.

Journal of the American Medical Associa“If you don’t think of it as a possibility, tion which suggests that sepsis is responsi- this story can happen again and again. This ble for more deaths than previously case could change the world,” Dr. Tracey, suspected. one of our honorees in this issue, continued.

The article, “Hospital Deaths in Patients The Washington program will also inWith Sepsis From 2 Independent Cohorts,” clude a dedication to children who have died reports that “sepsis contributed to 1 in from sepsis. “We couldn’t host this forum every 2 to 3 deaths, and most of these pa- without paying tribute to our son Rory and tients had sepsis at admission.” The re- all the other children who have died from search authors also say that “patients with this devastating infection,” says Orlaith. initially less severe sepsis made up the maThe Foundation has made significant jority of sepsis deaths.” progress in its efforts to create greater Ciaran and Orlaith say the article bolsters awareness about sepsis since it was estabthe Foundation’s argument that sepsis lished in the wake of Rory’s death. deaths can be prevented if recognized earlier. They say the JAMA article reinforces their campaign for more urgent and more The Foundation set up a meeting with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in 2014 aggressive detection of sepsis.

“Sepsis kills because we don’t administer to request the CDC to set the standard on sepIV fluids and antibiotics when people show sis awareness. CDC director Dr. Thomas up in the emergency room,” says Orlaith. Frieden promised change after the meeting “We need to identify sepsis in its early and first steps included the creation of a CDC-

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sponsored website on sepsis. The CDC website had not previously listed sepsis.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed “Rory’s Regulations” in New York State in 2013 for new protocols at medical institutions concerning the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis. The regulations are expected to save an estimated 8,000 lives in the state. The regulations include a Parents Bill of Rights which calls for improved communication between staff, parents and patients in pediatric emergency rooms.

The Foundation organized and testified before the first ever U.S. Senate Hearing on Sepsis, held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on September 24, 2013, in which Chairman Tom Harkin was moved to note that Rory’s Regulations were needed in every state.

Johns Hopkins University Medical Errors in Diagnostics Conference featured an abstract of the events leading to the unnecessary death of Rory Staunton, putting sepsis diagnosis and treatment in the spotlight.

Ciaran Staunton spoke before the conference of physicians, bringing the causes of Rory’s death to a new audience and urged them to “Think Sepsis.”

Ciaran was invited to give the keynote address at the Symposium on Sepsis held in Berlin, Germany after the Foundation joined forces with the World Sepsis Alliance to collaborate on greater global awareness.

Rory’s story has been featured in more than 500 media outlets internationally and Orlaith and Ciaran Staunton have appeared on the “Today Show,” “Dr. Oz,” and many other local and international TV and radio shows to publicly call on people to “think sepsis.” The family also provided Rory’s personal medical records to The New York Times to help highlight the issue.

Rory’s personal hero Captain Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, has also lent his voice to IA the Foundation.

Kelly Fincham, an assistant professor of journalism at Hofstra University, volunteers with the Rory Staunton Foundation.

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JFK Summer School

he 2014 Kennedy Summer School is set to kick off this September 1114th in New Ross, Co. Wexford and includes a venerable list of Irish and American participants covering the history, culture, and politics between the two countries. This year’s theme is “History Repeats Itself” and the list of speakers include: Dr. Christine Kinealy, professor of history and director of the Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University; Nicole Mary Kelby, the award-winning author of The Pink Suit; space commentator Leo Enright; and professor Nina L. Khrushcheva, granddaughter of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Summer School Director Noel Whelan said, “the task we have embarked on for the New Ross JFK Trust is to leverage the extraordinary success of last year’s 50th anniversary celebrations of President Kennedy’s visit to Ireland and to

build the Kennedy Summer School into a sustainable high profile annual event which brings hundreds of visitors to New Ross every September.”

The Kennedy Summer School builds on the links between New Ross and John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy family hails from Dunganstown, which President Kennedy visited in 1963, later stopping at the New Ross quayside where he made a historic and memorable speech attended by throngs of Irish.

Guests will flock again from all over Ireland and America and converge on New Ross for the three day event. Impressive talks include “A Cold War Then and Now Again,” “The Edward M. Kennedy Lecture,” which features a special address by Baroness Nuala O’Loan, and a special screening of Letters to Jackie: Remembering President Kennedy, a film based on the book of the same name which collected

Nicole Mary Kelby

250 of the roughly 1.5 million condolence letters sent to Jackie Kennedy after President Kennedy’s assassination.

The events are supported by Fáilte Ireland, Brandon House Hotel, Edward M Kennedy Institute for Conflict Intervention at NUI Maynooth; and Wexford County Council. – M.S.

White House Celebrates 45th Anniversary of Moon Landing Neil Armstrong (1930–2012), commander of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, descends the ladder of the Apollo Lunar Module (or Lunar Excursion Module, LEM) to become the first human to step foot on the surface of the Moon.

Apollo 11 astronauts Michael Collins (left) and Buzz Aldrin (right) at the White House on the 45th anniversary of the first lunar landing.

“Forty-five years ago, while the world watched as one, the United States of America set foot on the moon. It was a seminal moment not just in our country’s history, but the history of all humankind,” President Obama said on July 23, as he welcomed the astronauts of Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and the late Neil Armstrong ’s wife, Carol, to the White House to mark the historic anniversary of the moon landing.

President Obama thanked Aldrin and Collins “as advo-

cates, role models, and educators who’ve inspired generations of Americans – myself included – to dream bigger and reach higher.” And he said, “the United States of America is stronger today thanks to the vision of President Kennedy, who set us on a course for the moon, the courage of Neil, Buzz, and Michael, who made the journey, and the spirit of service of all who’ve worked not only on the Apollo program, but who’ve dared to push the very boundaries of space and scientific discovery for all humankind.” – P.H. AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 19

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Getting Serious About Climate Change o topic is more controversial right now in American politics than global warming, and California is one of the leading states calling for green initiatives to combat climate change.

California governor and Irish American Jerry Brown recently attended a conference in Sacramento, organized by the Foundation of Agricultural Economics, to draw attention to the devastating impact of global warming on the world. This comes days after a study in the Geophysical Research Letters journal found that Antarctica is losing about 160 billion tons of ice each year,

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By Matthew Skwiat

emissions and this summer will travel to Mexico as part of a trade commission to press leaders to reduce emissions. Following California’s lead, eight states have passed legislation calling for the reduction of carbon emissions, with nine Northeastern states adopting cap-and-trade policies.

Brown has doggedly campaigned for further recognition of the consequences of global warming as his state continues to fall victim to a record drought and wildfire season. As the summer stretches onwards, the California droughts continue to plague the state. Brown linked the growing threat

California Governor Jerry Brown

adding fears of global sea level risings.

Brown said at his conference speech, “We have to adapt because the climate is changing. We must find a way to live with nature, not collide with it.” One of the ways Brown is adapting is by cutting greenhouse emissions, enforcing California’s cap-and-trade program, which places limits on emissions, and by investing in electric cars, public transportation, and infrastructure. Brown’s feisty passion owes a great deal to his Irish heritage. His greatgrandfather had emigrated from Ireland, and Brown journeyed last year to Tipperary to reconnect with his Irish roots.

Governor Brown is also calling for change across the country and around the world. He has traveled to China to garner support for the reduction of greenhouse gas

20 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Dannel Malloy, Governor of Connecticut

of climate change with the droughts and wildfires in California. He was recently featured on ABC’s “The Week” where he said, “we’ve got to gear up. We’re going to deal with nature as best we can, but humanity is on a collision course with nature and we’re just going to have to adapt to it.”

Brown remains optimistic that his state will lead the way, saying “in California, we’re not only adapting, but we’re taking steps to reduce our greenhouse gases in a way that exceeds any other state in the country, and we’ll do more.”

Connecticut is also making significant strides against global warming, efforts that were spearheaded by Gina McCarthy (now the head of the EPA) who as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection from 2004-2009 helped

push through the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2008 to reduce 10% of greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by 2020.

According to a report released by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Connecticut has already achieved more than half the reductions required by the 2020 act.

Governor Dannel Malloy said, “Connecticut is doing its part to slow global warming. In fact, we are a national leader in efforts to reduce the amount of carbon emissions being put into the atmosphere.”

And then this past June, Malloy signed into law Public Act 14-200 that enacts a threeyear moratorium on toxic fracking waste in Connecticut. Activists in favor of the bill had garnered over 7,800 signatures and over 3,000 handwritten letters.

Fracking has been highly controversial across the country, with many congressmen and activists noting its harmful side effects to the water supply and environment. Fracking was thought to be a cheap way to release gas and oil from the earth, but it creates millions of gallons of toxic, potentially radioactive wastewater at every well and is largely unregulated by the federal government. Over the years, films such as Gasland and numerous books and articles have been written condemning the potentially harmful practice. The Connecticut bill will hopefully be one amongst many in the upcoming months. Representative Jonathan Steinberg of Westport congratulated Malloy on the passing of the bill and concluded, “This law will help protect the health and safety of residents across the state, while sending the message that our water resources are of paramount importance. I am proud to know that Connecticut is now at the forefront of states taking action on this critical issue.”

Connecticut, like California, remains committed to environmental change and will hopefully be leading the way for other IA states to follow suit.

Malloy and Brown are just two of many Irish-American public servants who are committed to lessening the impact of global warming on the world.

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Siobhan Walsh and Toni Collette

he Irish-founded humanitarian organization Concern World- ganizations have to keep changing if they want to remain vibrant wide U.S. celebrated its annual Women of Concern Awards and they have to bring in new talent.”

June 24th in Manhattan. Actress Toni Collette, who recently Chairman of Concern’s board Tom Moran praised Walsh’s everbecame Concern’s first formal Global Ambassador, received the deepening dedication to the organization. “Siobhan, along with Fr. Women of Concern Humanitarian Award, and co-founder and for- Aengus, built the Concern that can now fill this room today,” he mer Executive Director of Concern Siobhan Walsh was recognized said. “She knew how to identify help that was needed in order to for her pioneering 18-year direction with the Leadership Award. progress Concern further. But more importantly, she had this inThe event, this year hosted by New York’s Channel One news credible contact list – that I think she only made up in her own head anchor Shelby Holliday, aims to celebrate the lives of women around the world, both those in need and those who provide much-needed humanitarian aid. In the last year, Concern reached more than 14.3 million vulnerable women and girls throughout the world. Disproportionately affected by disaster, access to education, and malnutrition, women are a key focus of Concern’s efforts in 21 of the world’s most impoverished countries.

In her acceptance speech, Collette said, “I am especially honored to be here today as a woman and as a mother and as part of the global community of women.

And as we’ve seen here today women are the drivers of lasting change.

“As a mother of two children, I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have to listen to your children cry for something to eat and just have nothing to give them.

And yet this happens all around the world millions of families over,” she continued. “So I very much look forward to getting out there this year and seeing the good work that Concern does first hand and meeting the people they work with so I can help shine whatever spotlight I can on their needs.”

Collette, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in The Sixth Sense and won both an Emmy LEFT: Siobhan Walsh. TOP RIGHT: Concern CEO Dr. Joseph Cahalan, and a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series TOP Toni Collette and Chairman Thomas J. Moran. ABOVE: Honorees Siobhan for her performance in Showtime’s “The United States Walsh and Toni Collette with Keynote Speaker Amina Abdulla and former of Tara,” first united with Concern in 2012. She was rec- Women of Concern Award winner Ann Curry. ognized for her continued commitment to Concern’s global cam- somehow – and whether it be an individual or a corporation, a friend paign to fight malnutrition and hunger and later to a holiday appeal or family member, she was never afraid to ask for the help.” to make a difference to families across the world through gifts such Though more than a year after her departure, the impact of Walsh’s as livestock, clean water, and health care. ability to diversify Concern’s reach was readily on display at the Walsh, a native of Limerick whom co-founder Father Aengus luncheon. In addition to attendees from nearly a dozen U.S. states, Finucane jokingly referred to as “She who must be obeyed,” mar- the event drew people from Ireland and Mexico, raising over veled at how far the organization had come since 1996 when she $400,000, more than 40 percent more than any previous Women of and Father Finucane “got a work permit and went into Grand Cen- Concern event. tral Terminal with buckets and collected money from total Fitting that Walsh herself began Concern’s growth process when strangers.” she sought out Joe Cahalan to become the non-profit’s first full-time As Executive Director, Walsh established and expanded Con- CEO in 2012. That same year she also successfully petitioned the cern’s community and funding base in the United States, helping to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for investment in Concern’s make it a $29 million a year organization that, in partnership with newly established research and development project, Innovations the wider Concern Worldwide network, touched the lives of 6.5 mil- for Maternal Newborn and Child Health. lion people in 2013.

“Concern has to continue to put a spotlight on the issues,” Walsh Touching on her departure from the company that year, Walsh concluded, calling the crowd to action. “Concern has to continue acknowledged that non-profits like Concern must continue to adapt. pushing the message. And Concern must never ever give up hope, “I never wanted to feel like I was holding Concern back, because I because it’s hope that keeps these mothers and children going.” want Concern to grow and I want Concern to change. Healthy or– Adam Farley PHOTO BY: DAVE ALLOCCA/STARPIX

PHOTO BY: KIERAN MCCONVILLE/CONCERN

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Irish American of the Year Marty Walsh, son of immigrants and champion of the working class. We are thrilled to honor him as our Irish ayor Marty American of the Year.”

Walsh was preMayor Walsh, who was prosented with the filed in our February/March Irish American of 2014 issue, is the son of Irish the Year award by Irish America parents who emigrated from magazine at a luncheon on Connemara in County Galway Thursday, June 26th at the Seato Boston in the 1950s and setport Hotel in South Boston. With tled in the city’s Dorchester his extraordinary success and neighborhood. achievement in becoming the Upon accepting the award, Mayor of Boston, Mayor Walsh Mayor Walsh said, “I find it Irish American Partnership president and CEO Joe Leary (left) and exemplifies the spirit and deter- Irish America magazine co-founder Patricia Harty (right) with important as an Irish Amerimination of the Irish in so many Boston Mayor Marty Walsh holding the Waterford House of Cryscan, and not just for Irish tal 2014 Irish American of the Year award. profound ways.

Americans but for people of The event was hosted by the Irish American Partnership. Speak- any heritage, that it’s important to keep your heritage alive. It’s ing on behalf of the Partnership was Mary Sugrue McAleer, who important to learn the traditions – it certainly was in my house. highlighted the organization’s support of Irish schools and com“I’ve got a lot of awards and a lot of plaques, but this award munities, as well as expanding job-creating opportunities through- means a lot to me because of where I grew up and how I grew up,” out Ireland, north and south. the mayor continued. “I’m honored to receive this award.”

Patricia Harty, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Irish America Walsh is the thirteenth Boston mayor of Irish descent, which magazine, praised Walsh for his empathy and for overcoming began with the election of Hugh O’Brien, an immigrant from challenges early in his life, saying, “Who better to embody the County Cork, who served from 1885-88. In accepting this honor, tough, tireless, tender trajectory of our Irish story than Mayor Mayor Walsh joins a stellar list of honorees including President Bill Clinton, Senator Edward Kennedy and silver screen legend Maureen O’Hara.

Mayor Walsh also noted that his first official international trip as Boston’s mayor will be to Ireland, both the South and the North. “There are companies in this room that have ties to Ireland and I’m excited to strengthen those ties,” he said.

Those in attendance included James Brett, the former politician who is president and CEO of The New England Council; Dave Greaney, President of Synergy Investments; Paul Jennings, managing director at Silicon Valley Bank; Jim O’Brien, who brought American college football to Ireland; Father Jack Ahern of Blessed Mother Teresa Parish in Dorchester, and Michael Quinlin (who wrote the cover Attendees at the event included (from left): Mary Sugrue McAleer, Executive Director, story on Mayor Walsh) and his wife CoIrish American Partnership; Breandán Ó Caollaí, Consul General of Ireland in Boston; lette. The lunch was sponsored by VPNE Patricia Harty, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Irish America magazine; Massachusetts IA Parking Solutions.

State Senator Linda Dorcena Forry; and Joe Leary, President and CEO of the Irish

PHOTO: HARRY BRETT

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American Partnership.

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Seattle Gets its Green On

Front row, left to right: Aoife Blake, Irish Network Seattle Communications Officer; Kathleen O’Toole, Seattle’s new Chief of Police; Mayor Ed Murray; Anne Anderson, Ireland’s Ambassador to the U.S.; and Noreen McCormack, President of Irish Network Seattle.

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014 is proving to be an eventful year for Seattle Irish. Mayor Ed Murray, who lived in Ireland for a time, and whose four grandparents are from the old sod, was sworn into office in January. The Seattle Seahawks, led

by Irish American coach Pete Carroll, won the Super Bowl. Seattle musicians Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, both proud Irish Americans, won several Grammys, including Best New Artist. And last month, our first female Chief of Police, Kathleen (Horton) O’Toole was sworn into office.

Chief O’Toole, who was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, became the first female police commissioner of Boston when she was appointed in 2004.

In May 2006, O’Toole moved to Ireland to assume the role of Chief Inspector of

the Garda (Irish National Police). She had previously served on the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland under Chris Patten. The commission developed strategies that helped to shape the new police department of Northern Ireland. On May 19, 2014, she was nominated to serve as Chief of the Seattle Police Department.

O’Toole, who was honored as one of Irish America’s Top 100 in 2006, has roots in Co. Galway – her grandmother was from Athlone. Her husband has family in Roscommon and Mayo, and her daughter Meghan did her Master’s in screenwriting at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

When Mayor Murray addressed the attendees at the swearing-in ceremony, he

quipped, “I didn’t select Chief O’Toole because she is a woman. I picked her because she is Irish.”

Ireland’s Ambassador to the U.S. Anne Anderson was in Seattle for the occasion.

Seattle has a significant Irish-born population, as well as Irish American. and there are over 800,000 citizens in Washington state who claim Irish ancestry. Recently, the Irish government has demonstrated a keen interest in Seattle, not just due to Microsoft, but Amazon, Boeing and Expedia, to name a few Seattle companies operating in Ireland. Taoiseach Enda Kenny visited Seattle in March 2013.

– Noreen McCormack, President of Irish Network Seattle Irishnetworkseattle.org

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 23

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{ irish eye on hollywood}

By Tom Deigan

From left: John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, and Colin Farrell, in a promotional still from The Lobster.

drama “Scorpion,” which also stars “American Idol” runnerup Katherine McPhee and Robert Patrick. The dramatic series is about a band of troubleshooting geniuses who travel the globe solving problems for the government.

Meanwhile, Jason O’Mara and Gabriel Byrne will be using the small screen to go back in time in two separate historical TV projects.

O’Mara – a Dublin-born veteran of TV shows including “Life on Mars,” “Vegas” and “The Good Wife” – will take on possibly the most iconic American role ever created.

O’Mara is slated to play general and president George Washington in a new History Channel special entitled “Sons of Liberty.” The mini-series will take a close look at the American Revolution, and the characters who played major roles in the movement for freedom from Britain.

Also starring in “Sons of Liberty” are “Breaking Bad” and “Under the Dome” actor Dean Norris (Benjamin Franklin), as well as E.T. and Gangs of New York actor Henry Thomas (John Adams).

TV is the place to be for Irish acting talent these days.

This should not be surprising since high-quality smallscreen shows tend to get as much respect and buzz from critics and audiences as Hollywood films.

First up, rumors are swirling that Colin Farrell will star in season two of the HBO drama “True Detective.” The highly acclaimed HBO series featured Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in its first season, though producers all along planned to feature a different cast of talent Gabriel Byrne and John Kavanagh are each season - so long as HBO picked up the show for a new among the Irish actors who’ve appeared in season. Ratings and critical attention were strong, with the first two seasons of the History “True Detective” earning 12 Emmy nominations. No deals Channel series “The Vikings.” Recently, a were finalized concerning Farrell at press time, but neither third 10-episode season was ordered and creators nor Farrell himself have denied that he was a began shooting this summer. The third strong contender to lead the cast (unlike Jessica Chastain, season of “Vikings” is expected to air who shot down similar rumors about her participation in the Top: Jason O’Mara. sometime next year. show in the spring). The second season of “True Detective” Above: Gabriel Since “The Vikings” shoots mainly in is expected to feature a trio of lead characters, and be set in Byrne in Vikings.

Wicklow, the cast is loaded with Irish talent, including Tadhg California. (Meanwhile, though his box office track record Murphy and David Pearse, along with Irish American Donal has been less-than-impressive in recent years, Farrell is not Logue. (Logue, incidentally, was also seen as giving up on feature films. He is currently in Liev Lt. Declan Murphy last season in NBC’s Ireland shooting the sci-fi flick The Lobster, Schreiber “Law and Order: SVU,” and is expected to along with Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw, and Irish American John C. Reilly.) return when the show starts airing new episodes in September.)

Another much-buzzed-about cable drama is Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” featuring Liev All this, plus Denis Leary is still on track Schreiber as a tough Irish American from to star next year as an aging rock star in the South Boston who has relocated to Los FX series “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.” The cast Angeles where he, uh, solves problems for a has been rounded out by Irish American law firm - by any means necessary. comic Bobby Kelly, John Corbett, Elizabeth Blackrock-born actor Glenn Keogh will Gillies, and Elaine Hendrix. appear in episodes of “Ray Donovan” this Denis Leary (left) and the rest of the year, the second season of which kicked off Keogh “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll” cast. in July. It’s turning into a big 2014 for Keogh, who also regularly appears in the NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” He also starred along fellow Irish actor Jack Reynor and Mark Wahlberg in the blockbuster Transformers: Age of Extinction and in the fall will be one of the stars of the CBS 24 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

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{hibernia} Deirdre O’Kane and husband Stephen Bradley.

Finally, onto movies!

A film about “Ireland’s smoking, swearing and singing answer to Mother Teresa” has nabbed a big award and is building buzz for its fall release in theaters. Starring Drogheda native Deirdre O’Kane, the film is entitled Noble, and looks at the trials, tribulations and charitable work of Christina Noble. She created a foundation in her name that has gone on to help thousands of children, mainly in impoverished areas of Asia – this after facing a hard life of abuse herself.

“Playing her is the biggest thing I’ve done in my career - by a mile,” O’Kane was quoted as saying recently, after dubbing Noble a Mother Teresa with, uh, colorful habits.

Directed by Irishman Stephen Bradley (who happens to be O’Kane’s husband) Noble also stars Ethiopian-born / Irishraised Ruth Negga, Pauline McGlynn and Liam Cunningham.

Noble recently won the top jury prize at the 29th Annual Santa Barbara Film Festival, which was attended by such Hollywood royalty as Martin Scorsese, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio. “I’m absolutely thrilled,” O’Kane said of the victory. “What a great start to our Noble movie journey. I’m particularly happy for Christina as she deserves every accolade she gets.”

When the summer draws to a close in September, filmgoers will be treated to two action flicks with strong Irish ties.

First, Liam Neeson continues to kick butt and take names in the crime thriller A Walk Among the Tombstones.

Based on Lawrence Block’s best-selling book, part of Block’s Detective Matthew Scudder books, Neeson plays a heroic New York City detective who makes a Liam Neeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones.

fatal mistake. Now relegated to private investigations, Scudder is drawn into a bloody battle between a ruthless gang of drug dealers and law enforcement.

On the casting of Neeson in the role of one of his most popular characters, novelist Lawrence Block said, “Readers often ask who’d be my ideal Matt Scudder, and I usually change the subject. But now it’s safe to tell you that, ever since I saw him in Michael Collins, Neeson has been up at the top of

my personal Scudder wish list…. My book’s in good hands.”

A Walk Among the Tombstones is slated for release September 19, and will also star Dan Stevens, Whitney Able, and Ruth Wilson.

James Gandolfini (left) and Tom Hardy (right) in The Drop.

Also slated to open on September 19 is The Drop, written by Irish American novelist Dennis Lehane, the powerhouse writer behind cinematic hits like Gone, Baby Gone and Mystic River.

The Drop (which had previously been titled “Animal Rescue”) stars Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace as well as the late James Gandolfini, in a role completed before he passed away last year. Also set among New York’s underworld, The Drop explores the lower-level players in the drug world, focusing on run-down bars where illicit cash is stored. Things get complicated when a bartender takes in a battered pit bull puppy and falls under the spell of a mysterious woman.

Irish-born novelist Emma Donoghue will team up with Irish director Lenny Abrahamson Top: Emma to bring Donoghue’s best-selling psychological Donoghue. thriller Room to the big screen. The film will star Above: Brie up-and-coming actress Brie Larson. The chillLarson. ing novel is about a mother and child held hostage by a mysterious man. The novel is told from the five year-old child’s point of view, which will present a particular challenge for Donoghue, who is writing the screenplay.

Finally, Northern Irish screen veteran Ciaran Hinds will be featured in the ambitious film The

Hinds

Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, slated for release this fall. The project - written and directed by Ned Benson - is actually three separate films entitled Him, Her, and Them, and looks closely at a crumbling marriage from a number of different perspectives. Currently, the film Them – starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy – is slated to be released in the U.S. in September, with the two subsequent films to be released shortly afterwards. IA

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White House Names Ambassador to Ireland

he White House announced in June that the long-vacant post of ambassador to Ireland has been filled by Kevin O’Malley, a St. Louis Lawyer and political supporter of President Obama. This comes after the administration was scrutinized for leaving the position vacant for 18 months following the resignation of Dan Rooney in December 2012.

O’Malley is a respected trial lawyer and, according to the White House, a second-generation Irish American who is highly regarded in the St. Louis Irish community. The nomination does come as a shock to many in the Irish community given O’Malley’s low profile. Niall O’Dowd, founder of IrishCentral and co-founder of this publication, said of the nomination that “it was a complete surprise in the Irish-American community as he has not featured in any major Irish-American organizations.” But, O’Dowd acknowledged, “he is clearly well connected in the Democratic party locally and well respected in the legal profession.”

Commenting on the position Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former envoy for Northern Ireland said “The biggest issue for the ambassador to Ireland is going to be the economy and helping the country dig out of a fiscal mess.” – M.S.

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Ireland Is the World’s “Goodest” Country

recent survey conducted by policy advisor Simon Anholt found Ireland to be the “goodest” country in the word. It was part of the first ever Good Country Index which measured 35 separate indicators including the country’s economy, global contributions, science and technology, culture, climate, and health. In a Ted Talk on the index, Anholt said he designed the survey hoping it would change the way countries have been operating by placing more importance on their global impact rather than self interest. “It’s time countries started thinking much harder about the international consequences of their actions,” he said. “If they don’t, the global challenges like climate change, poverty, economic crises, terrorism, drugs, and pandemics will only get worse.”

While Ireland ranked first, the Nordic countries – Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands – all placed at the top, with New Zealand rounding out the top 5. The UK ranked 7th and the United States came in at 21 due to poor international peace and security. War torn Iraq, Libya, and Vietnam were at the bottom of the survey.

The findings have perplexed many throughout Ireland given the country’s recent economic downturn and high unemployment. The data used dated back to 2010 and curiously found Egypt placed first in helping to maintain world order.

Anholt countered that Ireland was suffering from “a severe case of Groucho Marx syndrome,” and insisted, “the message to the Irish people is that they can hold their heads up high. No matter how much they are suffering in the last number of years, they haven’t forgotten their international obligations and neither has the government. They still can feel proud of where they come from.” – M.S. 26 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Quinnipiac Famine Conference

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he 20th Ulster-American Symposium hosted at Quinnipiac University was held this past June in conjunction with Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute. Since 1976, the Ulster-American Heritage Symposium has met every two years at co-sponsoring universities in North America and Northern Ireland in an effort to shed light on the historical connections between the two places. This year’s theme, ‘Hunger, Poverty, and Migration: a Transatlantic Perspective,’ included presentations on everything from literature, history, and film to language, religion, geography, and genealogy. The three keynote speakers, Dr. Piaras Mac Einri, Dr. Christine Kinealy, and Dr. Maureen Murphy, spoke on themes of memorialization, forgotten famines, and the creation of memorials respectively, weaving together the many threads of the conference.

The conference also included excursions to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, the Yale Centre for British Art (co-sponsored by the Northern Ireland Bureau), the exhibit of the Lady Sligo Letters at the Arnold Bernhard Library, and a final day in NYC with a special viewing of the Bishop Hughes exhibit at the Irish Consulate followed by lunch hosted by Irish Consul General Noel Kilkenny and his wife Hanorah.

Special recognition is given to Quinnipiac president Dr. John Lahey, Dr. Warren Hofstra, Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald, Dr. Brian Lambkin, and Turlough McConnell, whose efforts brought the symposium to Quinnipiac and secured its success. The symposium itself would have been nothing, however, if it wasn’t for the hard work and devotion that Dr. Gerard Moran, Dr. Christine Kinealy, and the incredible Charity Stout of Public Affairs at Quinnipiac University put into the creation of such a successful event. – M.S. Kinealy

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iFest Comes to Boston Boston is set to welcome a new Irish festival this fall, as iFest makes its North American debut at the Seaport World Trade Center September 26-28.

escribed as a premium showcase of contemporary Irish culture, entertainment and innovation, iFest features an all-star cast of culinary masters, musicians, fashion designers and athletes to present a taste of modern Ireland. iFest Founder and CEO Rachel Kelly says, “iFest is about reframing Ireland, through the extraordinary talent of its people, and celebrating our unique culture; from music and the arts, to our renowned gastro culture.

Ultimately this event is an engaging and entertaining experience of Ireland, which will travel the world, and which, hopefully, will encourage iFest visitors to see first hand all that Ireland has to offer.” iFest supporters include Tourism Ireland, Aer Lingus, Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, Seaport

D

ABOVE: Irish traditional musicians at a pub session. FAR LEFT: Paddy Moloney and Sean Keane of The Chieftains.

LEFT: The Irish band Riptide Movement.

Boston Hotel & World Trade Center, Irish Food Board, Bewley’s, Guinness and Jameson Irish Whiskey.

On the culinary front, top Irish chefs Darina Allen, Kevin Dundon and Catherine Fulvio are showcasing their respective culinary work, alongside Boston’s grand chef Barbara Lynch. Maura Kilpatrick, named Boston’s “Best Pastry Chef,” is hosting afternoon teas with Bewley’s of Dublin.

On the cultural front, iFest is offering a literary salon, genealogy master-class and a display of contemporary and classic art and heritage pieces from Ireland’s major museums. And there will be plenty of Irish music.

Uilleann piping master Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains is performing, along with accordion maestro Damien Mullane. Other performers include Ireland’s indie-pop band Heathers, featuring

28 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

twin sisters Louise and Ellie MacNamara, and rock band Riptide Movement, whose single “Getting Through” was number one on the Irish charts this spring.

Irish designer Louise Kennedy presents a top Irish Fashion & Design Catwalk, and a Shop Ireland Mall is selling Ireland’s latest fashions.

Irish sports get a showing at iFest, with a traveling exhibit on the Gaelic Athletic Association and film highlights of some of Ireland’s classic matches over the years.

And finally, you’ll have a chance to see what Irish hospitality is all about, as Tourism Ireland staff showcase holiday and travel opportunities that will inspire you to take a trip to Ireland.

– Michael Quinlin ifestboston.com

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A Proud Day For The McCourts Frank McCourt High School first graduating class head to college.

est known as the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt also worked as a New York City public school educator, including 15 years as a teacher of English and creative writing at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan until his retirement in 1987.

It’s fitting then that soon after Frank’s passing on July 19, 2009, plans were put in place for a new communications arts high school to be named in his honor.

In making the announcement in October, 2009, Joel Klein, then chancellor of education, said, “Frank McCourt was a remarkable writer, but I believe he achieved his greatest impact as a New York City public school teacher for 29 years.

I’m pleased to announce our intention to honor his legacy through cre-

clarity and eloquence.”

It was an ambitious plan for the multicultural high school, but four years later, under the steady guidance of Principal Danielle Salzberg, all of the school’s first graduating class have been accepted to colleges including the University of Pennsylvania, Fordham University and Sarah Lawrence College.

“It’s an astonishing country where they name a high school after a teacher who

ation of a new public school that will nurture the academic and creative talents of New York City students for generations to come.”

The Frank McCourt High School, opened its doors at 145 West 84th Street, New York, in September, 2010, promising to be a diverse institution that would provide its students the skills to become leaders in their communities. The school’s mission statement reads in part: “Every student will graduate from Frank McCourt High School armed with the curiosity and intellect of a true life-long learner. We are committed to helping our students become engaged citizens and thoughtful civic leaders who can communicate their vision with

never went to high school,” said the author’s brother Malachy McCourt. (Despite not have finished high school, Frank graduated in 1957 from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in English and went on to earn a master’s degree at Brooklyn College.)

Ellen Frey McCourt spoke at the graduation, which took place Thursday, June 26th at the New York Academy of Medicine. Ellen and Frank married in 1994 and he credited her with being the motivating force behind his memoir.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who was instrumental in making the high school happen, also spoke.

Among the graduating students was Malachy’s granddaughter, and Frank’s

B

TOP: Adrianna McCourt.

LEFT: Notice board at Frank McCourt High School .

BOTTOM: FMHS Students.

grandniece, Adrianna McCourt.

“You can imagine how emotional it was to have a McCourt in the first four-year graduating class,” Ellen said in an email to Irish America.

“Sixty-seven students of varying backgrounds and races all came together in a bright tapestry. Because they were the first class they helped shape the ethos of Frank McCourt High School and went through the inevitable growing pains of charting the course for a brand new school. I think it made this inaugural class tighter, more connected and very motivated to do well. It was a lovely experience and I have high-hopes for the success of the school and its student body. Principal Danielle Salzberg deserves a lot of credit.”

Irish American Writers and Artists Inc., presented three of the graduating class with scholarships. The gold award of $2500 went to Kate Nelson, the silver, $2000, to Anastasia Warren and the bronze, $1500, to Sebastian Montjuich. “The Teacher Man would be pleased,” said Mary Pat Kelly Irish American Writers and IA Artists vice-president. – P.H.

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 29

Quote Unquote

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Former President Bill Clinton with Governor McAuliffe.

“Virginians deserve better than representatives who put narrow ideology ahead of what is best for our families, economy and budget.”

– Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. The Virginia State Senate, with a Republican majority, passed a budget that does not include the Medicaid expansion the governor had sought and has forbidden him from unilaterally expanding the health care program for the poor. The New York Times, June 16.

“Pope Francis appears guilty of condoning that most base Vatican sport: bullying nuns.

The cool pope suddenly doesn’t seem so cool, allowing Rome’s grand inquisitors to torque up the derogation this mother’s Day of the American sisters who have mothered so many – even as an endless parade of ghoulish priests were shielded as they defiled vulnerable kids in their care.”

– Maureen Dowd on Pope Francis’s decision to let the Vatican’s hardline approach on the largest group of American nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious continue. The New York Times, May 10.

McCarthy and her son Evan

“It’s so wonderful that he’s not aware that kids are making fun of him. But at what point do I need to teach him that? Evan told me, ‘They ask me to put bugs down my pants and I do it and they laugh.’ He thinks it’s funny. Do I just let him be? At what point does it stop? In high school they’ll [start saying], ‘Here drink this?’ “Okay!’”

– In a conversation on The View, July 20, Jenny McCarthy, 41, described her conundrum. Because of his autism, her son Evan, 12, doesn’t pick up on social cues well enough to realize he’s being bullied – has left her wondering what to do.

“I feel just like I have an inner peace on the golf course… It’s just a state of mind where you think clearly, everything seems to be on the right track.

I’ve always said, whenever you play this well, you always wonder how you’ve played so badly before. And whenever you’ve played so badly, you always wonder how you play so well. Golf is a very fickle game.”

– Rory McIlroy, who after a bad start at the British Open on July 18 followed up the next day to become the Round 2 leader. The New York Times, July 19.

“In some ways, as a dear friend once told me, my job my whole life has been to wake the dead and make them come alive again.”

– Filmmaker Ken Burns lost his mother to cancer at age 11, and the loss deeply affected him. His next film, due in 2015, will be a history of cancer titled, The Emperor of all Maladies.

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Wounded Warriors in the Rockaways Now in its tenth year, the Wounded Warrior Project’s Adaptive Watersports Festival invites injured veterans to Rockaway Beach for a weekend of restorative mental and physical activity.

By Adam Farley emoved from the scaffolding of Manhattan in the middle of one of the country’s oldest and most vocally patriotic Irish neighborhoods, the Wounded Warrior Project’s Adaptive Watersports Festival could not be held in a more symbolic location. Here, the shadow of the Twin Towers and the glint of the near-complete One World Trade Center loom large.

The Rockaway and Breezy Point community was devastated by the attacks of September 11th. In Breezy Point alone, 32 of the neighborhood’s roughly 5,000 full-time residents died. That date too, is significant for the Wounded Warrior Project, which was founded in 2004 to aid injured veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the wake of the attacks. It was a clear choice then for retired FDNY firefighter and Rockaway native Flip Mullen when he was approached by Walter Reed Medical Center to start an adaptive water sports weekend in his neighborhood. Mullen, who has been involved in adaptive sporting activities for over 40 years now, calls it “the homecoming these guys never got.”

“We lost someone from about every other block here. When a lot of these young men signed up, they were picking up the flag and running with it. So, to support them in any way we can is just the right thing to do,” he says.

Held the weekend after the Fourth of July each summer, the four-day festival begins with a parade from Rescue 5 Fire Station in Staten Island, across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, down the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, and concludes on streets lined with flag-waving supporters in the Rockaway neighborhood of Belle Harbor. The next days are filled with water activities of all kinds, including cruises around New York Harbor, fishing, water skiing, surfing, kayaking, scuba diving, and paddle boarding. The activities are fully adaptable to veterans with any type of disability, which range from PTSD to amputations.

Bill Hannigan, a native of Queens himself and now the Physical Health and Wellness Coordinator for New York City, attended the

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PHOTO: LEGENDS IN VALOR

32 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

first adaptive aquatics weekend ten years ago as a Wounded Warrior. For the last three years now he has been coordinating the event in partnership with Legends in Valor, the Rockaway community’s own non-profit. Founded by Mullen, Legends in Valor is aimed at honoring fallen NYPD and FDNY service members and works closely with Hannigan.

“The warriors and their families leave with smiling faces, and that’s what it’s about,” says Hannigan. “It’s about empowering the warriors and their families. I always love working with the Rockaway community. It couldn’t get any better than what they do for us.”

Since the 1960s there have been organizations devoted to adaptive sports. For the 50 Wounded Warriors who attend the event, this means there is a strong network of support that goes back often times before their birth to spur them into participation. This network, maybe more so than the activities themselves, is crucial to breaking the cycle of depression and isolation that befalls many veterans after release from active duty.

Gerard Patrick Miserandino, a licensed instructor with New England Disabled Sports, both of whose arms have been ampu-

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LEFT: Miserandino, who has been a long-time advocate for adaptive sports. FAR LEFT: No matter the injury, adaptive sports will accomodate any activity.

Often this means building new aparatuses for amputees like the water skiing chair Ana Manciaz uses. BELOW: As the Wounded Warriors bus made its way from Staten Island to the Rockaways, the streets were checkered with salutes from the FDNY and NYPD. OPPOSITE: Crossing the Marine Parkway Bridge from Brooklyn into the Rockaways.

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tated below the elbow, is a Vietnam veteran for whom such service and patriotism runs in his family. Newfoundland-Irish on his mother’s side, three of his uncles were Fransiscan Brothers, his other uncle was in the Navy, and each St. Patrick’s Day the family would march with “the boys from St. Agnus,” as he called them.

Adaptive sports, he says, are “a small stepping stone.”

“With adaptive sports, any disability, any challenge a person has, if I can get them to do one small thing, whether it be water skiing, snow skiing, or biking, just so they can feel independent…

Because when you see another vet who has a major disability from war who gives you that little push, they can’t say no to me. And when they do it, they say, ‘He’s right. If I can do this I can do anything. There’s more to life than losing an arm or a leg.’”

But the weekend is also about more than building relationships with other veterans and Wounded Warriors; it is about reincorporation into a community that shows its support, as the Irish Americans in the Rockaways do. It’s as much about restoring faith in physical independence as it is about restoring mental security in public acceptance.

“A lot of times what we’re just trying to do is get them out of the house, getting them to understand that the community is welcoming,” says Lane Wiseman, the East Regional Manager for the Wounded Warrior Project’s Physical Health and Wellness team. In

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 33

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ABOVE: Lyndon Villone.

RIGHT: Ana Manciaz, a Wounded Warrior alumna, shows other Warriors how to surf. BELOW: The standard bearers of the Rockaway and Breezy Point communities wave the Warriors in at the start of the weekend.

PHOTOS: LEGENDS IN VALOR

the Rockaways, that sense of gratitude and non-judgmental welcome is far from scarce.

“It’s unbelievable,” says Michael McCoombs, who grew up on Carraig Bearn Croft farm in Massachusetts and was medevac’d out of Fallujah in 2003 while serving with the Rhode Island National Guard.

“The people who are putting it on, the fire and police departments, the whole neighborhood, have very big hearts. It’s hard for me to fathom that there are people like that out there,” he says. “They’re so appreciative and we don’t ask for that, we don’t expect that, so it’s overwhelming for us that such kindness is out there because it’s so different from when you’re abroad fighting. It’s amazing. That’s the single word you can say.”

Not all the warriors have had as much time as McCoombs to recover from their injuries. In fact, two-thirds of the Wounded PHOTO: KIT DEFEVER Warrior participants present at the event were active duty service members who came straight from both Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and Brook Army Medical Center in San

34 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

ABOVE: Rita and Flip Mullen (left) with the parents of Captain John J. McKenna IV, USMC, who was honored by Legends in Valor at a reception on Thursday, July 10.

McKenna, also a former NY State Police officer, was killed in action in 2006 attempting to rescue a member of his platoon.

Antonio, TX. Some of them had been injured less than three months. For them, the community and veteran networks become ever more important. For someone like McCoombs, seeing them come out gives him strength.

“To see the kids who are in the hospital right now, to see the smile on their faces, I don’t have to do anything but watch that. It makes me proud.”

“It’s like hitting the reset button,” says Iraq veteran and Rochester native Lyndon Villone, who is Irish on his mother’s side and has the shamrock tattoo to prove it. And what is his advice for other wounded veterMcCoomb ans? “Don’t let your disability define you, because anything can be turned into a strength. I’m going to go home and finish up all the work I have been putting off or saving until the last minute. With every event IA I do, it’s like that – it’s going to be great.”

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COVER STORY

The

Gina McCarthy, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, on why action on climate control is critical for our nation’s health.

Interview by Patricia Harty

ina McCarthy was appointed Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in June 2013, after a 30-year career in the health and environmental sector. Many see her appointment as a strong message that President Obama is serious about climate change; serious about reducing U.S. carbon emissions and moving towards renewable energy sources.

Prior to her appointment, McCarthy held the position of assistant administrator, U.S. EPA from 2009. A longtime civil servant, she served as environmental advisor to five Massachusetts governors and helped develop a climate change action plan in the early 2000s. In 2004, she became commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and implemented a regional policy to trade carbon credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the first cap and trade program in the United States.

McCarthy, a passionate and committed environmentalist, has called for all hands on deck in the climate fight. In recent months, she has been to California and Colorado and Texas, Missouri and China. She has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, and other TV and radio shows. And she has taken to Facebook and Twitter to get the message out. “The changes that you can see, and the future changes; if we don't pay attention, will be very dramatic and I think we’ve let it go long enough.

It's really time for us to embrace that challenge. It’s time for us to act now.”

If there is a sense of urgency to McCarthy’s mission, it’s because the National Climate Assessment released in June shows hotter and longer summers, wildfires that start earlier and more often, record heat waves and floods, and longer allergy seasons.

And that’s just the broad strokes. The

G

36 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

report also shows how climate change is causing increased illnesses such as asthma and heart attacks, and it also investigates the economic impact of severe weather patterns that result in damage to infrastructure and property, loss of production, and delayed harvests.

It’s safe to say that none of this is news to McCarthy, who has been active on health and environmental issues since she was a college student. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology. (One of her heroes is Margaret Mead, the famous U.S. anthropologist and scientist).

In 1981 she received a joint Master of Science in Environmental Health Engineering and Planning and Policy from Tufts University. Her first job was in public health, where she saw firsthand how the environment affects health.

She became engaged in remediation of hazardous waste sites – a career path that has led her all the way to the top job at the EPA. When I met with McCarthy at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., she struck me as a no-nonsense person. Her strong Boston accent is infused with attitude and resilience.

I came away thinking that if the climate fight is a tough one, and it is, McCarthy is the right one for the job.

Born in 1954, McCarthy (who is married to Kenneth McCarey, and has three children, Daniel, Maggie, and Julie), grew up in Canton, a Boston suburb largely populated with Irish.

Her family saw public service as an honorable profession, and that’s what she grew up wanting to do.

How did growing up in Boston influence who you are today?

Boston is so much a part of my identity, as is Dorchester and South East. Growing up, I was surrounded

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BELOW LEFT: Gina giving an interview on June 2, 2014 following the Clean Power Plan announcement, a proposal which for the first time cuts carbon pollution from existing power plants, the single largest source of carbon pollution in the United States.

Global warming is one of the “biggest health issues facing the nation.�

PHOTO: JOHN LOOMIS

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COVER STORY

by really hard working Irish people. My parents grew up in the Dorchester area. There were 15 kids in my father’s family. I was the youngest of 50 first cousins on my father’s side. So we really had a fun, big family when I was growing up. My mother was both English and Irish; my father was all Irish with roots in County Clare. Most of Canton was Irish who moved from Dorchester after WWII because it had all those small cape houses that they funded for veterans, and that’s how my father ended up moving there as well. He was a schoolteacher in the Boston school systems for 40 years.

So why do you do what you do?

I come from a very much service-oriented family. We have firemen, policemen, post office, school teachers – my sister, Elaine, is a middle school history teacher – and it’s not like someone told you that was the thing you had to do, but public service was seen as very much an honorable thing to do. And that’s what I grew up wanting to do; my parents’ gift to me was two things, public serv-

already happening, as well as looking at how those could worsen over time if we don’t address the mitigation and reduce our carbon pollution. [The report] is very science based. It’s very analytic, and it’s very clear that climate impacts are already happening. And those range from increased sea level rise in the Northeast and rainfall, to the droughts in the West, to in the Midwest both floods and droughts in the same state at the same time.

And then further work has been going on both within the administration and outside to document the economic costs associated with all of these natural disasters. In 2012 alone, that cost ranged from 110 to 120 billion dollars. And so the costs for this are getting very extreme. Not just in terms of costs to lives and safety, but costs out of the pockets of American people.

Can you explain how climate impacts health?

Climate impacts public health very directly in a couple of different ways. Hotter weather creates ground level smog that is very damaging to people with lung diseases and kids and the elderly who have trouble breathing. Higher temperatures result in more ozone, as well as longer allergy seasons.

It will trigger asthma attacks and make them more difficult to manage. It also has significant impact on the cardiac system as well as the overall pulmonary system. Right now one out of ten kids in the U.S. has chronic asthma.

And if you look at the projections that the scientists are giving us, we’re going to get 100-degree weather much more frequently. We all just have to face the fact that the environment has changed. It’s changed as a result of human influence that nobody intended. But now that we know, we can stop it from getting worse for our kids, and that’s really our moral obligation.

In terms of the Clean Power Plan, and reducing carbon emissions, do individual states take responsibility, and what sort of compliance is required?

Each state is required to achieve a particular stanMcCarthy with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District. dard. That standard is based on the tons of carbon pollution per megawatt hour of electricity that’s generated. ice and hard work. I don’t know anybody I grew up with that So you can get there any way you want, but it’s actually going to didn’t teach their kids that there was a larger meaning in life. measure the carbon that is coming out of the fossil fuel power plants.

And so you can divert and start using other facilities like renewables What was your first job? more effectively, you can count nuclear generation, you can look at My first job was when I was 13 so probably we should get more other ways of generating that electricity, or you can make your efspecific. My first professional job was working for a community ficiency much better so that you’re producing more megawatts for health center in Rhode Island. My interest in public health grew every carbon molecule that you’re emitting, or ton that you’re emitinto an interest in the environment when I began to realize just ting. Or you can take a look to make sure that you’re driving down how much the environment impacts people’s health. electricity demand so that those units don’t continue to have to pump When my mother became ill, I returned home and I took a job out as much electricity as they did before. We set the goal based as the first Board of Health agent in the town of Canton. It was on what we think is achievable, on the basis of what kind of techrestaurant inspections, septic system inspections, housing inspec- nology choices [the states] have, what their infrastructure looks tions. It was when all the hazardous waste laws were coming out. like, and what their opportunities are. And we allowed every state I had to look at water quality issues and it was eye opening and to develop a plan that’s best for them. So if [the state] can get enlightening. I got engaged in remediation of hazardous waste these reductions cheaper doing it one way versus another, go for sites, which have all the volatile organic contaminants you see in it. If there’s a lot of economic job growth opportunities in one water supplies. I became very active representing boards of health, strategy versus another, you’re able to do that. Every state then and eventually I started working for the environmental agency. has to propose their plan to us, after the rule is finalized. EPA has to sign off on that plan, and the plan needs to come with enough Can you talk about the latest National Climate Assessment, analysis to tell us they’re actually going to be, in the end, achievwhich looks at the impact of climate change on the U.S.? ing the reductions we’re looking for in terms of reductions in carThis latest report, which came out in May, covered different re- bon pollution from their fossil fuel power plants. This is the way gions in the country and noted the kind of climate impacts that are that EPA has regulated for 40 years. So we know how to do this.

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A number of states, such as California and Connecticut, have already been very effective in reducing carbon pollution from the power sector as well as generating revenues for energy efficiency programs, which will keep those levels down. Over 1,000 mayors have signed climate pledges and are looking at reducing carbon emissions at the city and town level. Universities have also been leading the way. So when the President called on the EPA to do a rule that lowered carbon pollution we had all the data on actions that would be effective, reasonable, and practical. We built the Clean Power Plan on the backs of all of those states [that have reduced carbon pollution], recognizing that while they have done great work, there’s work that every state can do that would benefit that state and benefit us nationally and globally.

Governor Malloy of Connecticut has just signed a moratorium on fracking waste. Do you think that’s a good move?

Governor Dannel Malloy came in after I left (as Connecticut’s EPA commissioner), although I did a lot of work with him when he was Mayor in Stanford.

He’s a really capable person and we did a lot of work together. He had a lot of significant brownfields [areas that have been contaminated by industrial waste] that he was redeveloping along his waterfront. It was really fun to work with him on that.

So do you think the ban on fracking waste is a good move?

I think it’s pretty clear that the abundance of inexpensive natural gas has been a significant opportunity to try to make a shift to a cleaner energy supply system, which is essential for climate change. And that’s really what the president has been signaling to us is to actively reduce carbon pollution that fuels climate change, from our power sector. And that’s what EPA’s major emphasis is right now.

So you’ve been traveling the U.S. – what have you experienced?

We’ve begun to realize that when you get out of Washington, D.C. and you talk to real people, that they’re worried about the climate. I’ve been to numerous places that have been hit by floods, and places that have been hit by wildfires. I was in California on the drought issue. I’ve been in Utah on the basis of the work that’s going on in Salt Lake City with the mayor doing all kinds of great climate efforts. I’ve been in Iowa talking to farmers, I was in Missouri yesterday, basically trying to have a good conversation about concerns that the agriculture community has about the Waters of the U.S., which is a proposal to define what waters are significant enough that they need to be federally regulated to ensure appropriate and safe drinking water and protection of natural resources – basically establishing the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. It’s work that’s long overdue, but we’re going to be able to get it done because everyone sees drinking water as a vital resource. And in the United States, one out of three people, about 117 million, rely on really

Facts and Figures on Climate • Globally, the 10 warmest

years on record all occurred since

1998.

• Temperatures from 2001 to 2012 were warmer than any previous decade in every region of the United States.

• 2012 was the hottest year in the United States since scientists started keeping records.

• 2013 was the driest year in California since record-keeping began in 1894.

• Wildfires burned more than 9.3 million U.S. acres in 2013.

• Climate and weather disasters in 2012 alone cost the American economy more than $100 billion.

• U.S. power plants emit about 2.2 billion tons of carbon

dioxide (CO2) each year, or roughly 40 percent of the nation's total emissions.

• From 1960-2005, the U.S. emitted 26% of total global carbon emissions.The next biggest polluter, China, emitted 88,643 MtCO2 over the same time frame, 10.7% of global emissions (Greenpeace).

• If Texas were its own country it would rank 6th out of 184 countries in the world in carbon emissions.

• On May 6, the Obama Administration released the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment, the most authoritative and comprehensive source of scientific information to date about climate-change impacts across all U.S. regions and on critical sectors of the economy.

• On June 2, the EPA released a proposal that will set the first-ever national carbon pollution standards limits for America’s existing power plants.

• Fifteen American cities have committed to divesting from fossel fuels.

Cracks stretch across the dry bed of Lake Mendocino, a key Mendocino County reservoir, in Ukiah, California.

PHOTO: REUTERS

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 39

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COVER STORY U.S. These [renewables] are not “pie in the sky” anymore. So when you put out a rule that says you have to reduce carbon pollution from the power sector, it’s our hope that the states and the private sector will start investing heavily in these technologies of the future. We will be setting a standard that will be in place for 15 years.

It will challenge people to think about whether they want to upgrade the technologies of the past, the 42 year old, 60year old, 70-year old fossil fuel facilities and generators, or whether they want to invest in the technologies of the future. And we’re more than willing to bet, and I think this country has proven, that we’ll be looking forwards not backwards.

Administrator McCarthy with Missouri farmer Bill Heffernan and EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks, at Heffernan’s farm on July 9, 2014.

small streams that run only intermittently to feed the drinking water supply systems.

So it’s not just the big rivers and the groundwater that people rely on. It’s the series of even smaller streams that we need to protect, or we’re going to lose an opportunity for that water to be pristine and suitable for drinking.

What do you say to the skeptics on climate change?

You know, the climate deniers are getting fewer and fewer, or else they’re getting less vocal. Polling now indicates that 70 percent of the people understand not just that climate change is happening but that it’s time to take action on it. So I’m seeing less and less skeptics. But what we always see at EPA – and EPA’s been around for 44 years – is that every time we put out a big rule like the big Clean Power Plan, which we just put out to regulate carbon pollution from power plants, or the Waters of the U.S. rule, you will find people who say the economy’s going to shut down, manufacturing’s going to stop. There’s always been a strong lobby of special interests groups that will want to make sure that their interests are protected. But we’ve found that every time [the critics] have over-estimated the cost, they’ve over estimated the negative impacts. And they certainly haven’t proven their case that by improving the environment we’re doing anything to impact the economy other than in a positive way.

We have decades of data that show every time we’ve moved forward environmentally we’ve seen commensurate improvement in the economy, and that we have not

40 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Will the recent announcement that the U.S. plans to cut back on carbon emissions help us internationally?

Yes. I just met with Edward Davey, the U.K. Secretary of State for Energy & Climate and he told me that the tone and tenor of the international discussions has changed, because of the U.S. proposal on clean power plants, and plan to cut back on carbon emissions. It shows a strong level commitment from [the U.S.] one of the largest greenhouse gases emitters, about making reductions that are necessary. And it’s sending the right international ABOVE: As Administrator McCarthy arrives at signal.

As President Obama said a mid-Missouri farm, she’s greeted by their when he put together this climate acfriendly barn cat. tion plan, “We’ve got to reduce our damaged anything. If you look at the Clean carbon emissions. We’ve got to help our Air Act, over the past 44 years we’ve re- communities be more resilient, and we’ve duced air pollution by 70 percent, while the got to influence the international commuGDP has tripled. So there’s tremendous on- nity and be a leader there so we get the the-ground benefit as a result of protecting kind of global solution that this global chalpublic health, and it keeps the United lenge requires.”

States as a place where people want to live and where you can breathe clean air.

What do you say to those who say you want to kill the coal mining industry?

Germany created half the power that We certainly will still have coal being they need based on solar panels last mined, there’s no question about it. Even at year. Do you think that Europe will help the end of this 15-20 year period. But it will change attitudes here in the U.S. about be cleaner, and we will be shifting to a sigsolar energy? nificant amount of other power generation Germany is doing amazing work. And I as well, in a way that’s going to reduce our think the one message for us in the U.S. is carbon emissions by 30 percent from 2005. that we have been moving in the right di- And these are all not painful, these are inrection. A lot of people in a lot of states in vestments, these are efficiencies, lowering a lot of cities and towns, and in the private waste. It’s going to be an economic benefit sector, have been developing the technolo- to move in this direction. Consumers will gies of the future. And the future is now! actually see their electricity bills go down at You have renewables that are competi- the end of this period. So we think everytive – solar is competitive in the western thing about [Clean Power Proposal] sends

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“It’s clear that climate change is not only impacting public health,

it’s impacting other species. It’s impacting trees, flora and fauna. It’s impacting the oceans. It has an impact on the jet streams. The changes that you can see, and if we don’t pay attention, will see, are very dramatic. We’ve let it go long enough.

It’s time for us to embrace the challenge. It’s time for us to act now.” the right signal for the U.S. both economically as well as environmentally. And we’ll be hopefully sending the right signal to our kids that we’re actually paying attention to their future.

Name some of the EPA achievements that you are proud of?

The president, during his first term, developed through the EPA, what is basically a greenhouse gas reduction target for the light duty vehicle rule, which is all of our cars and light trucks. And that’s going to double fuel economy by 2025. Also, our Energy Star program, which started as a greenhouse gas reduction strategy because we were driving manufacturers to make more efficient appliances. If you go to buy a dryer or a refrigerator you’ll see that blue Energy Star label. It provides consumers with information on how much they can save by spending a little more now, and it tells you how efficient that is. It’s been one of the most successful programs ever; 85 percent of the people in the U.S. recognize that label and they go to it.

Do you think that Climate Change should be part of the educational system?

Very much so. I think part of the challenge of explaining climate change is that it requires a level of science and a level of forward thinking and you’ve got to teach that to kids.

People didn’t have a sense of how dramatic climate change really is, and what it means for all of us. So that’s been a challenge. But what’s great about renewables is that when you put a solar panel on the roof of a school, you change the entire dynamic of education for the students. It’s hands-on.

When you wanted to get people active in the environmental world a while ago it was recycling, because you could do it yourself. Part of the challenge today is to make all of these things [affecting climate change] personal enough so that people can get engaged and get active, and feel like there are things we can do together.

That’s the hump we need to cross in cli-

mate control and I think we’re doing that.

I really do, I think people are getting active and engaged.

My sister the beekeeper says that bees are dying because we are using pesticides in the U.S. that are banned in Europe, and that one out of every three bites of food we eat requires pollination by bees.

The president just asked us to put together a task force on pollinators. It’s not as easy as saying it’s the result of a pesticide. We did take a look at what we call the neonicotinoid pesticides, which is the group that people are concerned about, and we did an entire re-look at how it should be used and we modified that just to make sure that it doesn’t have the direct impact [on bees]. But it’s way more than that.

What we’re finding is that the bee population is facing a lot of stressors – one of which is loss of habitat – and the president has asked us to look at all of these stressors and to identify within the span of nine months to a year, what the United States can do to address the bee population.

We’re taking it very seriously. It’s just that we’re not sure yet that the banning of this pesticide, as Europe has done, would be the appropriate response. It needs to be proven scientifically and it needs a more comprehensive look. So that’s what we're involved in right now.

Does the EPA also oversee genetically modified foods (GMOs)?

There are a lot of genetically modified products on the market. Some states utilize them, some states develop their own rules around them, and we try to keep abreast of all of them. But there’s a lot going on. One of the biggest challenges that we have is just keeping up with the changing market and making sure that we’re doing the right kind of risk assessment in a timely way so we can make the decisions on it.

Europe has banned American apples because they are sprayed with diphenylamine (DPA), a substance that keeps

them from turning brown. When was the last study done on DPA? It’s something we are looking into. We have to approve any new pesticide that’s coming out, and the pesticides that are being used we have to take a look at their current use over a sequence and period of time, so that we can make sure they’re properly labeled and properly used.

Returning to the subject of natural habitats, I read an article in the New York Times about how in wildernesses, such as Joshua Tree National Park, the trees are gradually dying out because of climate change. Is that something that the EPA pays attention to?

Yes. That’s why the president has a cross agency office that gets together, so we understand what the challenges are and how we can impact those.

It’s clear that climate change is not only impacting public health, it’s impacting other species. It’s impacting trees, flora and fauna. It’s impacting the oceans. It has an impact on the jet stream. The changes that you can see, if we don’t pay attention, the changes that we will see, will be very dramatic. We’ve let it go long enough. It’s time for us to embrace the challenge. It’s time for us to act now.

How hard is it to be in public service in this era of social media? It seems to me a lot of politicians spend most of their time defending their positions or explaining quotes taken out of context?

I try to keep very positive about it, because I think I spoke earlier how honorable public service is. Every day I get up thinking that this is the best job ever, even when it’s difficult, because it’s an honor to do this job.

And so while it is, no question, challenging, I’m not going to let these everyday challenges sway me from the vision and the job that I was put here to do. EPA is moving forward, we are under very close scrutiny but we’ll live up to that scrutiny and we’ll still IA make progress.

Thank you Administrator McCarthy.

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 41

This year, don’t dread the end of summer—celebrate autumn in Ireland!

As the autumn leaves change and a chill returns to the air, escape to the warm pubs, friendly locals and jaw-dropping scenery that make Ireland the perfect destination for any time of year.

Perhaps one of the enchanting ways to travel the country is along the Wild Atlantic Way, a scenic route showcasing the culturally rich towns and villages and awe-inspiring landscapes of the west coast of Ireland. Tailor your trip to include as many stops as you like along the winding coastline of beaches, cliffs, and beautiful medieval castles.

This fall, there will be plenty of reasons to visit Ireland’s great cities. The Galway International Oyster & Seafood Festival starting September 25th draws seafood lovers from around the world every year to sample Ireland’s freshest and tastiest marine cuisine. In late October, the city of Cork will come alive with a festival of its own, and if past years are any indication the town will be swinging! Cork Jazz Festival has become one of the most internationally renowned music events, and not just for jazz lovers. Hundreds of acts spanning several genres alight the city for four days of fun.

In Northern Ireland, Belfast attracts visitors every year with fabulous shopping centers and restaurants. Not to mention the Titanic Belfast Experience, a six story interactive

museum designed to tell the tale of the HMS Titanic. And in any city you visit, you’re never far from a traditional music session!

Of course, no 2014 trip to Ireland would be complete without a visit to this year’s UK City of Culture, Limerick. Nestled on the shores of the beautiful River Shannon, the biggest trouble in visiting Limerick is deciding what to do first. The Limerick City Gallery of Art is home to one of the finest collections of Celtic art in the world, as well as works from giants like Picasso, Renoir, and Henry Moore. After a visit at the museum, head over the Milk Market to satisfy all your Irish cravings with fresh fish, organic fruits and vegetables, mouth-watering chocolates, and more. A city filled with beautiful Georgian architecture, delicious food and exciting events to celebrate music and art; Limerick more than lives up to its City of Culture designation.

Is there anything more Irish than a hot cup of tea? This autumn, Dublin will usher in the chilly weather with the inaugural Dublin Coffee & Tea festival. Kicking off on

September 12, the festival will be brimming with flavors from around the country.

Ireland has played a huge part in the growing specialty coffee and tea markets in Europe and it’s high time to celebrate that café culture with a cup or two, or three! While in Dublin, take in the lively scene of pubs and music at Temple Bar. It’s a city bursting with authentic Irish pubs, sophisticated restaurants and a wealth of history to explore.

When the city bustle gets to be a bit much, just south of Dublin is County Wicklow, affectionately known as the Garden of Ireland. Wicklow is home to some of the most beautiful countryside in the world.

Fields of purple heather and dramatic mountain ranges make it a hikers paradise.

With mountain bike trails through forests and beside sparking lakes, if it’s the outdoors you seek then look no farther than Wicklow!

Also in Wicklow is Powerscourt, a great European treasure with a perfect blend of attractions for all ages. Complete with a children’s museum, lavish gardens, and unique shops, the stunning Powerscourt estate is beatiful place to spend the day.

The Milk Market, Limerick City

Limerick Gallery of Art

Limerick City Galway International Oyster & Seaood Festival

Cork Jazz Festival

TI advertorial 3.indd 1

Wicklow Mountains

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Insight.

Innovation.

Performance.

As an Irish company that is one of the world leaders in clinical research, ICON applauds all the Irish America Healthcare & Life Sciences 50 Honorees for their excellent contributions to advancing healthcare.

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THE HEALTHCARE & LIFE SCIENCES

Irish innovators who are leading the way in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease

CO-PRESENTED BY

Patrick J. Boland, M.D.

Dr. Paddy Boland is a full-time, senior member of the Orthopedic Service, Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he specializes in the management of malignant and benign tumors of the bones, including those of the spine and pelvis, and in soft tissue sarcomas of the extremities. He also has special training in limb salvage surgery – that is the removal of the limb cancers while preserving a functional extremity.

Together with colleagues from neurosurgery, diagnostic radiology, and radiation therapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering, he has extensive experience in the treatment of primary and metastatic tumors of the spine. Over the years, he has developed a special interest in the management of tumors of the sacrum.

Paddy is involved in extensive research activities, including on-going clinical research in sacral tumors and in the assessment of quality of life in patients with metastatic bone cancer.

He has also authored and co-authored chapters and scientific papers on surgery for tumors of the extremities and the spine. Born and raised in Ireland, Paddy is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in England, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

Theresa M. Butler

Theresa M. Butler is the chief executive officer of Middletown Community Health Center Inc. in Orange County, NY, a position she has held since 2006. She has over 25 years experience in the medical field, having worked for Montefiore Med-

46 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

ical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, and Volunteers of America.

Theresa spearheaded the O&W Project or the “Pathway to Health,” which is transforming a 30,000 ft abandoned railroad station in Middletown into a primary care headquarters and has already been given support by Senator Chuck Schumer.

Theresa is a second-generation Irish American and Bronx native with ancestors hailing from Cork and Mayo. It is “the legacy of a strong willed, determined heritage,” she says, “that has allowed me to fulfill my American dreams of success.” She received a B.S. in business administration from Mercy College and went on to receive a master’s in public administration from Marist College. Theresa’s career achievements were highlighted in Mercy College’s Success Story 2003 Annual Report. She currently lives in New York with her three children Peter, Caitlin, and Kelsey.

”The legacy of a stong-willed, determined heritage

has allowed me to fulfill my American dreams of success.”

– Theresa Maloney Butler

Kevin Cahill, M.D.

As a distinguished doctor of medicine, Dr. Kevin Cahill has not only treated patients including Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, but has offered his vast expertise to a number of national and international organizations including the United Nations and the New York Police Department. These efforts to aid human suffering come as no surprise considering that Cahill began his medical career in 1961, studying tropical disease in the slums of Calcutta beside Mother Theresa.

Kevin’s relief efforts have since spanned the globe and include treating refugees in Sudan, serving concurrently as the special assistant to the governor of health affairs, chairman of health planning commission, and chairman of the Health Research Council of New York State.

Raised in an Irish immi-

grant home in the Bronx, Kevin was taught from childhood the importance of Irish poetry and literature from his own family members. The majority of his relatives established themselves in America and became policemen. His father, who as a physician was the exception to the rule, would buy up land in his native Rathmore, Co. Kerry, and give it to the family members who stayed behind. His first visit to Ireland was when he was only 11 or 12, and since then he has maintained a strong connection to the country both through professional and personal work.

He and his late wife, Kate, have five sons and several grandchildren.

Michael W. Collins, Ph.D.

Micky Collins is the executive and clinical director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program, the first and largest research and clinical program focused on the diagnosis, evaluation and management of sports-related mild traumatic brain injury in athletes of all levels.

Over the course of his career, he has been instrumental in the development of concussion management programs at the youth sports level nationwide and in teaching and implementing the proper use of baseline and post-injury neurocognitive testing to determine injury severity and recovery for young athletes. Micky also serves as an advisor to numerous athletic organizations, including USA Rugby, US Lacrosse, and Cirque De Soleil, as well as a concussion consultant for several other national and international sports organizations and teams.

Micky graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and biology and from Michigan State University with a master’s degree in psychology and doctorate in clinical psychology. A fourth-generation Irish American with roots in County Limerick.

Micky and his wife Lynn have four daughters.

Niall Condon

Niall Condon is the vice president of BioPharmaceutical Manufacturing Operations at Pfizer Global Supply.

Niall began his career with Pfizer in Ringaskiddy, Ireland as production supervisor in 1987. He moved to the Groton, CT site in 1988 and worked in several sections before being appointed director/team leader of Organic Synthesis in 1998.

Since then, Niall has steadily moved upwards at Pfizer. In 2001, he was named director/team leader of Organic Synthesis, Holland, Michigan;

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plant manager, API Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2003; site leader, Kalamazoo in 2005; and vice president, Established Products Operations for U.S./ROW in 2008. He was appointed vice president, Established Products Operating Unit in October 2010 and named VP of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Operations in November 2012, based in New York. In 2014, Niall was named VP. Niall has a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the Cork Institute of Technology and holds a Master of Business Administration in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He is married with one son and enjoys biking.

Deirdre Connelly

Deirdre Connelly is president, North America Pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The global health care company announced on July 25 that Health Canada had approved a BRAF-inhibitor, Tafinlar, and MEK-inhibitor, Mekinist, for melanoma patients with BRAF V600 mutation, offering new hope for those afflicted with metastatic melanoma.

Deirdre is a member of the global Corporate Executive Team and co-chairs the Portfolio Management Board. She has also served as the CEO and president of Human Genome Sciences Inc. Consistently recognized by Fortune as one of

John J. Connolly, Ed.D.

John Connolly, the nation’s foremost expert on identifying top physicians, is the president & CEO of Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., publisher of America’s Top Doctors and other consumer guides to help people find the best healthcare.

He is also vice-chairman of Castle Connolly Graduate Medical Ltd., which publishes review manuals to assist resident physicians and fellows in preparing for their board exams.

John served as president of New York Medical College, the nation’s second largest private medical college, for more than ten years.

John is extensively involved in healthcare and community activities and has served on a number of voluntary and corporate boards including the board of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, of which he is a founder and past chairman, and the Culinary Institute of America for over 20 years, where he is now chairman emeritus. He also served as a director and chairman of the Professional Examination Service and is presently on the board of the American Swiss Foundation.

The author or editor of seven books, John holds a B.S. from Worcester State College, an M.A. from the University of Connecticut, and an Ed.D. in college and university administration from Teacher’s College, Columbia University.

William A. Conway, M.D.

the 50 most powerful women in business, Deirdre was named Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association in 2012. In 2008, she was appointed to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

Deirdre was born in San Juan to an Irish father and a Puerto Rican mother. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and marketing from Lycoming College in Pennsylvania and graduated from Harvard University’s Advanced Management Program, and in January 2013 was appointed to the Harvard University Public Health Policy Council.

William Conway is CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group and executive vice president of the Henry Ford Health System. As such, William leads Henry Ford’s 1,100-physician medical group, one of the nation’s largest and oldest group practices, with more than 40 specialties.

William joined the Henry Ford Medical Group in 1977 as a senior staff physician in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Since then, he has served in numerous leadership roles, including as chief medical officer for Henry Ford Hospital. He completed a fellowship and his residency, where he was also chief medical resident, at Henry Ford Hospital. He is the past chairman of the American Medical Group Association, current chairman of the American Medical Group Foundation, and a founder of the Group Practice Improvement Network.

An alumnus of Creighton University, William is a second generation Irish American with roots in County

Mayo on his father’s side. “My grandparents and other immigrants continued the Irish traditions in America of looking out for our neighbors, sharing with them, and helping them succeed, all of which I witnessed during my visits to Ireland,” he says.

“It’s important to apply that inclusive, communityoriented Irish philosophy to health care in Detroit and the U.S.” William and his wife Susan have five children.

Patricia Coyle, M.D.

Dr. Patricia K. Coyle is known internationally for her expertise in Multiple Sclerosis (see page 100), neuroimmunology, and neurological infectious diseases like Lyme disease.

In addition to lecturing around the country on MS and other neurological topics, Patricia has a busy clinical practice and also maintains a research laboratory. She is a professor and vice chair of neurology and the director of the Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center at the Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York. Currently, she is involved in many therapeutic trials testing new immunotherapies for MS and is optimistic for the future of treatment. “This is such a hopeful era for MS,” she says. “We’ve seen this disease become a treatable disease in the last decade. But clearly the current therapies need to be started as soon as possible to minimize the ongoing damage, to really control it, to keep people intact.”

With a B.S. from Fordham University and her medical training done at Johns Hopkins, Patricia is the oldest of six children and grew up in a lively Irish household (lots of parties and cousins she says) in the Bronx.

All four of her grandparents emigrated from Ireland and she has roots in Counties Donegal, Leitrim, and Clare. A particularly influential presence was Patricia’s grandmother Kate Tuohy, who she remembers as “a strong, dominant force.”

John P. Donoghue, Ph.D.

Dr. John P. Donoghue is the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. Donoghue’s big breakthrough came when he designed a machine, the Braingate, that uses thought to move objects and control a computer in paralyzed patients.

Since his undergraduate days at Boston University where he received his B.S., John has been interested in brain function which he augmented with a master’s degree in anatomy from the University of Vermont. His career really took off once he attended Brown University and comAUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 47

pleted a doctoral degree in neuroscience. In 1992, John became the founding chair of the Department of Neuroscience and has since served on review boards for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. His numerous awards include the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Health.

John is a second-generation Irish American with ancestors from Kilgarvan, Co. Kerry on his paternal grandfather’s side. Donoghue had returned to Kilgarvan with his wife and kids and was surprised to discover locals still remembered his family. John lives in Rhode Island with his wife and children.

Patrick Donohue

In 2007, Patrick Donohue established the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, which has now become one of the leading organizations worldwide

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working to prevent, identify, treat and eventually cure pediatric acquired brain injury (PABI).

Sarah Jane Donohue, Patrick’s first child, suffered traumatic injuries just days after she was born when she was violently shaken by her nurse.

Sixty-percent of the rear cortex of her brain was devastated. Patrick was told that his daughter would never walk, never speak, and never move independently again. In the weeks and months following, Patrick, decided to change his career to what he calls “changing the world for Sarah Jane”.

In September 2013, Patrick established iHOPE, the International Academy of HOPE, the first and only school in the world, to educate and habilitate kids with brain injuries and other brain-based disorders. The school, in New York City, has already grown to 40 students. It will serve as the pilot program and change agent for modeling best educational practices all over the world.

Patrick’s philosophy is: “Things work out best for those who make the best out of the way things work out.” He says, “It is unfortunate that I got involved in this because of Sarah Jane’s problem, but I hope our best efforts will help her and many others like her.”

Michael Dowling

Michael Dowling is the CEO of North Shore LIJ Health System and was a 2013 Irish America Business 100 keynote speaker. Michael began his career as a faculty member at Fordham University as a professor and the assistant dean at the Graduate School of Social Services. In 1983, under Governor Michael Cuomo, he served as deputy secretary and director of Health, Education, and Human Services. When Cuomo left office in 1995, Michael signed on as senior vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield, later taking up the post of SVP at the Hospital Services at North Shore LIJ Health System. He became executive vice president and chief operating officer in 1997, and was named president and CEO in 2002.

Born and raised in Knockaderry, Co. Limerick Michael is the eldest of five children. He had to help support his family from an early age, inspiring him to push further and achieve his dreams. “No” was never an option for Michael as he makes clear: “if you tell me I can’t do something, that’s when I become determined to get it done.” This very Irish mindset propelled him to success, becoming the first person in his family to attend college, graduating University College Cork while working odd jobs to pay for tuition. After graduation he went to New York and earned a master’s degree from Fordham University. Michael and his

wife Kathy live on Long Island with their two children, Brian and Elizabeth.

Mike Duffy

Mike Duffy serves as the president of Medical Consumables at Cardinal Health, Inc. As such, Mike has responsibility for Cardinal Health’s entire medical supply chain including global manufacturing, sourcing, inventory management, warehousing and transportation. Prior to Cardinal Health, Mr. Duffy served as vice president of the Global Value Chain at Gillette and as principal at New York Consulting Partners, a strategic supply chain consulting firm.

Mike earned both his bachelor’s degree (operations research) and master’s degree (transportation) from MIT and currently serves on the board of directors for the Columbus Metropolitan Library Foundation.

He is a fourth-generation Irish American with roots in Dublin on both sides of the family, and ancestors from Kilkenny on his mother’s side. He remarks, “my family is from Boston, where the Irish community is still very active. I am proud to be a descendant of the Irish community that both built the city infrastructure and shaped its local culture. It is that work ethic and sense of purpose that I carry with me every day.”

Walter J. Fahey

Since 1995, Walter J. Fahey has been senior vice president and CIO at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. With more than 25 years of information technology experience in healthcare, Walter has held positions at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and held information technology leadership positions at Baxter Health Care, St. Vincent’s Medical Center, and the New York Methodist Hospital.

Under Walter’s leadership, Maimonides has received numerous accolades to become a nationally recognized center for healthcare IT, including the 1998 ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award, the Nicholas E. Davies Award, and American Hospital Association’s “Most Wired” and/or “Most Wireless” company. Additionally, Walter sits on the board of the American Hospital Association, One View, Aruba, and Unisys and was instrumental in developing the Brooklyn Health Information Exchange in 2005.

Walter is a second-generation Irish American with maternal (Early) roots in Co. Cork, and

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Fahey roots in Galway. He holds an M.B.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

James Geraghty

Jim Geraghty joined Third Rock Ventures in 2013 to create companies dedicated to improving the lives of patients with rare genetic diseases and support existing portfolio companies in the rare disease space. He is an industry leader with 30 years of strategic and leadership experience, including more than 20 years developing and commercializing therapies for rare diseases. Jim has taken an active leadership role as Interim CBO of Voyager Therapeutics.

Prior to Third Rock, Jim served as senior vice president, North America Strategy and Business Development at Sanofi. Before Sanofi, Jim spent 20 years at Genzyme, where his roles included

senior vice president international development, president of Genzyme Europe and general manager of Genzyme’s cardiovascular business. He also served as chairman and chief executive officer of GTC Biotherapeutics (formerly Genzyme Transgenics), which he founded and took public.

Jim oversaw Genzyme’s Humanitarian Assistance for Neglected Diseases program, under which the company supported innovative therapeutic programs on a non-commercial basis. He is chairman of Idera Pharmaceuticals, a member of the Joslin Diabetes Center board of trustees and serves on the board of BIO Ventures for Global Health. A graduate of the Yale Law School, Jim also holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelors from Georgetown University.

Peter Green, M.D.

Dr. Peter H. R. Green is the director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University as

well as the Phyllis and Ivan Seidenberg Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University and an attending physician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Peter received his medical degree from University of Sydney, Australia. After completing his residency and GI fellowship in Sydney he became a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and in the Gastroenterology Department at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

He is a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the American College of Gastroenterology as well as a member of the American Gastroenterologic Association and American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

Celiac disease has been Peter’s focus over the last 10 years with equal concentration on patient care and research (see page 64). He is one of the few physicians in the United States with an intense clinical and academic interest and expertise in celiac disease. As a result of the need for a coordinated approach for the medical care of patients with celiac disease, Peter established the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University. He is the author of the book Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic.

“If you tell me I can’t do something, that’s when I become determined to get it done.”

– Michael Dowling

Jo Hannafin, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Jo Hannafin became the first female president of the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine when she assumed her appointment in July.

An orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, Jo argues that preventative and non-surgical care for sports-related injuries are a crucial part of sports physicians’ missions and have a huge impact on the rest of

the population. In a 2013 interview, she pointed out that “studies of muscle movement also have guided designers of office furniture and equipment to reduce injury risk from repetitive motion, and in the next five to ten years, we’ll learn more about the effects of physical activity on the risk of developing progressive diseases. We’ll learn more about the effects of changes in exercise and fitness patterns, together with changes in other lifestyles and their roles in [the] prevention or delay of recurrent or extended disease.”

Jo’s great-grandparents on both parents’ sides immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland. She traces her roots to Counties Kerry and Cork. A lifelong rower – she was a three-time national rowing champion and silver medalist at the 1984 World Championships – she serves as a team physician for the United States rowing team. She is the coauthor, with Marian Betancourt, of the book Say Goodbye to Knee Pain.

James I. Healy, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Jim Healy has worked as a general partner at Sofinnova Ventures since 2000 and has since been a key investor and served on the board of at least 15 companies. Among those, Jim has financed and served on the board of nine companies which received drug approvals from either the FDA or EMA. He was an early investor and board member of eight companies which subsequently completed initial public offerings and seven companies that have been acquired as private or public companies. Specializing in biomedical research, development and finance, Jim currently serves on the boards of Amarin and InterMune, and is chairman of the board at Hyperion Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing treatments for rare diseases. Most recently, he was listed by Forbes as one of the industry’s top life science investors, and in 2012, Jim was named one of the best “young and proven” biotech investors by Xconomy Magazine.

Jim holds bachelor degrees in both molecular biology and Scandinavian studies from UC Berkeley and earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Now, he frequently travels to Sofinnova’s Dublin office to work with the company’s several Irish investments, including biomedical firms Amarin and Prothena.

“I have enjoyed traveling to Ireland frequently to work with the management teams in our portfolio to build strong companies that are making a difference in patient care around the world,” he says.

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Born in Maine, Jim grew up delivering papers and working in the hardware and gardening departments of a local store and credits his hard work ethic to his Irish roots, which come from the maternal side of his family. “Many of my ancestors worked as immigrant farmers and ranchers,” he says. “My mother worked two jobs when I was young. If you want to succeed in life you need to put in the effort.”

”Healthcare is an informationintensive industry.”

– Sean Hogan

Kevin Horgan, M.D.

Sean Hogan

As vice president and industry general manager of IBM Global Healthcare, Sean Hogan leads IBM's business serving clients across its services. With an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in engineering from Dartmouth, Sean has particularly focused growth that is predicated on the development and transformation of existing business models and advanced technology throughout his career.

Embracing the Irish “reputation for determination, warmth, and integrity,” as he calls it, Sean is proud of the work IBM is doing to support its clients deliver greater access to high quality, cost-effective care.

Sean says “healthcare is an informationintensive industry,” so his key interests include technology applications that help the medical community access and analyze data in order to achieve better patient outcomes. For example, IBM is working with clinicians to develop IBM Watson cognitive computing technology to help oncologists fight cancer, and predictive analytics to improve early detection of heart failure.

Sean is a fourth-generation Irish American. All 16 of his great great grandparents are Irish and lived in the U.S., emigrating from all over, including Clare and Cork. He and his wife Jana currently live in Ridgefield, CT with their three children, Matthew, Jared, and Kate.

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Dr. Kevin Horgan is a physician scientist in Philadelphia, PA. Born in London, his parents were natives of Clare and Cork. After attending Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick he graduated in medicine from University College Cork in 1982. He completed postgraduate medical training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, and UCLA in internal medicine, immunology and gastroenterology.

After four years on the faculty at UCLA, where he specialized in managing inflammatory bowel disease, he joined the pharmaceutical industry at Merck Research Laboratories. There he led the development of the groundbreaking drug Emend for the prevention of nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy. A decade after its approval in 2003, no similar drug has been successfully developed.

Since then, Kevin has developed several novel therapies and pharmaceuticals for inflammatory bowel disease and Alzheimer’s and his immunol-

ogy research provided important early support for the development of three approved medications for multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

Most recently he has been chief medical officer of Soligenix and Coronado Biosciences: both companies developing novel immunotherapies.

He is currently working with several start-up companies in the U.S. and Ireland that are translating the discoveries of scientists and physicians into new therapies and diagnostics with emphasis on the immunotherapy of cancer, the microbiome, and healthy ageing.

Patrick Johnston, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor Patrick Johnston is the newly appointed president and vice chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast. Patrick joined Queen’s University in 1996 as a professor of oncology, becoming the director of the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology. He later became dean of the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences where he led the foundation of a new international Medical School and Institute of Health Sciences, which is internationally recognized for its excellence in teaching and biomedical research programs. Patrick’s research focus has been on the understanding of mechanisms of drug resistance to therapeutic agents which has resulted in numerous prestigious landmark publications and grants.

A native of Derry and with parents from Derry, Patrick speaks fondly of his Irish heritage saying, “My Irish heritage and family are very important to me; it is part of my living DNA. All that I have achieved has been as a result of the sacrifices of my parents and grandparents to ensure that I had the opportunities that they could only dream of.”

In 1982, Patrick received a medical degree from University College Dublin followed by a Ph.D. in medicine in 1988. He later obtained a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda. Patrick serves on the Medical Research Council Strategy Board, was appointed Chair of the MRC Translational Research Group in 2012, and is the founder of the Society for Translational Oncology (based in Durham, NC), and Almac Diagnostics (based in the U.S. and Northern Ireland). Among his many awards and honors are the Queen’s Anniversary Prize from Queen Elizabeth II in 2012, a fellowship to the Academy of Medical Sciences, and in 2013 was named winner of the international Bob Pinedo Cancer Care Prize. Patrick and his wife, Dr. Iseult Wilson, have four sons, Seamus, Eoghan, Niall, and Ruairi.

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Anne Kelly and Maryellen O’Sullivan

Nurses were Ireland’s biggest export in the late 1980s when Anne Kelly finished her five years of training, first as a nurse and then as a midwife.

“The job situation at home was bad and everyone was going somewhere else,” she recalls.

Anne herself was recruited to come to New York City in 1987 from Kilconnell, Co. Galway, to work at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center but it wasn’t her first time working outside Ireland. Earlier, Anne had the opportunity to spend 10 months as a midwife in Saudi Arabia, Anne credits her successes to her nursing studies at University Hospital, Galway, where the nuns were in charge. “Wherever we go, our training has stood to us,” she notes. “It’s in us to do the best we can for every patient. I think Irish nurses get on very well everywhere.

“I’m no Mother Teresa,” she admits, “It’d always be in my head: How could I help the patient more? I think it’s in our DNA as Irish people to be kind, to go that extra mile.

“It’s very important,” Anne says, “and the patients feel it. They know we’re on their side. It might mean taking a few extra minutes but we try to pick up on little things. Often, when you talk to a patient, you hear the worry in their voice and you try to find out what specifically is causing that concern.”

Maryellen O’Sullivan, whose grandparents came from Tipperary and Kerry, received her Bachelor’s degree in nursing from Wagner College and an advanced practice degree from NYU. As a nurse leader at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers, Maryellen has about five nurses on her staff who were trained in Ireland and also works with many nurses of Irish descent.

In comparing the approach of Irish nurses in greeting patients and doing assessments, Maryellen has observed that culturally, “they tend 52 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

to have a softer, more engaging style and use some humor, which makes patients feel more at ease.”

Even the Irish accent can sometimes be a nice talking point that patients enjoy picking up on, she adds.

“In a big institution, if you can humanize the experience and make personal connections, it’s very helpful.”

During the more than 25 years that Maryellen has been in nursing, she has seen the first wave of Irish nurses who arrived in the 1980s and a second wave in the last 10 years, as more people returned to the workforce after a break to raise children or do other things.

Maryellen reports that Irish nurses “have a strong history of being extremely well schooled and competent, very hard workers and exceptionally dependable.”

Technology has become much more of a presence in nursing today, Maryellen says, but the “key thing is meaningful use of technology and while it can be a learning curve for some people, it doesn’t take away from their ability to do a nursing assessment or to develop an individual plan of care.”

No matter what the specialty or sub-specialty, Irish nurses have demonstrated their abilities to bridge the old and new worlds with grace, good humor and ability. – By Teresa O’Dea Hein

”It’d always be in my head: How could I help the patient more?

I think it’s in our DNA.”

– Anne Kelly

James P. Kelly, M.D.

Dr. James P. Kelly serves as the director of The National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) on the campus of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. While serving as the NICoE’s director, Kelly is also professor of neurosurgery and physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He has also served as director of the

Brain Injury Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and was the neurological consultant for the Chicago Bears. He was the first chairman of the Defense Health Board’s Traumatic Brain Injury External Advisory Subcommittee for Military Clinical Care, Research, and Education.

James is Irish on his father’s side and explained: “My father, William A. Kelly, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the seventh of eight children of secondgeneration Irish immigrants who left Ireland around the time of the potato famine.”

James obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology from Western Michigan University, graduating from Northwestern University’s medical school and completing his neurology residency and behavioral neurology fellowship at the University of Colorado. He co-authored the sports concussion guidelines of the American Academy of Neurology and the Standardized Assessment of Concussion that is widely used in athletic and military settings.

John Kennedy, M.D.

Dr. John Kennedy, born in Dublin and educated at Ireland’s Royal College of Surgeons, is a surgeon at New York Hospital for Special Surgery.

John met Flip Mullen, a retired FDNY officer, six years ago at the Irish America Top 100 awards dinner. Both were being honored for their work helping others: John for performing orthopedic surgeries free of charge in Santo Domingo, and Mullen for his work with the Wounded Warrior Project (see page 32).The two met and began to talk, and out of their conversation a new partnership was born.

Mullen and other Wounded Warriors counsel injured soldiers to consult John, for a second opinion. He and his associate Dr. Austin Fragomen in turn meet with the wounded soldiers, look at their injuries, and have in certain cases performed surgeries saving soldiers from amputation. Mullen and his wife, Rita, house the soldiers and their families while they are in New York.

John is currently the clinical director of the running clinic at the Hospital for Special Surgery. His interest in sports medicine of the lower limbs is generated by a long personal history in sports, where he competed at national and international levels in track, rugby, fencing, and water skiing.

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MacDara Lynch

Born in Bandon, Co. Cork, MacDara Lynch having graduated from University College Cork with a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1972, joined Pfizer, the first major pharmaceutical companies to locate in Ireland (1969).

Over the last 40 years, Pfizer has a rich heritage of innovation and expansion in Ireland – eight locations based in Cork, Dublin, and Kildare with over 4,000 employees – and MacDara was part of that expansion. From his initial job as a shift supervisor, he served in leading positions in many countries with the company. Wherever he and his late wife Ita found themselves, they became active in the local Irish community. MacDara served as Honorary Irish Consul in Indonesia for two years.

Having retired from Pfizer in 2012, MacDara is currently an active member of the board of directors of the Ireland-U.S. Council, which builds ties between Ireland, and the U.S., and Cooperation Ireland, which promotes positive relationships between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. He will also be on forthcoming pharmaceutical advisory board for Enterprise Ireland, the government organization responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets.

MacDara lives in Connecticut where he enjoys spending time with his three children and four grandchildren. He says being Irish “helps to refocus me on what is really important in life.”

Bill and Kathy Magee

Dr. William and Kathleen Magee are the founders of Operation Smile a worldwide children’s medical charity they established after visit-

ing the Philippines in 1982 (see page 67). Bill, a plastic surgeon, is the company’s CEO and together with Kathy, a nurse and clinical social worker, oversee the company’s worldwide networks of over 12,000 volunteers that span more than 75 cities and nine countries. Their work has given thousands of children ravaged by deformities the chance to smile once again.

Both Bill and Kathy hail from New Jersey. Bill’s maternal grandmother from Valentia Island off the coast of Kerry settled in Pennsylvania in the 1800s. Besides Operation Smile, Dr. Magee is a noted speaker at numerous conferences around the world and trains international physicians in craniofacial techniques while Kathy remains deeply involved in Operation Smile’s Student Program and numerous volunteer activities.

Over the years Bill and Kathleen’s efforts have garnered them many prestigious awards including the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, a 2001 Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service, and the 2007 President’s Call to Service Award from President George W. Bush. The Magees reside in Virginia with their five grown children and many grandchildren.

”It’s about being part of a present-day community” – Terry McGuire

Mike Magee, M.D.

Early in life Dr. Mike Magee was an electrician’s apprentice with his older brother Bill (above), but as one of 12 children of a house-call making doctor, a medical vocation wasn’t long coming. Now, Mike is the founder and president of Positive Medicine Inc., a strategic health communications firm that works with organizations committed to the same home-centered health care his father provided.

Mike has long been a champion of patients’ rights and practiced as a physician for 13 years in rural New England before assuming progressive academic and leadership posts including senior vice-president at Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital, and founding director of the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative in New York City.

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A descendant of Daniel Magee, who arrived in the U.S. from Derry in 1760, Mike has always felt a kinship with Ireland. Oh his first trip there 20 years ago, he recalls hearing galloping and looking up just in time to see a heard of horses disappear over a ridge.

“At that moment,” Mike says, “I felt at home and at peace, balanced and content, holding my wife’s hand, and believing in the future.”

For Mike, that future means continual patient-focused healthcare, but also working on his new book which will recount 100 years of medical and insurance history through the eyes of WWII veterans.

Susan Mahony, Ph.D.

Dr. Sue Mahony is president of Lilly Oncology as well as senior vice president for Eli Lilly and Company. Sue joined Lilly in 2000 with over a decade in sales and marketing roles in Europe and the United Kingdom. From there, she worked in a variety of roles in global marketing and product development, leading Lilly’s operations in Canada, later acceding to senior vice president in 2009 and president in 2011.

Sue is first-generation Irish, having been born in London to David and Anna with family hailing from Cork City and Coolea, Co. Cork. While she was raised in England, most of Sue’s family now resides in Ireland and she remembers fondly the summers she spent in Coolea saying “it’s a beautiful country with wonderful people…. I am extremely proud of my Irish heritage.”

Sue learned from an early age working in a card shop the importance of hard work and dedication which she carried through to her studies.

She attended Aston University in Great Britain

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where she received a B.Sc. in pharmacy, later completing a Ph.D. in Aston’s Cancer Research Campaign Experimental Chemotherapy Group.

Sue did not stop there, but went on to the London School of Business where she completed a master’s degree in business administration. She serves on the board of the United Way of Central Indiana and in 2010 was recognized as one of Indianapolis Business Journal’s “Women of Influence.” Sue and her husband John have two children, Thomas and Rebecca.

Mary McFadden

Mary McFadden is the co-founder of Health Management Resources Corp., one of the leading providers of weight management services in the United States. Mary co-founded HMR in 1983, taking on the roles of director and corporate counsel for a number of years.Throughout its history, HMR has helped over 1.1 million people tackle their weight related health issues, with Ireland looking to open offices in the future.

Mary is a native of Bethlehem, PA and is a fourth-generation Irish American with ancestors from Leitrim on her father’s side. She says she “takes great pride” in her Irish heritage and feels a strong connection to her roots while growing

Thomas McGinn, M.D.

Dr. Thomas McGinn is senior vice president and executive director of the North Shore-LIJ Health System Medicine Service Line and serves the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine as chair of the Department of Medicine.

Before joining North Shore-LIJ in 2011, Thomas was Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

An internationally acknowledged authority in evidence-based medicine and comparative effectiveness, Thomas is currently overseeing an unprecedented expansion in both the scope and size of the department’s research enterprise by focusing on cutting-edge study of healthcare delivery and patient-centered outcomes research.

Thomas is a diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He earned his M.D. from SUNY Downstate, completed his residency in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Bronx Municipal Hospital Center in the Bronx, and holds an M.P.H. from Columbia University.

With both paternal and maternal roots in County Tyrone, Thomas is a fourth-generation Irish American in a highly medical family – his father, uncle, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew all holding prominent roles in health care and the title “Dr. McGinn.”

Thomas is an enthusiast of traditional Irish music and closely follows the Irish national rugby team and Gaelic spor ts. The latter has taken on special meaning as Gaelic football from Ireland and the U.S. support the rebuilding of his childhood hometown of Breezy Point, where his mother and several other family members still live.

Martin McGlynn

up in a very Irish household, noting her father’s help in campaigning for President John F. Kennedy.

Mary attended Boston University where she received a B.A., later earning her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School where she graduated magna cum laude. Mary has received numerous awards throughout her career including the Environmental Merit Award from the EPA. Mary and her husband Lawrence live in Massachusetts with their three children Evan, Haley, and Molly.

Martin McGlynn joined StemCells, Inc. in January of 2001 as president and CEO and was elected to its board of directors in 2001.

Martin has spent several decades as a senior executive in the life sciences industry in Europe, Canada and the United States but began his career in Manufacturing Operations with Becton Dickinson, Ireland Ltd. In 1990, he joined the BOC Group as President of Anaquest Inc., a global leader in anesthesia and

acute care pharmaceutical, headquartered in New Jersey, and subsequent to its acquisition by the BOC group, was also appointed managing director of Delta Biotechnology (UK) Ltd., a leader in the discovery and development of recombinant human proteins from yeast expression systems. In 1994, he became president and CEO of Pharmadigm, Inc., a privately owned, start-up, engaged in the research and development of a new class of intravenously administered anti-inflammatory agents.

A Dublin native, Martin holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University College, Dublin. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Confederation of Irish Industries and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada, and currently serves as an Officer of the Board of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. He and his wife Kamar have six children.

Terry McGuire

In 1996, Terry McGuire was a founding member of Polaris Partners, which has since rapidly expanded with investments in over 100 companies with offices in Massachusetts, California, and Dublin, and is now one of the leading venture capitalist firms investing in technology and healthcare companies.

In addition to Polaris,Terry has co-founded a number of other companies including Inspire Pharmaceuticals, AIR, and MicroCHIPS, a far cry from his first job cleaning the dance studio that his mother and aunt owned in his youth.

It was here though where he was introduced to his first taste of the hard working business world.

“It didn’t pay very well,” he says. “But it was my first exposure to entrepreneurship as I watched the effort it took to own your own business.”

Terry is a third-generation Irish American with Roscommon roots on his father’s side. Of being Irish, he says it’s “about being part of a presentday community that shares important values which include a strong work ethic, the importance of family, and a love of life.”

With a B.S. in physics and economics from Hobar t College, an M.S. in engineering from the Thayer School at Dar tmouth, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and an honorary J.D. from Ohio Wesleyan University, this credo is something Terry has followed his whole life. Originally from Buffalo, Terry currently resides in Massachusetts with his wife Carolyn and three kids Bar ton, Seamas, and Eileen.

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Emma Meagher, M.D.

Dr. Emma Meagher is an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her tenure at Penn, Emma was a senior lecturer of cardiovascular medicine at Mater Hospital in University College Dublin following her completion of a residency there.

While at Penn, Emma, with colleagues from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, pioneered a

”I only use technology to augment and not replace the personal care each patient needs.”

– Joe Mulvehill

Joseph Mulvehill, M.D.

mentor-leadership training program that has seen 75 mentors trained since 2012. Emma has also been highly prolific in the academic world with interests in the development of novel education programs in translational research and of therapeutics for dyslipidemia.

Emma is a native of Dublin with family from Offaly, Tipperary, McMullin, and Cavan on her father and mother’s sides. She says of her Irish heritage, “it is who I am.” Emma attended the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland where she graduated summa cum laude, receiving a medical degree. Emma is an active member of many organizations including the board of directors for the National Association for Clinical and Translational Science, where she serves as the chair for Education and Mentoring. Among her many honors, Emma is the recipient of two National Institute of Health Clinical Associate Physician Research Awards and numerous awards for teaching excellence, including the university’s highest teaching honor, the Lindback Award for Medical Education.

Emma and her husband Noel Williams have four children, Cameron, Cia, Simon, and Nicole.

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Dr. Joe Mulvehill obtained his medical degree from SUNY Stony Brook and completed his training in internal medicine at Albert Einstein Medical College. A diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and recognized as one of Castel Connolly’s Top Doctors and Best Doctors by New York magazine, Joe’s metropolitan New York practice was rated among one of five “best concierge-medicine practices nationwide”

by Town & Country. Joe is among a small group of New York physicians who pioneered the concept of concierge medicine, with the goal of restoring to his practice the intimate doctor/patient relationship he experienced while growing up in rural Ireland. He believes that finding the solution to medical problems must be accomplished in the context of each patient’s life.

Joe believes in innovation, and his use of Internet-based solutions to stay in contact with his patients has become an integral part of his everyday practice. However, he says, “I only use technology to augment and not replace the personal care that each patient needs,” which he believes is paramount to the doctor/patient relationship. To this end, a patient’s ongoing medical history is consolidated into a Personal Health Record, which allows each patient to access his or her

vital medical information.This Personal Health Record, which helps to create a closer bond between doctor and patient, is now available to treating physicians wherever they happen to be.

Karen Myrick, D.N.P.

Dr. Karen Myrick, is a Doctor of Nursing Practice and a nurse practitioner. She is currently a professor at Quinnipiac University with a joint appointment in the School of Nursing and the Frank Netter School of Medicine. She practices clinically as a nurse practitioner in the specialties of Family Medicine and Sports Medicine in Avon, CT. Her specialties have ranged from labor and delivery, emergency medicine, family and urgent care, as well as orthopedics and sports medicine.

Also a nurse researcher, Karen’s focus has been athletes and sports medicine.The recipient of multiple grants, she developed a newly designed physical examination technique for determining hip labral tears called The Hip Internal Rotation with Distraction (THIRD) test. More recently, Karen received an award for “Outstanding Poster” at a national nurse practitioner conference, for her work on “Recruiting and Retaining the Best and the Brightest Nurse Practitioner Faculty.” In addition to publishing regularly in peer-reviewed journals, Karen has successfully composed an academic book chapter on preventing childhood obesity.

A 5-time half marathon finisher and 18-time triathlete, her personal hobbies keep her aligned with her patients and research.

Thomas Nealon, III, J.D.

Tom Nealon is the national board chair of the American Liver Foundation, one of the leading resources of liver disease research, prevention, and treatment. In addition to his time at ALF, Tom is also the vice chairman and director of legal affairs LNR Partners, LLC, a commercial mortgagebacked securities industry he joined in 1992.

Born in Scranton, PA,Tom is a second-generation Irish American with Irish ancestry on both sides, including County Mayo from his father Tom and Kilkenny from his mother Mary Catherine. He is proud of his Irish ancestry, particularly his maternal grandfather who at 21 emigrated to the U.S. 100 years ago, and fondly remembers summers with him in western Pennsylvania. “I learned much from him about hard work and respect for others and always maintaining a sense of dignity in everything I do in life. I

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owe much in my life to my Irish heritage.”

Working as a plumber at 16, Tom “gained a great respect for the hard work and determination that trades people put into their work,” he says. “It always gave me a revelation and a realization that if I aspired to do anything else in life I needed to work hard to attain it.” An avid runner, Tom ran the Boston marathon in 2002 and has helped raise over $1.5 million for the American Liver Foundation. He currently lives in New York with his wife Marjie and his five children Thomas, Peter, Brian, Alexander, and Carlyle.

James Joseph O’Connell, M.D.

Dr. James Joseph O’Connell is one of the founding physicians and president of the Boston Health Care of the Homeless Program and director of the Homeless Families Program. Besides being the president of the BHCHP, James is a practicing physician at one of the program’s many clinics throughout Boston. He has also taught medicine at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University. He also holds seats on many health care boards and is a prolific author of books and journal articles.

James’s father’s family hails from the Dingle Bay in County Kerry while his mother’s family comes from Cork. Both sides immigrated after the Great Famine to Newport, RI, where he was born and raised and still thinks of as home.

James graduated Salutatorian in 1970 from the University of Notre Dame, and earned an M.A. in theology at St. John’s College, Cambridge, England in 1972. He then went on to study medicine at Harvard Medical School. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, he was recently awarded the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, an award for which past recipients include Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter.

Christopher O’Connor, M.D.

Garrett O’Connor

Dr. Christopher O’Connor is the Richard Stack Distinguished Professor of Cardiology and a professor of medicine at Duke University, which he joined in 1989. He is also chief of the Division of Cardiology and the director of the Duke Heart Center.

A leading researcher in the field of cardiology, Christopher’s findings have been influential to the world of medicine having been one of the principal investigators of the landmark HFACTION clinical trial, which studied exercise training in heart failure patients and led to in-

Dr. Garrett O’Connor was born in Dublin, graduated as a physician from the Royal College of Surgeons, and later trained in psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. For more than forty years Garrett has lectured, consulted and led workshops on addiction and related topics in the United States and abroad, and has published scientific articles in a variety of peer-reviewed medical journals.

He was chief psychiatrist of the Betty Ford Center from 2002-2008, and the founding president of the Betty Ford Institute from 2008-2012.

Currently he is director of the Elaine Breslow Addiction Institute and medical advisor for the Beit T’Shuvah Addiction Treatment Program.

Garrett has been in personal recovery from alcoholism since March 6, 1977, and is widely known for using his own life story as a tool for teaching about recovery to patients, medical students, and other audiences, including his fellow physicians. He has been married to the actress/writer/director Fionnula Flanagan for 42 years. They have two sons, a daughter-in-law, a granddaughter, and two great grandsons, all of whom are in long-term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs, (with the exception of the great-grandsons who are only 5 years and 3 weeks of age).

ternational changes in cardiac guidelines and rehabilitation.

Christopher was born in Takoma Park, Maryland and is a third-generation Irish American with ancestry from Killarney on his father’s side. His Irish ancestry, he says, “has given me the willingness to achieve excellence in a socially responsible way,” and has guided him throughout his life, beginning with his first job as a lifeguard and throughout his career.

Christopher earned both his B.S. and M.D. at the University of Maryland, strengthening the qualities of what he finds to be in a good leader : vision, listening, and making decisions with transparency.

These qualities have also been useful in Christopher’s other leadership roles with the Heart Failure Society of America and the American College of Cardiology.

He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife Sue and their children Ryan, Erin, Sean, and Kyle.

Daniel O’Day

Daniel O’Day is the chief operating officer of the pharmaceutical division of Roche, the world’s leading biotech company, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and with offices in more than 150 countries, including Ireland.

O’Day was appointed COO in 2012 having previously been the COO for the diagnostics division of Roche since 2010. Beginning in 1987 as part of Roche’s commercial and sales team Daniel later moved to Switzerland for roles in global marketing and lifecycle management team in 2001. Since then, he has been head of corporate planning in Japan, general manager in Denmark, and president of Roche Molecular Diagnostics in California.

Daniel was born in Texas and is a third generation Irish American with family from Ennis, County Clare on his father’s side. “The perseverance of my Irish ancestors is a daily motivation to me professionally and personally,” O’Day says.

O’Day’s first job was performing the “hard physical labor” of landscaping, which, he says, “inspired AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 57

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Dennis Purcell

me to pursue my education.” Daniel attended Georgetown University and Columbia University receiving a B.S. in biology and an M.B.A. Daniel currently lives in Switzerland with his wife Mara and children Tierney, Meghan, and Brendan.

Joseph O'Neill, M.D.

Dr. Joseph O'Neill tackled arguably the largest medical crisis of our time – the AIDS crisis.

He is globally recognized for his work in public health and medicine, and was credited by President George W. Bush, who named him as his Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy in July, 2002, as being the “architect” of his Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest public health program in history.

With his passion for the medically underserved, Joseph influenced President Bush's agenda, and helped secure the proposed $15 billion emergency plan for AIDS relief in African and Caribbean countries.

As a professor of medicine and director of global initiatives at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, he was responsible for all international activities in Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Law, Social Work and Graduate Studies. Activities range from conducting medical disaster relief in Haiti after the earthquake, delivering HIV/AIDS care in sub-Saharan Africa and establishing on line training programs for students interested in global health.

In the past year he co founded a start up company dedicated to genetic testing for families called Life Span Medical Sciences and serves as its Chief Executive Officer.

Joseph has a long-standing interest in end of life and hospice care. He has served on the advisory boards for several organizations in this arena including the Diana, Princess of Wales Fund and the African Palliative Care Association. He has recently joined the Palliative Care and Hospice program at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as a fellow.

He is proud of his Irish heritage. His maternal grandparents are from Co. Sligo, and the O'Neill side hails from CO. Mayo.

Eileen O’Reilly, M.D.

With her medical degree from Trinity College Dublin, Dr. Eileen O’Reilly is a gastrointestinal medical oncologist who serves as an associate director of the Rubenstein Pancreas Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and is an associate professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She completed her

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fellowship training at MSKCC and has been a faculty member in the GI Oncology service at MSKCC since then. Her primary research initiatives include integration of molecular-based therapies and novel therapeutics for the treatment of pancreatic cancer along with development of adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapy.

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma, remains one of the most challenging malignancies. Of 44,000 people diagnosed in 2012, 37,000 died from the disease. “To have a major impact in terms of outcomes, we need to be able to screen successfully and diagnose the disease earlier. Both of those are elusive challenges at the moment,” Eileen, who is Irish-born, said in an interview with Joe Cavallo.

At a national level, Eileen is the chair of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Pancreas Task Force, and a member of the Alliance Co-operative group Gastrointestinal core committee. Dr. O’Reilly is also an associate chair of the MSKCC IRB and Privacy Board, a member of Research Council and is the recent past president of the MSKCC medical staff.

”We need to be able to screen successfully and diagnose the disease earlier.

Both of those are elusive challenges at the moment.”

– Eileen O’Reilly

Dennis Purcell has served as the senior managing director of Aisling Capital since February 2000, which has approximately $1.7 billion of assets under management.

Prior to joining Aisling Capital, Dennis served as managing director of the Life Sciences Investment Banking Group at Chase H&Q for over five years.

During his tenure, BioWorld and other industry publications cited H&Q as the leading underwriter of life sciences securities. Dennis is a frequent commentator on the industry and has been honored in the “Biotech Hall of Fame” by Genetic Engineering News, named to the Biotechnology All-Stars list by Forbes ASAP and cited as one of the top 100 contributors to the biotechnology industry.

He has served as a member of the Advisory Council at Harvard Medical School, the board of directors of the Biotechnology Industry Association, as well as the New York Biotechnology Association and the Irvington Institute.

He also serves on the board of L.E.K. consulting.

Dennis received his M.B.A. from Harvard University and his B.S. in accounting from the University of Delaware.

Eamonn Quigley

Eamonn M. M. Quigley is David M. Underwood Chair of Medicine in Digestive Disorders, chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston. He is also a principal investigator at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) in Cork, Ireland.

A native of west Cork, Eamonn earned his medical degree from University College Cork before completing his intern year at St Finbarr’s hospital in Cork. In 1986, he joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha where he ultimately served as chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Returning to Cork in 1998, he served as dean of the Medical School at UCC for seven years and has been a principal investigator at the APC since its inception.

His primary research interest is the gastrointestinal system, particularly irritable bowel syndrome, gastrointestinal motility, and the role of the gut microbiota in health and in gastrointestinal and metabolic disorders.

Eamonn is married to a UCC classmate, Una (née O’Sullivan) with whom he has

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“Never take anything for granted, take pride in what you do, stay humble.”

– Jason Ryan

four children, Joanna, Killian, Finola, and Aisling, and one grandchild, Nuala Saroja Bishu.

Jason Ryan

Jason Ryan is the senior vice president of finance at Foundation Medicine, a breakthrough company in the fight against cancer. Over the past year as senior vice president of Foundation Medicine, Jason has seen the company double in size, go public, expand overseas, and implement new products, all while helping over 15,000 cancer patients battle their disease.

granted, take pride in what you do, stay humble.”

Jason attended Bates College receiving a B.S. and Babson College where he received an M.B.A. He also has earned a C.P.A. in Massachusetts, where he and his wife Jennifer currently reside with their two children James and Hazel.

Emer Smyth, Ph.D.

Dr. Emer Smyth is a research associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania where she is a member of both the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and the Cardiovascular Institute. Her current research targets how some anti-inflammatory drugs consistently reduce incidence, recurrence and/or mortality in breast and other cancers.

Among her many awards, most recently Emer received both a Translational Biomedical Imaging Center (TBIC) Pilot Award and the Joseph and Josephine Rabinowitz Award for Excellence in Research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine for the 2013-2014 academic year. She also served recently the vice chair of the Women’s Leadership Committee within the American Heart Association’s Council on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

Emer has come a long way since she would work six days a week in her father’s Dublin butcher shop on winter and summer holidays.

She was born and raised in Dublin and is an alumna of University College, Dublin for both her B.Sc. and Ph.D., but has now been out of the country for almost as long as she lived there. And yet, “although I carry an American passport and have American children,” she says, “I am now and always will be Irish. It is part of the very essence of who I am.” She and her husband have three children, Maeve, Fina, and Cormac.

Fionnuala Walsh, Ph.D.

Born in Concord, MA, Jason is a third-generation Irish American with Irish ancestry dating back six generations. His paternal relatives on his father’s side hail from Cork, Limerick, and Fermanagh, and from Limerick and Roscommon on his mother’s. In his heritage Jason finds the tools that made him who he is today saying, “from my Irish ancestry comes my (rather ubiquitous) sense of humor, sense of fairness and caring, openness, and work ethic. I see these traits in my parents and in their parents – never take anything for

stance, which she calls “overwhelming and exciting all at once,” as well as kept her committed and passionate about her education, having received a bachelor’s and doctoral degree in chemistry from University College Dublin. Fionnuala and her husband Myles O’Neill have three children, Sophie, Eoin, and Kevin.

James Watson, M.D.

Dr. James Watson is a Nobel prize-winning scientist, chancellor emeritus of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and 2011 inductee to the Irish America Hall of Fame. He was one of the key co-discoverer’s who unraveled the structure of the DNA while a student at Cambridge University, one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. It resulted in a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1962. Later, he accepted a position in the biology department at Harvard University. It was here where he wrote his classic Molecular Biology of the Gene and the award-winning Double Helix. After Harvard, James led the Cold Harbor Laboratory, where he devoted his energies to setting up the Human Genome Project.

“Deeply proud” of his Irish ancestry, James is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Tipperary. His great-grandparents had emigrated to Ireland in the 1840s, settling in Ohio and later moving to Indiana.

He has received numerous awards throughout the years including the National Medal of Science, the city of Philadelphia Liberty Medal, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal Award by the American Philosophical Society. In 1962, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and, in 1977, he received from President Ford the Medal of Freedom. In addition to numerous honorary degrees, in 2002, Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary Knight of the British Empire.

Dr. Fionnuala Walsh is the senior vice president of global quality for Eli Lilly and Company, having joined the company in 1988 at its manufacturing site in Kinsale, Ireland.Throughout her time at Lilly, Fionnuala has held numerous positions in everything from technical services and laboratory analytics to management positions in the manufacturing science and technology sector and has held her current role since 2007.

A Dublin native, Fionnuala says her parents instilled her with the qualities necessary she finds in being a great leader: courage and resilience, allowing her to take pride in “belonging to a global diaspora.” This is what helped Fionnuala land her first job as head of quality for a global drug subAUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 59

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Wants to

Dr. Garret FitzGerald

He works between the strands of basic discovery and clinical trial, national research and global connection, harnessing the power of diaspora.

By Adam Farley

r. Garret FitzGerald, a.k.a. “Big G” as faculty and students sometimes call him according to a 2001 Penn Medicine article, is a humble man with a proclivity for speaking about his research in equal medical and metaphoric terms. He fell into medicine through “a series of accidents” he thinks, though his earnest quest for knowledge is anything but.

Born and bred in Graystones, Co. Wicklow, he went to high school at a time when specialization in either the arts or the sciences wasn’t required as it is now. His grandfather had been a professor of Greek, he says, “So I did Greek and Latin and French and German and English and Irish,” but also rounded out his linguistics with and math and physics. It’s clear his secondary school studies have stayed with him.

Now Dr. FitzGerald heads the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT) at the University of Pennsylvania. The institute, founded in 2004, is at the cutting edge of biomedical and public health research and aims to bridge the divide between basic science and what Dr. FitzGerald calls “the realization of clinical promise.”

Basic research is what is commonly called “blue skies” research, meaning “you study the sky because it’s there, not because you’re looking for a way to get to Mars,” FitzGerald says. “And of course most of our greatest discoveries that have affected human health or the way we live have come from that type of research. They haven’t come because somebody woke up in the night and said, ‘I’m going to develop a non-stick frying pan.’ They came because people went to the moon and a by-product was a non-stick frying pan.”

This, however, is highly problematic for Dr. FitzGerald and other researchers, because scientists can’t rely on serendipity alone to improve human life. What’s more is that scientists sometimes have trouble relying on each other to efficiently make the transition from discovery to practice. “As you can imagine, people are educated and tend to be trained in either basic science or clinical research.

Very few people have the training that actually straddles what we call the translational divide.

“Our area focuses right where basic science abuts the earliest stages of clinical investigation. And that’s actually the biggest hurdle in drug development… so our focus has been on really trying to increase the number of people who have the expertise that bridges the two very different disciplines,” he says. “Objective number two is to identify and reduce the barriers to their science in that space be-

D

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Garret FitzGerald, M.D.

tween basic research and early clinical development.”

In its decade of existence, the institute has enjoyed relative prominence. More than 100 people have graduated from the ITMAT with master’s degrees in translational medicine, and in addition to its core faculty of about 40, the institute also has what Dr. FitzGerald calls a “virtual faculty membership” of collaborators from across the Penn campus. All together, ITMAT has about 2,000 members, has been at the cusp of new research initiatives, and would appear to have made translational medicine into something of a zeitgeist.

There are now centers for translational medicine across the world, including Singapore, Malaysia, Finland, Germany, and the U.K. Despite these accomplishments, Dr. FitzGerald is hesitant to make any causal argument about the institute’s responsibility in the growth of translational medicine as a field. “It’s a cultural change,” he says. “Ours was the first institute of this sort in the world, and the institution undertook a commitment that this would take ten years or twenty years to change the culture.”

That cultural change has two parts, according to Dr. FitzGerald, one inside the academy, and one outside. In developing a drug, he

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says, “you need to harness the expertise of chemists, of pharmacol- to both Ireland and the U.K. and it is partly to his credit that Ireland ogists, of informaticists, of experts in animal models, of clinicians, now spends billions of government money on medical research. To of trial design people, people of very different disciplines. Tradi- put this in perspective, when Dr. FitzGerald returned to Ireland in tionally all those people act in distinct and often times competing 1991 for the first time in more than a decade, his lab’s research departments within an academic medical center, and one of the budget was roughly six million pounds he estimates, from a mix of things that we’ve really provoked is a much more interdisciplinary private investors and external sources like the NIH and EU, while interaction between investigators within the institution.” the entire national research budget for medical science for the whole The second change he’d like to see, and is just starting to notice, country “was five-something,” he says. comes from collaborations with outside private sector companies.

Recognizing that Ireland could do more with public money, he “The traditional approach has been that large, vertically integrated attempted to replicate the system that had worked so well in the companies like Pfizer or Merck would do everything from basic United States, but was quickly met with resistance. He and coldiscovery all the way through to clinical trials and marketing for a league Desmond Fitzgerald (small “g,” no relation) managed to new drug,” Dr. FitzGerald explains. found the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at UCD and the Mater “Now that system is progressively breaking down so that the mul- Misericordiae Hospital, before it moved to the Royal College of tiple modules along the way, the very different types of expertise Surgeons in Dublin. But trying to increase the amount of public that you need along the way, can be drawn not just from within a funding in a way that mirrored the American system quickly enlarge, vertically integrated, company, but at various stages in the trenched the two of them in a political mire which Garret FitzGerald process from academic centers, from biotech companies, from other calls “a brief and bruising experience,” after which he left for Penn. large, vertically integrated companies, from different geographies.

“But,” he concedes, “it turns out that one of the more constructive We’re moving to a sort of modular approach to drug discovery and things I did for Irish science was leave, because shortly after that development. Our objective is to enthe government decided they might hance the ability of our investigators invest in science and I think the role to play in that space.” that I could play was – I was very faIn the years since the institute was miliar with the realities and confounded, its members have become straints of the system on the ground far more interconnected as rein Ireland and yet because I left I searchers than those who did not didn’t have a dog in the race.” elect to join and translational mediNow though, the science research cine has become one of the most budget is thriving, and was largely bourgeoning fields in the medical inmaintained during the recession, sigdustry. Ever humble, and thinking nifying a public change in perceplike a scientist, Dr. FitzGerald caution about scientific research. That tions that this correlation doesn’t preservation, Dr. FitzGerald notes, mean causation. “was almost counter-cultural” in a “Now the problem always is country where the popular icons whether this is just a coincidence were of literature, poets, and music, over the time course of the existence ignoring centuries of what he sees as of this institute, or if this is a result a “grand tradition of science.”

Enda Kenny presenting Dr. FitzGerald with the of the institute. And that’s a difficult Taoiseach Dr. FitzGerald hypothesizes that inaugural Science Foundation Ireland Award this past one because we don’t have a control March. Dr. FitzGerald was instrumental in SFI’s foundation. the Republican state, perhaps uningroup.” But, he says, “I would say tentionally, excluded that history of success has many fathers, and we can claim that we were one of science “because it was mostly the Anglo-Irish Protestants who had them. We don’t aspire to be anything more than that.” the resources to indulge in science. So although we have many figHowever success is defined for the ITMAT though, for Dr. ures of considerable stature in our history of science, the Irish State, FitzGerald himself, it is easily measured. Over the course of his 35- when it was founded, largely ignored them.” year career, he has published scores of research papers, worked in Even Éamon De Valera, himself a mathematician, was contradicIreland, England, and the U.S., and has received numerous awards, tory, FitzGerald notes. “Despite the fact that he gave [Erwin] including most recently the inaugural Science Foundation Ireland Schrödinger a home during the Second World War – Schrödinger Award this past March. In fact, he was instrumental in the process stayed in his house – and he developed an institute for him, the Inthat gave birth to Science Foundation Ireland in the early 2000s. stitute for Applied Physics, which still exists, the state he led never Moreover, in the previous 15-20 years, he has acted as an advisor made an investment up until the early 1990s.”

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And while this has certainly been a boon for the economy and for medical education in the years since, Dr. FitzGerald still, like any good researcher, sees room for improvement. Ireland, he thinks, is making a “classic mistake of government” by, perhaps counter-intuitively coming from FitzGerald, prioritizing translational research and shifting focus away from basic research.

“In other words, they wanted near-term gain and they wanted to introduce into their funding decisions the likelihood of commercial realization [as a form of] payback for the state investment,” he explains. While he admits this is a natural reflex of many investors, particularly national governments, he would like to see a readjustment of balance between funding for basic research and clinical research.

“A classical, small-village argument against investment in science in the past was, ‘Oh we’re a small country, we’re not going to make any big discoveries. We should let the Americans and the Germans make them themselves and then we’ll apply them.’ That’s nonsense. We’ve seen it in other domains of our activity. We can play on the international stage. And you don’t have to build MIT in Dublin to do it. You just need to enable people to realize their own potential.

“Will there be individuals who do amazing things? Yes there will, but increasingly science is a team sport and we want our guys to be able to play on Manchester United or Bayern Munich or whatever team you want to choose for science. If you take the players on those teams they’re drawn from everywhere. Barcelona has Messi and Neymar. So we want Irish players on those teams. That’s what’s realistic.

“What Ireland has absolutely got the capability to do is to invest and develop investigators who have the resource, the education and the infrastructure to play in this global game. To be partners with people in Switzerland or the United States or New Zealand in pursuing big questions in sci-

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ence. We can and we should!”

The soccer analogy is an apt one. At the time we spoke, the World Cup quarterfinals were just beginning and national pride was in full swing. But, as Dr. FitzGerald observed, Messi, the star striker for Argentina, and Neymar, Brazil’s striking jewel, both play abroad between national tournaments.

“That’s where our traditions of people emigrating is actually our biggest strength,”

the avid sports fan says, tying it together.

“Because we emigrate, some of us go back, some of us don’t. It doesn’t matter. You’re creating a scientific diaspora which enhances the ability to develop the capital at home.”

“An ironic twist of fate is that that very paucity of resource propelled me out to train with world-leading figures. In a sense, the availability of resource to train within Ireland now reduces that creative insecurity that prompted people to go. And I think it’s very important in training to widen the perspectives and to go, particularly from a small country, to train at least part of the time, if not all of the time, abroad.”

In fact, he says, he thinks it’s a mistake to

ABOVE: Dr. FitzGerald (far right) stands in the ITMAT building with his research group. BELOW: The Smilow Center for Translational Research where the ITMAT is housed at U. Penn.

try to force people into the decision of whether to remain abroad or return. “What you do is you create the opportunity for them to return, and for those who don’t, you try to harness their goodwill to create the sorts of opportunities that I afford in my own lab.” Dr. FitzGerald is referring to his training program, in which he takes four high school students from Dublin and two students from UCD, his alma mater, to join twenty other students from around the globe to participate in a rotational research project for 6-7 weeks each summer.

It is interesting to think that one of the leading Irish figures in cardiovascular science and translational medicine almost wasn’t. When he’d told his grandmother he’d been accepted to medical school, she told him flatly, “Garret, any fool can be a doctor,” so he thought he would be a dentist, also in part because he was impressed with “a guy who had taken a tooth out.” That guy, however, told him not to pursue pre-dent and go into pre-med. FitzGerald says that advice made a huge impact, “so two weeks before I had to sign up for one or the other I signed up for pre-med. It wasn’t very strategic.”

Then, he almost dropped out, but his future wife would persuade him to remain enrolled.

Finally, he had an instructor who made everything click. The teacher emphasized “that we didn’t know the answers and that medicine and science were a series of asking questions,” says Dr. FitzGerald, who has built his entire career around challenging common knowledge about existing drugs and systemic practices in the medical industry.

“You should be inquisitive and you shouldn’t accept dogma; you should question dogma. And that really stayed with me,” He pauses.

“I was always inquisitive, I guess.” IA

The Pink Angels

are deeply honored to establish

Bridget Spence, née Mooney, was diagnosed with stage lV breast cancer at 21 and with the help of her family, looked the disease square in the eye and fought with courage, dignity, passion and friendship.

The Bridget Spence Fund for Young Women with Breast Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

With the support of the Dana-Farber fund development group, The Pink Angels have made a $100,000 commitment to establish the Bridget Spence Fund as a lasting and meaningful tribute to their dear friend who passed away in 2013 at the age of 29.

In memory and celebration of Bridget’s incredible life, the fund will support ongoing education, outreach and groundbreaking research under the direction of Bridget’s clinician, Dr. Ann Partridge, founder of the Young Women with Cancer Survivorship Program.

Bridget gave herself fully to finding a cure – while knowing the cure would not likely be found in time to help her. She was Susan G. Komen’s national face the last year of her life and spoke at conferences all over the country telling her story of the shocking diagnosis, of fulfilling many of her dreams, of running out of trials as her health deteriorated, and of the importance of finding a cure.

pink angels.indd 1

Please make a contribution to “The Pink Angels” targeted for this longterm project and its groundbreaking research so that future young women everywhere will benefit from Bridget’s extraordinary determination and spirit.

For more info or to make a donation, visit thepinkangels.org/bridgetsfund

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CELIAC DISEASE

What You Should Know about this condition that is common to the Irish Dr. Peter Green is Director, Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University.

Here, he talks to Patricia Harty.

eliac disease has been Dr. Peter Green’s focus for almost 20 years, with equal concentration on patient care and research. He is one of the few physicians in the United States with an intense clinical academic interest and expertise in the disease, and is the author of Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic, which has been called “the definitive resource for celiacs and those yet to be diagnosed.”

Dr. Green first came to my attention when I read an article he had written on how JFK’s medical problems could have been caused by celiac disease. On speaking to Dr. Green, I learned that he had treated Frank McCourt, the Irish writer who died of complications related to melanoma, and that patients with celiac disease have an increased risk of melanoma, and other autoimmune diseases.

C

What is celiac disease?

Celiac disease is caused by ingestion of gluten, which is the main protein component of wheat and related cereals, rye, and barley. The small intestine develops villous atrophy that results in difficulties in the absorption of nutrients. In Kennedy’s case, his problems started in childhood.

64 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Unprocessed vegetables are naturally gluten-free.

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There is no cure for celiac disease, however it can be effectively controlled by diet alone He had gastrointestinal symptoms, weight and growth problems as well as fatigue, and later in life, he suffered from abdominal pain, diarrhea, weight loss, osteoporosis, migraine, and Addison’s disease. While it’s not clear that his physicians obtained a definite diagnosis, a review of his medical history raised the possibility that he had celiac disease.

Why is it that the disease often goes undiagnosed?

The greatest problem is physician awareness. There was a lot of research on celiac disease in the sixties but then it fell away, and that is probably related to the pharmaceutical industry having such a major role in the direction of health care in this country – the bulk of medical research is driven by pharmaceutical industry interest, so there was not much taught [in medical schools] because the educators were not working on celiac disease. The American College of Physicians have not had celiac disease on their educational program at their annual meeting for as long as we look back.

The rate of diagnosis can be improved by more research, leading to more publications, leading to more education of physicians. The pharmaceutical industry is now getting involved and there are some drugs that are now in Phase 2.

The latest figures show that only 17 percent of those with celiac disease in this country are currently aware that they have it, and that would suggest that physicians are not making proper diagnosis. There’s a study in Finland that says the rate of diagnosis of celiac goes up when you educate the doctors.

Does celiac have a relationship with other autoimmune diseases?

Yes, and it’s a bit unclear what the mechanism of the association is – whether there’s an autoimmune connection – a genetic connection – or if it’s related to the fact that having celiac increases the risk of having other autoimmune conditions. There was a study done

in Italy that showed that the earlier the rate of diagnosis in age the less chance of getting other autoimmune conditions and then another study in France that shows that if, after diagnosis, people are strict with the diet there is less likelihood of them getting more autoimmune conditions.

There’s also a suggestion that people who have Hemochromatosis (known as the Celtic Curse, the disease that causes the body to absorb too much iron) have more celiac disease because the celiac disease is protective of the damaging effects of Hemochromatosis. So evolutionary wise they may run along together.

Some claim that there is an association between celiac disease and schizophrenia. Is that true?

There is some association with celiac disease but it’s hard to know how much that relates to each individual patient with both but it does appear to be related.

So who should be tested?

Those showing symptoms. Irritable bowel type symptoms or fatigue or if they get diagnosed with amentia or osteoporosis or unusual neurological symptoms, or if a patient has low cholesterol then you should suspect celiac – especially low HDL, they should ask to be tested for celiac and typically if the doctor says, you can’t have that because you are too fat or too tall or something, patients should say, “I want to be tested please,” because doctors often say that because they are not aware.

What peaked your interest in the disease?

I diagnosed a lot more patients than my colleagues because I had learned about it in Australia where we were told in medical school that it was common – but people here in the U.S. thought it wasn’t very common so naturally I seemed to diagnose a lot more than other doctors. And I like doing research so seeing a lot of patients led to more research in that area.

And the demand for patients to be seen led to us bring in more doctors to see them so [the center] has grown quite exponentially.

Is there a cure?

Diet can wholly reverse the damage and on a gluten free diet all the abnormalities can go back to normal. So that is the treatment. There isn’t any other treatment available. There are some medications that are being developed but they are going to take a while.

Do patients find the gluten free diet hard to adjust to?

I think there’s a lot of difficulty when people get diagnosed. They can get anxious – and angry and get depressed. It’s a pretty big deal because you have to learn what not to eat but also what to eat and that probably is the more difficult thing to do because you can easily learn not what to eat but you have to be able to substitute nutritious foods. We have a very experienced dietitian here and in addition to cooking classes we offer nutrition strategies for finding enjoyable food alternatives.

What about alcohol. Is it allowed?

Distilled liquor is fine, but beer is not distilled, it is brewed from barley hops, so unless it is brewed from sorghum or something like that – it’s got gluten so people with celiac shouldn’t have it. IA For more information on celiac disease visit: celiacdiseasecenter.columbia.edu/

Peter Green

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WHY THEY HELP

A Giant Among

Humanitarians Tom Moran writes that his involvement with Concern Worldwide began with Aengus Finucane, the Limerick-born priest who founded the Irish relief organization.

s Chairman of Concern Worldwide U.S., I have traveled to almost a dozen countries where we work in as many years – from Afghanistan, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Haiti. It was on a recent visit to Haiti that I was reminded that every time I make the journey to these extremely poor and vulnerable communities, I am walking in the footsteps of a giant.

In 2008, Haiti was the very last country that Father Aengus Finucane visited in his remarkable lifetime, and his legacy was unmistakable in Concern’s work there.

Aengus truly was a giant among humanitarians. As a young mis-

helped save lives in Syria and Lebanon, the Philippines and at the very end of 2013, South Sudan. In all, our 3,000 staff members reached some seven million people in 27 countries, and of the nearly $30 million raised here in the U.S., 92 percent went directly to programs.

One of Aengus’s favorite quotes was by the Indian poet Tagore: “Build bridges by your lives across a gaping world blasted by hatred.” I was reminded of this call to action on a recent visit to Afghanistan, in many ways a symbol of a world blasted by hatred.

At the Concern-supported Khashai Dun School, high in the mountainous district of Rustaq, the future can be seen in the eyes

sionary in Biafra, he famously laid a “19-stone tackle” on a gun-wielding bandit attempting to steal aid supplies like the former rugby standout he was. But his true magnitude as a person was measured across a 40-year span beginning in Concern’s very earliest days in 1968; extending into the 1970s, when he became the first country director in Bangladesh for the growing secular, international non-governmental organization; the 1980s, when he was named Chief Executive; the 1990s, when he would be the driving force behind the establishment of Concern Worldwide U.S.; and finally, the new millennium, when despite advancing age and failing health he remained committed to living Concern’s mission, spreading awareness, raising funds, and doing his part to ensure that the organization would continue to save and change millions of lives. This will be Aengus’s legacy.

Since 1968, Concern has been providing immediate safety nets to those beset by disaster, and building ladders out of poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Last year, ongoing development programs delivered impact and innovation, while emergency responses

of nine-year-old third-grader Sediqa. They lit up as she told us she intends to be a teacher when she grows up – like most of the girls in her class. It’s the kind of dream that would not exist but for Concern’s work.

The harsh reality is that girls in most of Afghanistan must leave school at age twelve, but it’s a process, and Concern is committed.

I’m placing great hope in Sediqa and a generation of women who will read, write and do basic math, and want to ensure those skills are handed down to the next generation of girls. Change will come in Afghanistan.

This ethos of being undeterred by harsh realities and helping the poorest and most vulnerable transform their lives was embodied by Aengus, and it continues to define everyone who works for Concern. I am proud to have a part in it.

– Tom Moran Chairman, CEO, and President of Mutual of America Chairman of Concern Worldwide U.S.

A

ABOVE LEFT: Tom Moran in Ethiopia. ABOVE RIGHT: Father Aengus Finucane, the founder of Concern Worldwide, in Haiti.

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Angel Smiles

Roma Downey on her work with Operation Smile and why she does it.

have been a spokesperson for a Roma Downey wonderful volunteer organization with one of Operation Smile for almost 20 the babies years. I have traveled with them on helped by the Operation international medical missions to Smile team.

Asia, to Central America, and to the Middle East. The work they do is amazing as they transform the lives of thousands of children who have been born with facial deformities, primarily cleft lips and cleft pallets. These children suffer and are often ridiculed and shunned because of how they look and are often under nourished because they have difficulty eating.

But because of the work of Operation Smile, in just 45 minutes and for around $250, these children’s lives can be changed forever.

My work as a fundraiser began in 1994 when I first met founding surgeon Dr. Bill Magee and his wife Kathy. We were shooting an episode of Touched By An Angel and the story was based on a child who had a cleft lip. The Magees were visiting our set in Utah and brought with them some before-and-after pictures of the extraordinary work they do. I was so incredibly moved by what I saw that I decided immediately that I would do whatever I could to help draw awareness to this most worthy cause.

Every child deserves the dignity of a smile, and because of the amazing volunteer medical teams of Operation Smile, free care is given to children who might never even be able to dream of a normal life.

As a mother myself, my heart has been moved to see when mothers arrive filled with desperation and anxiety yet dare to hope that their child will be one of the lucky ones selected.

I have seen them hand over their precious babies to a team of strangers hoping and praying that a miracle awaits; and I have seen the look of gratitude and love when they gaze on the newly restored faces of their children after the surgery. What a moment it is, filled with the promise of a new life.

I have also seen parents heartbroken as their child is turned away because we don’t have enough resources to help everyone.

If we had more donations we could help more babies. I do my best to help raise awareness that brings more funds so these children get a chance at a normal life.

I

I believe when we work together, shoulder to shoulder, for the good of each other, we really can make a difference in the world.

Operation Smile: changing the world one smile at a time.

– Roma Downey Actress and Producer Operation Smile Ambassador AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 67

Serious Fun

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CHILDREN’S HEALTH

Barretstown, a specially designed camp in Kildare, Ireland, provides therapeutic recreation programs for children with serious illnesses and their families. Founded by Hollywood actor Paul Newman in 1994, and modeled on his renowned Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, the camp serves children from Ireland, Britain and throughout Europe.

Patricia Harty talks to Barretstown CEO Dee Ahearn.

Tell me about Barretstown.

It’s our 20th anniversary and a big year for us. We have welcomed over 27,000 children and their families through the gates of Barretstown during that time, and on an annual basis we welcome almost two and a half thousand. The camps typically run from March right through to mid November. And the camps that run from March through early summer are what we call Weekend Family Camps. So that’s where mom, dad, siblings, and the sick child all come to camp together.

How important are those family weekends?

When these families come to Barretstown we like to say that they leave their illness at the gate. They arrive at Barretstown and meet other families who have been on the same illness journey that they’ve been Barretstown CEO Dee Ahern with one of her many visitors to the camp in Co. Kildare. on. I’ve had moms and dads tell me that they’ve had moments sitting down because they get to spend time together, go to that hospital and bring something of camp life to the child’s bedside. We’re curin our dining hall at 6pm on a Friday they get to have fun. rently running that program at Cork Unievening as the first time that they’ve actuversity Hospital and it’s been very ally sat down as a family for a very long And how many of these children can successful. time. Because they just haven’t had the op- make return trips?

Children can come back to Barretstown portunity. They’ve been juggling. Mom has been with the sick child, or Dad has been up to three times. We always try to give pri- And it’s not just Irish children?

The majority of the children are now with the sick child, and they’ve had to jug- ority to newly diagnosed families, so last gle quite a bit. And they get to have some year we introduced a hospital outreach pro- Irish, but when Paul Newman established fun as well and it does help to heal the psy- gram so that if a child found themselves Barretstown in 1994, it was his flagship chological scars then between the siblings back in hospital again, a camp team would camp in Europe. Prior to that, children were

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LEFT: Children enjoying the activities at Barretstown camp for seriously ill children.

traveling across the Atlantic to go to the camp in Connecticut because word had spread about the impact of the camp and how great it was for the children to attend.

So he wanted to set up a camp in Europe and thankfully he chose Ireland as the location.

Do you know why he chose Ireland?

I know he was looking at locations in the U.K. as well, but I think he was very wellsupported by the Irish government at the time and they found Barretstown for him and when Paul arrived in Barretstown he completely loved it. He could really see it as a medieval bazaar and he could see the children there, as he said it, “kick back and raise a little hell.” So that was why he chose it.

What is the history of Barretstown?

It was owned by Elizabeth Arden the cosmetics icon and then it was sold to the Westin family who gave it to the Irish government on the proviso that it be used for some charitable purpose. It is leased to us at a rate of one pound a year for 99 years, so we’re very grateful to have that support.

Where does most of your funding come from?

We have a lot of corporate support, so 30-40 percent. Then we have a lot of individual donors, and we have community fundraising, and funds that come through events.

I’d imagine it’s a very expensive proposition.

It is. All of the children come to camp entirely free of charge. So we must raise

4.5 million euro on an annual basis for us to be able to provide our programs. But we’re very conscious of cost at Barretstown and we’ve literally over the last two years embarked on a program to reduce our operating costs while in absolutely no way compromising the integrity of our programs. We’ve been able to do that and all the while welcoming more campers, by working with more volunteers. So it’s been very positive.

We also work very closely with other Irish charities. For example we’ve run events for the Irish Skin Foundation and for Ataxia Ireland; I’ve worked closely with John Irwin of the Jack and Jill Foundation and we’ve been able to run a weekend camp for the Jack and Jill families as well as our own families. Our donors like to see that we’re supporting one another.

Barretstown House with the red door for which Elizabeth Arden named her Spa collection.

And what about hosting children from other countries and language barriers?

It’s a great cultural experience as well for the children who come in from other countries to be able to attend camp with Irish children. It’s fantastic for Irish children too. Last summer we had ten campers travel to Ireland from New York and they were the highlight of the camp because the Irish children thought they were cool, but the New Yorkers of course, thought it was the Irish children who were cool.

I have honestly witnessed children sitting around a table in our dining hall and there could be a child from Greece, a child from the U.K., a child from Spain, sitting with Irish children, and clearly language is no barrier.

How important are these connections?

We’ve been involved with Yale School of

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CHILDREN’S HEALTH

Medicine on research and one of the things they’ve found is the connections the children make at camp are hugely important. So this year we’re rolling out a new program called Camp Connections, which is finding ways for us to help the campers stay connected, because, as I said, they can only come out to camp three times. We’ve got a program called Camp on the Move which is going to see us bring camp to regional locations. So it could be a day camp, for example, in Cork or Galway or Belfast where campers can all come together for a day and we’ll run camp. It might be in a hotel setting or in a school setting, and we’re finalizing those details, but really it’s just a way to keep them connected.

child’s self-confidence and self-esteem. I see all the time at Barretstown children who arrive with their families and their heads are down, they’re apprehensive, they’re shy. And that’s because they’ve been in isolation for very long periods of time, they’ve gone through grueling treatment, the friends they’ve had in school have moved on, they’ve been unable to continue with school, they’ve been unable to continue with their play dates and their sports.

But for the child who’s been sick, they’ve spent long periods of time in hospital, and quite often in isolation. So that’s the serious side of what we do. It’s a challenge of action and discovery. And the children when they come it might be for example that a child is terrified of horses but they want to pet a horse. That evening at the cottage we have Cottage Chat and the councilors will say “What did you achieve today?” “Oh well I petted a horse” “Oh isn’t that great, you didn’t think you were going to do that.” So all the time it’s empowering the child. And honestly I have letters everywhere in Barretstown from parents saying, “Gosh, you gave us back the child we had before this diagnosis of serious illness.” So that’s the serious element, rebuilding the confidence and the self-esteem.

Yes, 90 percent of the children who have come to Barretstown in the past have been oncology patients. But we’ve been working very closely with Jane Pierce, who is our medical director at Cromlin Hospital, to identify other children who could really benefit from our programs.

And this year we introduced some new illness groups, so that’s been very successful and now we’re going to add them to our 2014 camp calendar.

Animals are one of the most successful part of therapy at Barrettstown.

John Fitzpatrick who sponsored the refurbishment and operation of the nature room and crèche in Barretstown Camp in memory of his parents.

And the other thing we’re doing this year is we’re bringing out a Barretstown app. Basically everything about Barretstown is the activities they can take part in, so it’s either performing on stage or it’s arts and crafts or it’s canoeing, archery, fishing, horse-riding, so the app is designed around our camp and its various different activities. So there’s games to keep them connected.

So the “serious-fun” aspect is a significant part of these camps?

It is. There’s two sides to it. Obviously it’s fun, and that’s the most important thing for the children, but there’s a serious element to it as well. Our programs of therapeutic recreation are designed to restore a

70 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Do you take children across the board?

I know not all of them have cancer.

Do you have any connection with any of the other camps? There are about 30 now world-wide.

Yes, there are 30 programs world-wide and we have great connections. We take the learnings and the best practices from all our camps and we’ve got a very strong network of CEOs. In fact, recently I was in Ohio. I was co-chairing a Serious-Fun conference of CEOs. And again, it’s a great opportunity for us to get together and talk about new innovation, best practice, new learnings. It’s a fantastic umbrella body for us.

And that was rebranded over the last couple of years. It was called the Hole In the Wall Gang Camp, but there was confusion because the camp in Connecticut is called the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, so it rebranded itself and it’s now called the Serious Fun Children’s Network and there are five camps now in Europe but BarretIA stown was obviously the first.

S:6.75”

S:9.5”

RED CARD, DONOVAN. GET A SUNBURN, AND YOU COULD BE OUT OF THE GAME.

If you miss out on sunscreen even once, you could end up a walking red card like Landon Donovan.

Whether you’re dodging defenders or mowing the lawn, everyday activities put you at great risk for damage from harmful UV rays. Learn how to stay safe in the sun at S U N B L U N D E R S . C O M © 2013 The Skin Cancer Foundation

Untitled-1 1

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Your Presence

COMMUNITY

Serving By

I

The work of two extraordinary Irish nuns, one of whom works with women who have been trafficked for sex or labor. The other helps first-time offenders stay out of prison. BY KARA ROTA

f you run a Google search for “safeThey now live in Washington Heights. for them,” says Michele, who tutors the house nyc,” one of the first results “Part of our calling is to answer new girls in English grammar, writing, and is for a bar in Greenpoint called needs as they emerge,” says Bríd. reading.

Brooklyn Safehouse. The menu “Religious communities are diminishing “They’ve all got different stories. For includes a yellowfin tuna burger right now, but even in diminishment we some it was labor trafficking, for others it and kale salad. It’s a far cry from must be focused outward and help in was sex trafficking, but basically they’re the LifeWay Network safehouse where whatever way we can. And I think it was all trying to put their lives back together Sister Michele Harnett works: a secret a natural fit for us to minister among the again, and we are here to help them.” location that protects, cares for, heals, immigrant population, being immigrants Carmen, who was a victim of traffickand educates women who have been vicourselves.” ing and is now employed and in school, tims of human trafficking.

She spends much of her time at says, “The Sisters and the staff helped me “To date we have helped twelve to heal my trauma by women. We can only accommodate listening to me and payfive women at a time,” says ing attention to me in a Michele, who coordinates the 20 way that made me feel volunteers, from a network called confident to tell them the New York Coalition of what I experienced.”

Religious Congregations to Stop Carmen, who spoke Human Trafficking, who staff and at a recent fundraiser support the house. for LifeWay, said, “the Like her colleague Sister Bríd [traffickers] control us Long, who works at Abraham emotionally, psychoHouse, an alternative to incarceralogically and physicaltion for first-time offenders, Sister ly, and the only way to Michele grew up in Ireland. They escape from their hands each answered a call to join the is finding people with Sisters of St. Louis, a teaching Sister Bríd Long (second from right) with Abraham House staff: (from good intentions who order, in their youth, and haven’t left) Andre Pabon, Lynda DeFilippi and Althea Brooks. PHOTO: KIT DEFEVER believe us and believe looked back.

Abraham House on Willis Avenue in the that human trafficking exists and listen to In 1963, Michele was missioned to Bronx. The address is easily found. Not us.”

California where she worked as an eduso for LifeWay house, where Michele Listening is an important part of what cator, school principal and counselor for works. It must, for good reasons, remain Bríd and Michele do.

48 years. “I came to Los Angeles to a secret.

“A lot of times we’re just a presence... teach in 1966,” says Bríd, “however, “It’s dangerous for the girls until such we have cups of tea with the residents; after completing doctoral studies in time as their traffickers have been we chat with them,” says Michele.

Rome, I taught Pastoral Theology at the brought to trial,” Michele says.

Both she and Bríd work with case Catholic University of America and the As well as the safety factor, the chalmanagers and groups such as Safe Washington Theological Union before lenge for most of the girls, all of whom, Horizon and Sanctuary for Families, who returning to California in 2004 to serve in apart from one American, are from difprovide legal help and counseling. community leadership with Michele.” ferent countries, is lack of basic educa“The basic thing for me is that people In 2011, both answered an invitation tion and English language skills. can be helped,” says Bríd. “Many people from their neighborhood to open an inter“A big part of the goal of the are in trouble. They’re alone, they’re national community in New York at the Safehouse is to help them heal but also to overwhelmed by life, they’re poor, they service of the immigrant population. provide some measure of independence don’t have a safe place to live, they’re 72 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

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Left: Michele Harnett, SSL raises awareness of human trafficking at the NY Gift Box. Below: : Bríd Long, SSL with Fr. Peter Raphael, founder of Abraham House Bottom: Severino Diaz, one of the miracles of Abraham House

afraid, especially if they’re here undocumented. Abraham House provides them with access to resources.”

A lot of families come to Abraham House to meet with the social workers and get help with immigration and other legal problems.

“One young boy came [to the U.S.] as a high school student; his sister was here and he crossed the border on the back of a truck. He was captured, put in a camp in California for four months, then because he was still underage, he was released to his sister who’s here in the Bronx,” says Bríd.

“He has had to go to court several times. His deportation was deferred, maybe in the hope that immigration law will be reformed and that he can stay and be legalized. I don’t know if that will happen anytime soon, but we hope for that,” she adds.

Bríd teaches English to adults from “at-risk” families at Abraham House where her favorite time is Saturday afternoon. “There is group work for the clients, pastoral activities for families, and Mass. After Mass, the families have dinner, prepared with great care by the residents, who feel very proud of the fact that they can help others even though they are doing time.”

Severino Diaz, who now works at Abraham House, was wrongly imprisoned for 25 years. Father Peter, the founder of Abraham House (now retired), believed in Severino’s innocence and helped him maintain his optimism and his determination to continue his education while in prison so that he could advocate for others upon his release.

“Father Peter was there with me all the time. I don’t think three months passed by without a visit from him,” says Severino. “First I became a paralegal,

then I kept going and got a BA in psychology. It was escape for me. I made a commitment to myself; I had to survive.

That’s the only way that I made it 25 years.”

Even while he was still in prison, Severino started helping people. “Inside prison a lot of people are illiterate – they don’t know how to read or write. Not only immigrants, but Americans,” he says.

The families that belong to the community of Abraham House are mostly immigrants and poor – most live below the poverty line, with big challenges.

“They don’t speak English for the most part. They’re away from home. They lack a sense of community that they had in their own country, and in general their circumstances are sometimes worse than where they came from,” says Bríd.

The way Bríd and Michele see it, the immigrant story is the American story, and the changing economic times have made it more improbable for poor immigrants to scrape by, let alone achieve citizenship and thrive.

“I think the difficulty of raising children without family support systems is a challenge. Not being able to feed their children often is a challenge too. And not knowing the system, not knowing where to get help causes great difficulties. They hope, like all people, for something better. Some get into trouble, they run into difficulties with the law. Sometimes it’s petty theft, sometimes drugs, various things like that.”

In these cases, alternatives to incarceration like Abraham House can be the difference between an individual spiraling into more major crime and finding a place to get help and ultimately helping others in their own community.

“I’m not trying to minimize crime,” says Bríd. “I know crime is crime. But it can be circumstantial. One of the young

men at Abraham House is married and has three children. He worked at a cleaners but didn’t make enough money to support his family so he got involved in some fraudulent activity. Luckily he was sent to Abraham House rather than being sent to prison. Here we help people get their lives together, and we help them get some job skills and find jobs. It’s a place of welcome where people can come and feel at home, and be among others who are struggling along with them. And they know that there are people here who will help them.”

Both Bríd and Michele see a correlation between what they do and the experience of earlier Irish immigrants who had the most menial of jobs and were discriminated against.

“I don’t like to talk about duty, but it is almost that we should be compelled to help those who are trying to come up also,” says Bríd.

“It’s simply about not leaving people on the periphery but feeling responsible for one another, walking with one another, supporting one another, forming a community together, sharing life together. If all of us could reach out to and accompany one another in some way, IA then we’d all be a lot better.”

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IRISH HEALING

Sacred Space and Health Spending time in nature’s sacred places can bring balance to the whole self and help you reach your optimal level of health. By Rosari Kingston ood health and a happy life are determined by the balance of the four quadrants of life – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

It is possible by listening to the symptoms, observing the signs, and undertaking a thorough clinical examination to determine any physical pathology. Mental and emotional health can generally be assessed through careful history taking and the patient’s own narrative. The fourth quarter of the circle is harder to assess and it is easy to understand why. Many people today equate the spiritual with religion and thus it is not seen as relevant to a health consultation. However, man’s spiritual awareness predates religion, which may even be considered man’s attempt to describe and conceptualize his experience of the numinous in creation.

The spiritual is best described as the awareness of the divine in one’s surroundings, an awareness of the transcendent in the here and now of our environment. The ABOVE: The Entrance Stone, to Newgrange, an Irish passage tomb that dates to c.3, success of John O’Donohue’s book Anam 200BC, Ireland’s best known prehistoric monument. Martin Brennan, an Irish-American Cara bears testimony to the awareness of, researcher believes the art on the stone, which was done before the stone was put in place, relates to alignments and astronomy in the Boyne Valley complex. TOP: Croagh and desire for, this experience in our sur- Patrick, nicknamed the Reek, is a 764 metres (2,507 ft) mountain, which overlooks Clew roundings. This experience of the spiritual Bay in County Mayo, and is considered the holiest mountain in Ireland. and divine in nature is experienced through the other three quadrants in the circle of life. It is through our 1st, the feast of Samhain, a time when the veil between worlds physical and emotional senses that we open ourselves to this is lifted and it is easier to communicate with those who have experience, and acknowledgement and integration of this gift is passed from this life. This awareness of the nearness of the achieved through our mental faculties. ‘other world’ is part of the psychological makeup of many Irish Celtic spirituality has always been associated with nature. people and it is necessary to be aware of its utter normality for Nature nourishes us and the annual cycle of feasts and festivals many people when touching on matters relating to grief and in the Irish calendar advises us of this truth. These seasons folbereavement in the clinical setting. low the length of the day, with each day beginning at sunset.

The first day of spring is still marked in many Irish houseThis reminds us that all nourishment and healing takes place in holds by placing a St. Bridgid’s cross on the door. The young the dark, unknown to us. The seed begins its growth in the dark pliable green rushes are bent and twisted into the familiar cross of the earth long before the first leaf appears overhead. shape, but their very freshness captures the rising sap and the Likewise, the Celtic year commences in winter, on November commencement of the new farming season. This rhythm of life

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PHOTO: GARY MCCALL

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The Godess Cailleach

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There are certain characteristics to the legends of the Cailleach She shapes the land.

She is associated with water – wells, lakes and rivers Associated with winter (remember winter is a time of unseen growth) Gigantic Very old She can shape-shift – maiden, heron rock etc.

She was respected in early Christiantity but later demonized.

In examining Cailleach motifs there are a number of attributes that are supernatural and others that point to a priestly role. The association with wells is seen generally in healing cults and also priesthood. I see her very much as the engendered landscape. – R.K.

PHOTO:FAO;TE ORE;AMD

PHOTO: TOURISM IRELAND

PHOTO: GARY MCCALL

and the balance inherent in the recurring journey of the sun is captured in the Celtic cross. The horizontal shaft spreads out to the ends of the earth, and the vertical from the depths of the underworld to the vault of heaven. These two shafts are intersected by the circle symbolizing the annual cycle of the seasons, which in turn encloses the four quadrants of life.

Most people nourish the spiritual quadrant without realizing it. A morning run through a park or wood nourishes the soul for the day ahead. A quiet evening spent gazing at the setting sun brings peace and completion to the day’s activities.

In Ireland we have such a close awareness of the continuum of life that the island abounds with places that are deemed sacred. The holy wells are seen as sacred spaces.

No graffiti is to be found in their environs. It is from the wells that the Goddess Anu pours forth the water to nourish the crops and give life to the land.

In his book The Lightening Tree (2006), P.J. Curtis writes of his cousin, the healer Mariah Curtis, who hastened to a certain secret well on the first day of May each year to gather the water that had been touched by the first ray of the sun. This water was particularly efficacious in healing and it was guarded carefully so that not one drop was spilt on the journey home.

There are wells for taking away warts and wells for healing sore eyes and there is also the famous well, in Gleann na Gealt in Kerry, which helps cure depression. It does not matter that we now know that the water in this well contains high levels of lithium, so it is a natural antidepressant. It is far more important to know that our forebears went there in times of travail so that they might experience the healing hand of nature. This trusting in the beneficence of nature continues – ven today, many of my patients will go to a well to heal certain ailments.

According to cultural geography, therapeutic landscapes are those places or settings that foster healing through their physical and psychological impact. They do not always have to be in nature, but here in Ireland most of them are. It

ailleach, a fascinating figure, was an ancient goddess who shaped the land through her control of nature. She is especially associated with the Beara penninsula and there is a rock there known as the ‘Hag of Beara’. The forces of Christianity turned her into a rock, according to legend. She was a princess of the Kallaikoi and married Owen Mor, the King of Munster.

Owen was killed by Conn of the hundred battles who lived in the 2nd century AD. The first time Cailleach is mentioned in writing is in the classical work Histories, written in the 5th century B.C. by the Greek Historian Heredotus. He mentions a Celtic tribe on the Iberian peninsula of Spain called the Kallaikoi. She and Owen were also written about by the Greek Geographer Strabo, and Pliny writes about them in his Natural History (77 A.D.).

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is impossible to visit Newgrange during the winter solstice, and watch the sliver of light enter the chamber, gradually filling it, and not be in awe of the people who designed and built it. This goes for any stone circle with their careful alignment of stones so as to mark the depths of winter, the equinoxes or the high point of summer.

The last Sunday in July is the traditional day for climbing Croagh Patrick, five miles from Westport in County Mayo. Over 25,000 people climb “the reek,” and some climb the stony ground in their bare feet.

This tradition has continued for over 5,000 years and it is the ordinary people of Ireland who continue this custom. This pilgrimage helps to illustrate another factor about a sacred space. Man himself is instrumental in creating it and maintaining it, so both consciously and subconsciously, he influences and is influenced by his environment.

Modern bio-medicine is ordered, organized, and coherent to its practitioners. It is born of a particular cultural context and it gains significance and power from this. The patient is, for the most part, a passive recipient of the information and the proposed therapy. The illness is defined and classified, the therapy is proposed, and the whole experience is expected to follow along certain lines with no deviation. The expectation is, that the patient will be compliant and no departure from the defined path followed. It can be seen in this scenario that two of the four quadrants are neglected. These are the emotional and the spiritual. Yet these are as important to our health as the physical.

Healing will not take place unless the four are integrated and this is where the symbolism associated with sacred space can be so valuable. In many parts of rural Ireland today, a coffin is taken to the grave in an east west direction. This is called “a deiseal” or “to the right.” It symbolizes man’s journey from birth in the east, the journey through life, to the setting sun in the west. Attending any funeral in an old graveyard will thus reinforce the realization that all life is but a journey.

Above: An ariel view of Newgrange, a prehistoric monument in County Meath. It was built about 3200 BC, which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. LEFT: St. Brigid’s cross made from rushes. It comprises a woven square in the center and four radials tied at the ends. It may be related to the pagan symbol known as the Sun Cross. It can also be taken as a representation of the four quadrants of life: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

Ascertaining the sacred landscapes and symbolism that are important to a patient means that it is easier to integrate a healing therapy into their whole being. Places of peace and renewal can allow patients to channel their vital energy to the task of healing, but it is the job of the physician to identify and help the patient in this direction. It is this area of medical training that is sadly lacking and it is not only the patient who suffers by it. The modern health care professional is trained to be stringently scientific and there is no shortage of blood work, scans and tests undertaken to find an answer and offer a solution. This very training leaves the physician yearning for something more, something that allows him to offer that very elusive gift called healing as distinct from curing. The modern health care professional would therefore serve themselves, and their patients well, by applying some of the same rigor to the spiritual and emotional states of their patients. This would result in a more rounded and holistic care that would bring fulfilment to both the health care provider and the patient.

IA Rosari Kingston is the director of the Irish College of Traditional and Integrative Medicine, which offers 10-day intensives in traditional Irish healing that include visits to sacred sites and allows participants to spend time in clinics of traditional medicine. In this way the participants gain insight not only for themselves but also knowledge of how to help integrate the four quadrants involved in health and well-being. www.irishcollegeoftraditionalandintegrativemedicine.com

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ADDICTIONS

Rise Above the Pain Helping Families Cope with Addiction and

Frances Black, the founder of the RISE Foundation, shows that the impacts of addiction go far beyond the addict. By Adam Farley

arlier this year, Ireland’s Health Services Executive published a survey called “Alcohol’s Harm to Others in Ireland.” Among the primary findings of the study was the fact that at least a quarter of the population (28% to be precise, over 1.2 million people), drinkers and nondrinkers alike, had reported being affected by someone else’s drinking, whether at work, at home, or in public. “Problem alcohol use,” the study concluded, “can no longer be framed in the realm of personal responsibility.”

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What the study did not examine however, was the extent to which this harmed population was affected. Similarly, it was beyond the scope of the research to prescribe suggestions that would aid those, either directly or indirectly, harmed by another’s drinking.

Filling these gaps between diagnosis, prescription, and recovery for the last five years has been the RISE Foundation, founded in 2009 in Dublin by Frances Black.

Black, who left school at the age of 15 and by 17 was performing full-time with The Black Family and later Arcady, herself suffered from alcohol addiction and has

78 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

long been open about her own recovery process. Part of that process was educating herself about addiction, and in 2004 she returned to college and graduated as an addiction counselor. “As part of my college course I had to do some training,” she explains. “So I trained in the Rutland Centre with the renowned addiction specialist and Clinical Director at the time, Stephen Rowen.” (Rowen now works as a senior therapist with RISE.) It was working with addicts themselves in the Rutland Centre that alerted Black to the necessity of programs for family mem-

Frances Black (center) with the staff and practitioners from Bridge of Hope (Ashton Community Trust, North Belfast), who were joined by workers and volunteers from five other local organizations that participated in the RISE Community workers program on Rathlin Island.

bers. She recognized that stress and worry were quickly turning into extreme and sometimes paralyzing anxiety among those who were bringing their kin into the center.

“No matter how many times they may ask them to stop, unfortunately their loved one in addiction just can’t hear them,” she says.

“Family members feel like they are grieving

for the person they are losing to addiction.

So I decided that these family members needed their own separate support and therapy from qualified addiction therapists; that it was important they had their own program to learn to deal with the stress and anxiety of living with someone in addiction.”

It has long been common knowledge that problem drinking harms the problem drinker. But often elided in giving treatment to the individual is the treatment of their family and friends. Perhaps most famously, Alcoholics Anonymous includes making amends in their 12-step process, and began Al-Anon as a spin-off group to help those with a friend or family member going through AA understand and aid in the process. In Ireland too these types of tandem programs exist and there are many peer support groups, but RISE is unique in that its sole purpose is to treat the family members of those suffering from addiction.

While alcohol addiction may get the most publicity in Ireland and is the addiction most commonly seen at RISE, Black recognizes that it isn’t the only addiction facing the nation, and the center is dedicated to all forms of addiction, including gambling and drugs.

The statistics are staggering. For every one person diagnosed with an addiction in Ireland, research suggests, there are at least six others in their lives who also suffer.

Often times, if addiction is genetic, the family members themselves will turn to substance abuse to cope. It is that cycle which the RISE foundation seeks to break.

In 2012, Dr. Garrett O’Connor wrote in this magazine of five generations in his family, including himself, who used alcohol as a coping mechanism, both for their own psychological traumas, but also for those caused by witnessing and being powerless to help family members who were addicted to alcohol.

In Ireland, Black argues, alcohol abuse is more than a genetic or a familial inheritance.

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It stems from a culture of tolerance and what she, citing Dr. O’Connor, calls “malignant shame.”

“We use alcohol as a way to escape from hundreds of years of carrying this toxic emotion.”

“Because of malignant shame,” O’Connor wrote, “there is often a tendency to keep the behavior of problem drinkers a secret from the outside world. Under these circumstances of silence and denial, the family can become seriously isolated from the community, and dangerously deprived of vital access to dependable sources of emotional support and growth.” But where O’Connor sought to break the cycle of silence, Black seeks to break the culture of tolerance and family isolation. By bringing families together, she and RISE seek to “support families impacted by a loved one’s addictive behavior through awareness, education and therapy, and to combat the associated shame and stigma,” according to the foundation’s mission statement.

“The RISE Foundation helps to reduce anxiety, stress, and confusion (and often times denial) for the family members,” Black says of the foundation. But just how does RISE accomplish this? First off, she says, it empowers family members to identify, and preempt, how addictive behaviors can impact the family, and what they can do to take care of themselves simultaneously.

Secondly, and more importantly to the organization’s mission, RISE challenges family members to understand the cultural constructs in Ireland that led to the addiction of their loved one and teaches them to recognize their limits of responsibility and control.

“Family members learn that they can’t control a loved one’s addictive behavior, they didn’t cause it, and they can’t cure it.

By becoming aware of the beliefs and experiences that shape their own behaviors, participants identify new, healthy ways of coping with addiction and relationships.”

What is unique about this approach is RISE’s emphasis on education as well as therapy, operating on the assumption that knowledge is cathartic. Of course, it is for the family members, most of whom had never defined their loved ones as alcoholics or chronic gamblers, or perhaps even considered using the term “addict,” prior to some of the sessions with RISE. Towards

The Magical Healing Powers of Rathlin Island am the wife of a chronic alcoholic. I have been and to a certain extent still am going through a tough time because of his drinking. This time last year I was in a very dark place until I found The RISE Foundation.

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I have been doing one on one counselling there and have completed a 10 week family program plus a one week Residential Program. While the proThe Rathlin Island grams and the counselling are doing Lighthouse at the wonders for me I have to say it was site of the current residency program my stay on Rathlin Island which has in Northern Ireland. the most impact on my recovery [from the stress] of dealing with my husband’s addiction. I remember from the second I stepped off the ferry onto Rathlin I felt so peaceful

and relaxed, the most I have felt in years. I had expected to be feeling anxious about what I was about to embark on but I just couldn’t.

The remoteness of the island, and the tranquil setting, really does something magical to a person. I think I am one of the most skeptical people I know and I have never believed in any airy fairy stuff but

when I was on Rathlin I understood, insofar as I could, what the word spiritual meant. I really felt something that I have never felt before, the whole place has an aura about it.

I remember the day before I was to go home and Frances taking us up to the East Lighthouse to see the building which she plans to turn into the RISE center and

when she spoke about her plans you could really see it. and it all seemed so perfect.

The therapy room is to look out over the sea and I could see myself and others in my position getting great healing from this place. I couldn’t imagine anywhere more ideal than this setting to have the RISE. I came to love this island that much on this short visit that I made a return trip last

month with friends and it was the same emotions that I felt again, even though this time I was there at the height of the tourist season. There is really and truly something unique and special about this place and I wish for a lot more people to get the recovery and healing from it that I got.

Rathlin is something else all together, it is like nowhere else I know!

– Ruth

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ADDICTIONS The site for the proposed Rathlin Island Education and Awareness Centre.

that end, RISE operates two distinct programs (in addition to one-on-one therapy), each with a distinct set of aims.

The first, and most attended, is a tenweek, non-residential, family program, “developed to create awareness and educate our families,” Black says. “The program is run one evening per week, for 3 hours per session. Each program is attended by up to 12 participants and is facilitated by 2 qualified and experienced RISE addiction counselors.

The format is a combination of lectures and group therapy.” These sessions are run in LEFT: Community workers from disadvantaged areas of the North who came to Rathlin Is. to learn about addiction’s impact beyond the individual. BELOW: Black with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness who expressed his support for the work of the RISE Foundation when he visited the proposed education center site.

centers in Dublin, Swords, Portlaoise and Kilkenny.

While the first program is most common and is run out of RISE’s Dublin and Belfast offices, the second program is only available by ferry – a five-day residential program that takes place in the Manor House on Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim. Black knows the island well, as her father was raised there.

“The island is a haven of peace and tranquility and its geographical location attracts people from all communities. The program runs from Sunday to Friday, several times a year. Each program is attended by up to 12 participants and is facilitated by 2 qualified and experienced RISE addiction counselors.

The format, though similar to the non-residential program with a combination of lectures and group therapy, is more concentrated and intensive.”

Despite the huge success of the residency programs, Black and RISE are not content to stagnate; they aim to do much more with the island, where plans are underway to expand their facilities on Rathlin. They hope to develop “a dedicated addiction awareness and education center for family members 80 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

and community workers,” she says, though they’re still struggling with funding due to the recession.

“There are two old lighthouse cottages on a really beautiful part of Rathlin and the Irish Lights Commissioners have agreed to lease them to us if we can get the funding to renovate them. This project could be life-changing for so many people in this wonderful

country of ours as alcohol misuse is a huge problem.”

A center like this could be game-changing for Ireland, where 3.7 billion euro of government money is spent treating alcohol-related problems. Families need resources to deal with the effects of another’s addiction, and RISE has consistently provided that, but of equal importance is a brick-and-mortar educational resource that aims to effect both cultural and political change.

“I believe that it is important to look at issues around minimum pricing, [and in particular] alcohol being marketed in sporting and music events,” Black says. These kinds of policy changes may not be easy to come by if there is no centralized center like the one RISE proposes. It starts by looking at education and creating awareness. The HSE study was a significant one, but its findings are threatened with elision IA if work like Black’s ceases.

To learn more about the RISE Foundation and the Rathlin Island project, visit www.therisefoundation.ie Phone: +353 01 764-5131 Email: support@therisefoundation.ie

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CROHN’S DISEASE

When it’s More than just a

Living with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract. Darina Molloy tells her story.

n hindsight, I was always the kid with the sore tummy.

Most of the time, it just meant taking to the couch with a book, which was no penance for a dedicated reader. When I was nine, I was delighted with the spoiling that accompanied a three-night stay in hospital. Appendicitis was ruled out at that time, but as I grew into my teens the pains grew worse, and frequently resulted in the family doctor being called to the house where he would administer the only cure that worked – a shot of morphine to the hip. It wasn’t until I was in college that the unexplained crippling pains – which had gotten worse and were recurring far more frequently – were finally diagnosed. Suspected appendicitis had landed me in the hospital yet again, only this time the surgeon had gone ahead with the procedure.

“Healthiest appendix I ever saw,” he told me afterwards. “But we saw what the problem was straight away.” Years of repeated tests and investigative scopes had failed to show anything – but apparently there was a silver lining to my wrongful appendectomy. Not being possessed of a brilliant bedside manner, his abrupt diagnosis was delivered to a very woozy, post-surgery patient. “You have Crohn’s disease. Don’t worry, it’s not cancerous.” Of course, all I heard was the second C-word, and I could see by my dad’s face that he was equally perturbed. It was 1991, and I had never even heard of Crohn’s disease, nor had my family or any of my friends.

I finished out my final, post-grad year in college – which included a few more weeklong stays in hospital amid final assignments and cramming for exams – and emerged into recessionary Ireland. Finally

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lief when it disappears is just incredible.

Shortly afterwards, my mother, who clipped every article she came across relating to Crohn’s, highlighted a piece that suggested a link between cow’s milk and the disease. This rang alarm bells with me – we had always been huge consumers of milk in our family, and during my years at college – in a misguided nod to ‘healthy’ eating – I drank a pint of milk each day with my fairly awful canteen dinner. I loved milk, but decided to try weaning myself off it. Years later, during my first pregnancy, panicked about depriving my PHOTO: REIMAR GAERTNER bump of much-needed calcium, I armed with an incontrovertible diagnosis, started to introduce a daily glass of milk into but without the added assistance of the yet- my diet. Within three days, I was writhing to-be-invented Google, I was referred to a in pain as the first Crohn’s flare-up I’d had surgeon in my home town who agreed that in years took hold. To this day, I still miss it was time to tackle the problem head-on. the taste of milk. I can have it in my three The two main ways of handling Crohn’s dis- daily cups of tea, and I have no problem ease, I was told, were to operate and remove with other dairy products, but that’s the limit the part of the intestine with inflammation of my tolerance. or to undergo a course of steroids.

After my operation, I was advised that the I was assessed to be more suitable for the surgery could not be considered a cure – that surgical option, and was duly operated on in Crohn’s disease does not disappear – but April 1992. I emerged from the four-hour that I could think of myself as being in resurgery minus a couple of feet of small bowel mission. I had one brief meeting with a die(or intestine). Not a huge problem, as the mis- titian, but since there had never been any leadingly named organ ranges in length from investigation of a food link to my illness 15 to 32 feet. Twenty-two years later and I (apart from my milk self-diagnosis), I just can still remember the exhilaration of waking received some vague advice about avoiding up after surgery and not feeling any pain. And spicy food. The next few years, during yes, I’m sure the morphine pump was help- which I moved to New York and paid little ing, but I was utterly convinced that the de- attention to healthy eating or, indeed, bilitating pain I’d been having for years was healthy anything, would take its toll. gone. I was out of bed later that evening, disThrowing myself headlong into an unlimcharged two days later and out nightclubbing ited world of pizzerias, delis, and other culiby the weekend. The nurses were joking that nary options, I relied mainly on takeout, and I was a miracle patient, but as anybody who the consequences for my digestive system has lived with physical pain knows – the re- were dire. While I rarely suffered the painful

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Darina Molloy, is a former Assistant Editor for Irish America magazine.

Crohn’s: The Facts

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amed for the New York-based gastroenterologist doctor who wrote about it in the 1930s (although a Scottish doctor had published a paper about patients with the same symptoms in 1913), Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that can affect any part of the gastrointestinal system. It can start at any age, but usually begins in late teens or early adulthood. Studies have shown that five to 20 percent of affected individuals have a firstdegree relative with an inflammatory bowel disease. “Patients with Crohn’s disease have probably inherited abnormal defense

mechanisms that allow for bacteria to hang out and infiltrate areas it wouldn’t normally get to,” said Dr. Paul Butler, a gastroenterologist at Oro Valley Hospital.

Crohn’s occurs throughout the world, but according to Toronto gastroenterologist Fred Saibil “it is much more prevalent in temperate climates than in tropical ones ... [and] is found more often in developed areas such as North America, the

United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Western Europe than in developing countries.” It is thought that up to 700,000

people in North America may be affected by Crohn’s.

While previously almost

unheard of in Asia, it has become more of a problem

in Japan.

The primary symptoms of Crohn’s disease are abdominal pain, di-

arrhoea, vomiting or weight loss, and, in many patients, a clinical examination can easily distinguish a distinct swelling in the lower abdomen. There are a range of diagnostic tools available to physicians, including sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, barium enema, enteroscopy, capsule endoscopy, ultrasound, CAT scan, MRI and white

blood cell scan. It can often take a variety of these tests to identify the problem area.

There is a similar disease in animals, including cattle, called Johne’s disease, caused by a bacterium belonging to the tuberculosis family.

Some British researchers believe this bacterium is being transferred

to the human intestine through milk, but there are no definitive results to support this theory. Smoking is also thought to be a risk factor for Crohn’s and it has been shown that giving up cigarettes after surgery reduces the risk of the disease recurring. A new Japanese drug – Entyvio – to treat Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis has just been approved for sale in parts of Europe.

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 83

ARTWORK BY JOHN HOPKINS GASTROENTEROLOGY AND HEPATOLOGY RESOURCE CENTER, © 2006 JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

attacks of the pre-operation years, I was plagued by another mortifying problem. Because my small intestine was now shorter, any food that didn’t agree with me tended to travel quickly through my system, with the result that I could never be too far from a restroom. Subway delays – or any delay – were a nightmare, and I could have produced my own Zagat’s guide to the restrooms of New York City, such was the number of times I was almost caught short.

Stupidly, I didn’t quite make the connection between what I was putting into my body, and the resulting mad dashes. As more of our friends began to settle down, and we ourselves began to plan a Mayo wedding, nights out began to evolve into informal dinner parties in each other’s apartments, until, finally, I had no option but to learn my way around a kitchen and start to put decent food on the table. Within a year of slowly adding to my repertoire of basic recipes, the attacks had subsided dramatically, and my digestive issues had stabilized. The odd, renegade lunch at McDonald’s with a work colleague and the discomfort that followed finally caused the penny to drop. If I wanted to stay well, I was going to have to keep an eye on what I was eating.

In the years that followed, each of my pregnancies brought a mini-flare up that didn’t appear to be diet-related.

On the plus side, the agony of my Crohn’s attacks proved to be a wonderful rehearsal for labor pains, though I far preferred the end result of the latter. I still have the very occasional attack – probably just one or two a year – that reminds me Crohn’s will always be a part of my life. When it strikes, I know I’ll be out of action for a day or two. The inflammation can be easily felt bulging through my abdomen, the pain is horrendous, and avoiding food for the duration helps. The diagnosis has brought relief in many ways because prior to having a name to go with the stomach pains, I worried at times that people would think I was imagining them. As the years went on, also, I began to hear about Crohn’s disease more and more. The brother of a friend, my brother’s former girlfriend, the teenage son of a good friend – was it that it was becoming more prevalent or just more readily identified? Hearing about some of these other cases also reminded me that my particular case was far from the worst. I know of others who have suffered catastrophic weight loss, and patients even younger than me who have to live with colostomies.

Recently, during a medical checkup, my GP felt it was a good idea to refer me to a gastroenterologist who could determine how I was faring medically. One colonoscopy and one gastroscopy later, it was determined that while I had some inflammation and ulceration around the surgical anastomosis (the area where my intestine had been reattached), there was nothing too troubling to report. He recommended daily tablets to help reduce the risk of flare-ups, but not being a huge fan of regular medication, I prefer to deal with the couple of attacks a year I could potentially have. In the meantime, I will continue to eat (reasonably) well, and to be grateful that, as illnesses go, mine has not interfered hugely IA with my life.

Strength

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LIFE ESSAY

My Father’s

His physical strength was his currency, now it’s his patience and forbearance.

By MARY BETH KEANE

n the afternoon before my college graduation in 1999, there was a ceremony for graduates who were getting department prizes. My father was a New York City tunnel worker (a “sandhog”) and at that time he was working on Roosevelt Island, a 20-minute drive from Barnard’s campus. He always showered before leaving the job site, and on that day he’d brought khakis, a freshly pressed shirt and tie and the new jacket my mother had gotten him for his 55th birthday. I remember what he was Mary Beth wearing because it was the first time I Keane and noticed him holding a handkerchief, her father. which he used throughout the ceremony to dab the corners of his mouth. After, when we were discussing where to have dinner, I spotted a narrow river of saliva traveling down the side of his chin.

“Dad,” I said, pointing. As he wiped it away I felt a little ember of worry flare up in me, but about what, exactly, I wouldn’t have been able to say.

A year later, he was at work several hundred feet below ground when he slipped and fell on the curved bottom of the tunnel. He tore his rotator cuff and needed surgery, but we were relieved it wasn’t worse. He’d been a sandhog for 30 years at that point, and had his share of scars. When I was in grammar school he got caught between a screed used to level concrete and the platform from which the concrete was poured. He ended up getting “squeezed,” as he puts it. During that hospital visit, after looking at X-rays of his deeply bruised hips, the doctor asked when he’d broken his back. “Never,” he said, but the doctor insisted, pointing to a spot on the image that showed his spine had broken and healed.

“How does a person break his back and not remember?” my mother still asks when the story comes up. He always gives the same answer, which is that for some people it’s easy to break something without realizing. My mother and sisters and I love

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84 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

when he takes this position because it’s so ludicrous. Imagine!

His physical strength was his currency, and when he wasn’t working he kept busy around the house. I’d go home on a given weekend to find he’d built a deck, or had cut down a dead tree and dug the giant root out of the ground. Once, because it needed to be moved, he crouched under an ancient piano and lifted it on his back while my mother shouted “Willie! You’ll kill yourself!” My sisters and I clapped and cheered.

Only 56 when he hurt his shoulder and had to go on leave, my father expected to quickly recover and work well into his 60s, as many sandhogs do. But there were basic things he couldn’t do even three months after the surgery.

He’d get one arm into his jacket while the empty sleeve flapped somewhere behind him. Straining to reach it, he’d turn around and around like a cat trying to catch its own tail. Sometimes he’d need help trying to bend his rigid arm. “It’s my bad shoulder,” he explained, but the doctor suspected something else.

He was told he had Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disease of the nervous system, at the end of 2000, just before Christmas. I met him and my mother at the hospital, and stood with my back to the wall as the neurologist had him walk back and forth along a short hallway, tap his feet from heel to toe, touch his fingertip to his nose. I thought it was a big waste of time until I noticed him struggling. The doctor pushed him at the shoulders — gently, but enough to raise my hackles — and then watched as he staggered. After, when we were seated in his office, the doctor told us he’d known it was Parkinson’s the instant he saw my father in the waiting room.

“The mask,” he said. “No expression on his face.”

“Are you sure?” I said. “I think that’s normal for him.”

Everyone ignored me.

“It’s much better to know,” my mother said later, as we walked to the car. We studied my father to see if he agreed. I reminded them that the doctor had mentioned new research,

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treatment methods to slow the disease’s progress. My mother’s handbag was stuffed with pamphlets.

“Willie?” my mother ventured, and then burst into tears.

“I think we all need a cup of tea,” he said.

We braced ourselves for sudden change, but once he started a light dose of medication it was as if the clock had turned back.

We exhaled, marveled at how a few little pills a day could make such a difference. He seemed younger, and we dared hope his case was mild. Then, as the years passed, we learned that though the drugs gave him a lead for a while, the disease always caught up. He’d be having an average day — he’d walk a few miles, tinker in the garage — and then, as he described it, he’d “fall off a cliff.” He focused on trying to recognize when he was approaching the cliff so he wouldn’t be left stranded somewhere far from home, unable to move.

Then there were the side effects of the medication. My father, to be sure, is not a talker. It’s not that he’s bad at communicating; it’s just that he uses silence as much as he uses words and most people are too impatient to hear what those silences are saying. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I accompanied him to a checkup in 2008 and the doctor asked casually about the hallucinations. “Are you still seeing those men come into your room at night?”

“Yes.” “How many?”

“Six, like always.”

“Anything else?”

“They wear hats now. And they keep their backs to me. I think they’re playing cards.”

“Anything else?”

“Sometimes that other man still tries to come in through the window.”

After leaving the appointment, we’d crossed the George Washington Bridge before either of us said anything.

“So,” I considered how to begin. “Does Mom know you see

men come into your room at night?”

“Yes. I used to shout at them and she’d wake up.”

“Are you dreaming when it happens?”

“No. I’m awake.”

“O.K.” “I know they’re not there to hurt me.

“O.K.” “I know that now, so I don’t shout.”

But he did shout. In November 2010, when I was seven months pregnant with my second child, my husband, Marty, our son and I moved in with my parents for six weeks while we were waiting to close on our house. The first night we spent there, Marty and I bolted out of bed around 3 a.m. because my father was shouting at a volume I’d never heard him use in my life.

“My name is William Keane!” he bellowed. “I come from Ireland!” He sounded afraid, defensive, as if this information might ward off someone or something that had mistaken him for someone else. I went into the family room where he now slept in a hospital bed — half expecting to find a stranger pointing a gun — and though his eyes were open he didn’t seem to notice me there. Then he quieted down, a prisoner to his body until the morning, when his first dose of medication would kick in. If he had an itch he wouldn’t be able to scratch it. If a fire broke out he might not be able to flee. Whoever or whatever was threatening him now was something only he could see.

I told my mother the next morning, expecting it to be big news, but without even turning from the counter she said that she’d meant to tell us about that.

Over the years my mother has tracked down every tool that might help him. She, more than any of us, has set her will against this disease, constantly searching for ways around it, getting frustrated when the doctors don’t do more, as if the cure for Parkinson’s is a secret they all know and are just too selfish to share. When we remind her that he’s actually doing as well as can be expected, she just doesn’t believe it. We consulted a neuAUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 85

CONSTRUCTIONEQUIPMENTGUIDE.COM

Willie Keane, the author’s father, spent much of his life working in tunnels like this one. It was physically challenging work, and now he faces a challenge of a different king – living with Parkinson’s disease

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LIFE ESSAY

rologist who specializes in deep brain stimulation, a treatment where a pacemaker-like device is attached to the brain, but learned he’s not a good candidate. He has a special chair that can both recline flat and push him up to standing, grabbers on long poles to pick things off the floor, gadgets to help put on socks, shoes with elastic laces.

He’s had a few falls that I know of, and probably more that I don’t. When he can’t get his hands out in time he takes the brunt of the fall in his upper body, his face. It’s often difficult for him to eat, and one of my constant fears is that he’ll choke because the muscles of his throat fail him. But as his body gets worse he seems to grow more patient, more at peace. The doctor always asks if he tries to leave the house every day, and I was surprised to learn that a lot of people with Parkinson’s don’t bother trying to go out at all. There are some days when that’s all he does — try to leave the house — and if he fails all day he tries again the next. He’s never lost his temper about it.

This fall, my mother decided it was time to transform their narrow downstairs bathroom into a handicapped bathroom, everything wide and open enough for a wheelchair to roll into the shower and turn around. It was a huge project — the contractor had to move the sewage line — and several times my father asked why in the world they were going to the trouble, especially since my mother was so stressed about it, dragging home heavy samples of tile, trying to find the right sinks and toilets. We were all home for Thanksgiving when she spread an array of paint cards before us and said that although she liked cool colors, Dad liked earth tones so that’s what we should consider. “Dad,” I said, “have you ever said the phrase ‘earth tones’ in your life?” My sister laughed and my mother got upset, accused none of us of taking an interest.

He insisted once again that the current bathroom was fine, and Mom threw up her hands and shouted that a wheelchair won’t fit in the current bathroom.

“Why are we talking about wheelchairs?” he asked calmly.

“I’m not in a wheelchair.”

“You’re not in a wheelchair yet,” she said. “What about five years from now?”

“Jesus, Mom,” I said. “Do you have to be so mean about it?”

And then, looking back and forth between them — him silent, her furious — I understood that only one of them believed he had five years left.

There are more than half a million people in the United States who have Parkinson’s disease. People don’t die of Parkinson’s, they die with Parkinson’s. They choke. They have a fatal fall. They grow weak and vulnerable to other illnesses.

“Maybe.”

A snow plow passed on the street. He wouldn’t be able to walk outside until the sidewalks were cleared of ice, but when he felt good he often stood at the open garage door for a while to breathe in the fresh air. It seemed to revive him.

“O.K.,” he said. “Remember to say I’ve been luckier than IA most people.”

Mary Beth Keane is the author of Fever: A Novel of Typhoid Mary.

86 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Irish Dance Can Help Parkinson’s Sufferers

T

he 2nd Munster Parkinson’s Conference was held at The Oriel House Hotel, Ballincollig, Co. Cork on Friday, May 23, 2013, and featured speakers from the Parkinson’s Association of Ireland, and sessions on physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, mindfulness.

The grand finale was an interactive session on Irish set dancing as it has been shown to help people with Parkinson’s disease.

Since the Cork Parkinson’s Support Group started weekly set dancing classes in November 2013, approximately 30 people have attended on a regular basis. Volunteers from Ballincollig Ceolthais have helped those with Parkinson’s learn the movements of the different sets.

The attendance has included people of various mobility levels, from a nun who had a successful Deep Brain Stimulation operation to a celebrated pianist/composer, from Parkinson’s patients in their forties to those in their eighties. One participant remarked that if he experiences freezing of his legs, he uses a slide step to get moving again.

“Everyone has enjoyed the classes and hope to continue after the summer recess,” Ted Horgan, Secretary of the Cork Parkinson’s Support Group, said.

It was an Italian neurologist Dr. Daniele Volpe, a lover of Irish traditional music, who discovered that the reel step, used in Irish set dancing, seemed to allow patients with posterior-anterior advancement of the lower limbs to override this impediment.

Further research, carried out by Dr. Volpe and the University of Limerick proved this theory, as reported in our 2013 inaugural Health issue, 2013, see irishamerica.com/2013/08/reel-lifemiracle.

Parkinson’s disease suffers take part in Irish set dancing session at the 2nd Munster Parkinson’s Conference was held at The Oriel House Hotel, Ballincollig, Co. Cork

IRISH AMERICA would like to extend a special thank you to Irish America Healthcare & Life Sciences 50 co-presenter

and also to our annual sponsors for making this special edition possible:

Mutual of America The Coco-Cola Company Guinness Tourism ireland CIE Tours International The American Ireland Fund UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business House of Waterford Crystal 1-800-Flowers.com

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Being Pale

SKIN CANCER

The Perils of

Red hair and pale skin can be very attractive to some, but the potential perils from the sun range from mere sunburn to possibly fatal cancer, as actor Donal Logue discovered. am a redhead. Yes, I know we’re called “gingers” these days, but when I was growing up this was a term I only heard when visiting my equally pale, redheaded relatives back in Ireland or the UK, so I’ll stick with redhead. Which is what I am.

Or was. Over time my hair has darkened, my beard has whitened, and many of the freckles on my face and shoulders have morphed into a morass of blues, pinks and greens floating on the fish-belly white sea of my skin.

Unlike my pale Irish relatives, however, I grew up in the desert on the Mexican border, just a hop, skip and a jump south from where the highest temperature on this sun-splashed sphere was ever recorded. You can see where this is going. I spent the seventies like a lot of Californian desert youth, playing baseball and soccer, running, skateboarding, and generally baking outside in the sun all day, back when baby oil was my generation’s “sunscreen” of choice.

So it was really no surprise when this past summer, while back in Ireland, where I was spending many hours a day outdoors, shooting a TV show under the sunniest skies the Emerald Isle – thanks to global warming – had seen in decades, I noticed that the bump of reddish/flaky skin on my scalp-line was acting up again.

Some years back I had off-handedly mentioned this abnormal patch, one of dozens I have on my body, to a dermatologist in LA. He was sufficiently concerned to have subsequently frozen it off with liquid nitrogen. That seemed to do the trick until this past summer, when it suddenly, like a tiny Dionysus revived by the wild, Irish sun, came back from the dead.

This time I was concerned enough that I

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88 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Actor Donal Logue with his children in Ireland.

actually paid a visit to a doctor in Ireland, who glanced at it and said, “Ah sure, ye’re grand. ’Tis nothing.” But when the shoot was finished, and I was finally back in the States, I mentioned it to my best friend Gilles. He immediately dragged me to Dr. Gene Rubenstein, an awesome dermatologist whom I knew from my son’s school.

A sample was cut out of my noggin for biopsy, and then, not thinking I would ever have to deal with whatever it might or might not be in any immediate sense, I drove 12 hours north to my home in Oregon.

Two days later, Gilles called me from LA, and said, in his fairly unintelligible French accent, “You have to call the doctor!”

“Calm down,” I said. “He has my number.”

“Call him now,” he snapped.

When I finally spoke to Dr. Rubenstein, he told me I had squamous cell carcinoma

and that I had to schedule a surgery. I told him I had to go to Canada to shoot a film in a week and asked if I could go under the knife in March.

“No,” he said. “You’re doing it tomorrow morning.” He assured me that though squamous cell carcinoma is usually treatable, this one gravely concerned him because it had apparently traveled lower into my scalp through some hair follicles.

He was worried about how long it had been active in the subcutaneous part of my forehead: the danger zone.

I immediately turned around and drove the 12 hours back to LA, completely calm.

I remained so even after the initial hole cut into my head was deemed insufficiently large enough to get rid of all the cancer. A second bout of cutting ensued, and now I realized I had a pretty significant crater in my head.

“No problem,” the doc said. “We’ll sew it shut. It’ll smooth out your forehead.”

Good lord, I thought: an accidental facelift.

I recently had my stitches pulled and the doc gave me a good prognosis but also a stern warning: “You are at very high risk to have more squamous, so no sun and a hat and sunscreen at all times!”

This was, suffice it to say, a wake-up call. Now that I’ve had skin cancer, I know I have to be extra vigilant in the future: to check for new spots, to stay out of the sun if I can, to wear sunscreen when I can’t.

Today, when I check my face in the mirror for new growths, I wish I could shake that young boy I once was, running around under the hot, desert sun without protection, for doing such ineradicable damage to his future skin.

On the other hand, my 14-year-old son did say to me, when he saw my 47-yearold visage after the stitches were pulled out, “Dad, it’s like your face is 75, but your IA forehead is 25.” So there’s that.

Award-winning actor Donal Logue appeared most recently in Copper, Sons of Anarchy, and Vikings. He also will star as Detective Harvey Bullock in Fox’s new Batman prequel TV series, Gotham. He is also a trucker and now novelist, whose first novel, AGUA, will be released by Harper Collins later this year. He joins Everyday Health–and skin cancer survivors everywhere–in urging you to please get any unusual-looking spots on your skin checked out by a doctor. This article first appeared on everydayhealth.com.

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Like Father Like Daughter

MILITARY PHYSICIANS

Dr. Francis O’Donnell and his daughter, Dr. Mary O’Donnell, have dedicated their careers as physicians to serving our soldiers. The story of their service to their country and to our servicemen and women is a reminder of what makes our military great – the people.

“

was not interested in the military,” Francis O’Donnell recalls. “They basically had to drag me in.” It was the late sixties, during the Vietnam Era, and the draft was a reality for many young men and their families.

Francis’ grasp of the military was so limited that when the Selective Service Agency offered him a commission in the army, he had to call the agency office to find out what a commission was. It was the last year of his residency in internal medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City and the “doctor draft” had just been reinstated.

During his residency at St. Vincent’s Francis had become interested in exploring public health. Learning of this, the army promptly sent him to complete a residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“It was a sweet deal,” Francis recalls. “I essentially proceeded immediately to Johns Hopkins and they [the army] paid me as a captain.”

The continued educational opportunities that the Army afforded O’Donnell translated into his continued service, what O’Donnell refers to as “payback time.” After completing this residency, O’Donnell worked for a year in preventive medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, before being transferred with his wife and then two children to serve as Chief of

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BY SARAH BUSCHER

Preventive Medicine in an army hospital in Germany where their third child was born.

Subsequent postings took his growing family to Seoul, South Korea, where Mary was born, San Antonio, Texas and included his year-long deployment to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War and ultimately back to Walter Reed. The year 2002 marked thirty years of service and his mandatory retirement as a colonel, but Francis continues to work as a contractor for the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center as it strives to create a uniform health care approach for all branches of the military.

At some point during those thirty years, Francis’ obligation to the Army became a commitment born out of an appreciation for the opportunities the Army made available to him and a respect for members of the military. “I came to understand how [the army] operated. I discovered that these are good people. These are people I respected,” he recalls. “I was always impressed by the dedication that people in uniform showed to their mission.” This is an observation devoid of sentiment. Francis O’Donnell is a very pragmatic, rational person who values education and hard work.

In addition to the people he worked with, the army allowed O’Donnell to continue to grow in his career. “I liked the opportunities and was interested in what was going on,”

he admits. “I’m grateful I got to change jobs every few years. Why not be professionally stimulated and progress?”

He contrasts his military career to a career as a civilian in private practice and admits that he had no interest in managing the fiscal and economic aspects of a private practice and doubts that he could have continued to learn and grow as he has as an army physician.

His commitment to the army has inspired more commitment. In 2010, his daughter Mary graduated from the Army’s medical school, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, and is now four years into her internship and residency in general surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

With still two years to go, she is already considering furthering her education by pursuing a fellowship to study minimally invasive surgery.

Like father, like daughter.

“I knew I wanted to be a doctor very young,” Mary recalls. “I was about ten years old. My dad would get the New England Journal of Medicine and I would look at the pictures constantly and read about them. I didn’t think anything of it; I was just interested in the pictures. I guess that’s maybe unusual that I was looking at all the medical books my father had in the house.”

Mary laughs when I refer to her family’s

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Dr. Mary O’Donnell and her father, Dr. Francis O'Donnell, when he was deployed during the Persian Gulf War.

continued pursuit of education as an addiction. “And hard work,” she adds. “We are definitely blessed with intelligence in my family, but from an early age we learned that without hard work and continuous learning, it can be easily wasted.”

Even though she grew up in the military, Mary found her own path to the Army. When it was time to apply for medical schools, she cast her net fairly wide, applying all over, including her father’s medical school in New York City. “There was no pressure to join the military or to become a doctor. I became interested in medicine first, then interviewed at different medical schools, and USU was my favorite. I just fell in love with the sense of community, what you’re doing for people, the population, and how small the group of physicians that you’re going to be working with is. Taking care of wounded warriors was a huge part of it,” she adds.

“Working at Walter Reed has made it all the more worth it,” she points out. “It can be heartbreaking some of the stuff that you see, but getting [soldiers] to the point where they’re back with their families and they’re able to get to rehab is incredibly fulfilling.

Helping the families deal with what’s going on is an unforeseen part of a surgeon’s job.

Usually you think of a surgeon as – they meet you on the day of surgery and then it’s ‘goodbye see you in follow up’ and you never see them again. There’s a lot more patient interaction that goes on as a part of my job, and I am happy it is a part of my job. I’m incredibly grateful. It’s this aspect that I don’t think a lot of people outside the military get.

“You take care of the wounded warriors and they say thank you ma’am,” she marvels. “And I think, ‘Don’t say thank you ma’am. Thank you for everything that you’ve done.’ I would do this for free,” she points out. “They don’t even have to pay me to do this. It’s incredible. This is the reason why I became a doctor, to see my influence on helping people get back to their families, to be able to be with their families.”

Another difference between Army and civilian physicians is how they are paid.

Both Francis and Mary express relief at not letting a lack of money stand in the way of providing a patient the treatment they need.

“We completely avoid the patient as a transaction for money,” she points out. “Since it’s

government, it’s all paid for, you don’t even have to worry about, ‘Is this person even going to be able to pay for this?’ or ‘They really need this procedure but they can’t afford it, what do I do now? How do I take care of this person?’ You never really have to think about that stuff, which was something I didn’t really know before. It’s nice from a medical standpoint. I’m just trying to help a person.”

This is a family of keen and restless intellects. Mary’s oldest brother, Frank, graduated from Harvard and now works as the vice president of engineering at PubMatic.

Her sister Norah (the cover story for this magazine’s June/July issue) is a correspondent for CBS and her brother Matthew tutors high school students. Mary’s mother, Norah, Sr., at the age of 67, has returned to school to study microbiology.

Both father and daughter have a deep appreciation of the medical advances that have come out of the army, from the Army’s experiments with the smallpox vaccine during the Revolutionary War to breakthroughs in preventing infection and conducting amputations during the Civil War to the U.S. Army’s development of a vaccine for the meningococcal virus, and its continued research into vaccines for HIV and malaria.

“The Army has led the way in terms of research,” Francis points out. “Being exposed to that tradition was inspiring.”

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MILITARY PHYSICIANS

Our current war in Afghanistan has demanded more medical advances from the army’s medical personnel. “The wound care aspect of it has been a huge development,” Mary adds. “Prosthetic development has just exploded from [the outcome of the war in Afghanistan] in terms of incorporating your own nerves into the movement of these things, connecting your brain to a new limb.

On the base you see people walking around with their new legs and half the time you wouldn’t notice that they have prosthetic limbs on because they’re so high tech.”

“TBI [traumatic brain injury] rehab has become standard as well as a huge center for excellence to detect minor traumatic brain injury, which we were not aware of before,” she continues. “That has made people, like the National Football League, realize you can get multiple concussions and have minor traumatic brain injury, which does actually influence you. Through MRI technology they realized that there is damage going on that we were not aware of before.”

The army has proven a great fit for both father and daughter, who frequently use the term “mental stimulation” in describing their work and hobbies. In addition to his work as a contractor, Francis also serves as editor of the Armed Forces Health Surveil-

lance Center’s journal, The Medical Surveillance Monthly Report. He fell into this position because he could not resist participating in the editorial conversations of people working at desks near his. This led to some copy-editing and when the editor of the journal retired he asked Francis if he wanted the job. A natural storyteller, conversationalist, and crossword puzzle enthusiast, Francis’ love of words and the craft of writing is readily apparent. Consistent with his boundless curiosity, he and his wife are also studying Spanish. Mary is their inspiration for this endeavor. Having done volunteer work in Mexico as a high school student, she majored in Spanish at Georgetown University and is a fluent speaker.

Francis and Mary will frequently talk for hours about their cases and still talk about the New England Journal of Medicine, which is now an app on Mary’s phone. In describing her father’s influence on her life, Mary says, “My dad is the wisest and yet most humble person I know. He never pressured me in any direction towards a career path, as is evidenced by my elder siblings having chosen different paths.

However, his genuine desire for knowledge and pleasure in gaining it was obvious to me at an early age. He told me he used to

Mary's graduation from medical school. She is pictured with her parents, brothers Frank and Matthew, and her sister Norah.

read the encyclopedia growing up. For fun,“ she emphasizes.

Growing up on Staten Island in New York City, Francis says. “I was always keenly aware of being Irish.” His four children have the maiden names of their grandmothers as middle names as a way to maintain a connection to their heritage.

Still, the O’Donnells don’t wear their heritage on their sleeves. In fact, Francis is wary of the potential for divisiveness that can arise out of allegiance to one nationality.

His father was born in Scotland to parents who emigrated from Ireland to find work, ultimately moving to the states. Their experience of having to struggle as immigrants to find work instilled in them an intolerance for discrimination, particularly racial discrimination.

The O’Donnells are only two of the hundreds of thousands of unsung heroes who tend to the sick, and work to ensure our safety. Their story underscores what the army does well – protect U.S. citizens and take care of those who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way to protect our country. That commitment to its service members has led to advances in our entire nation’s health care. It’s more than the motto IA Army Strong, it’s also Army Cares.

“Prosthetic development has just exploded from [the outcome of the war in Afghanistan] in terms of incorporating your own nerves into the movement of these things, connecting your brain to a new limb.”

92 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

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HISTORY

My Grandfather’s War OVER 210,000 IRISH ENLISTED IN THE BRITISH ARMY DURING WORLD WAR I. AMONG THEM WERE DOCTORS SUCH AS MY GRANDFATHER WHO TENDED THE WOUNDED AND SAW THE BRUTALITY OF MODERN WARFARE UP CLOSE.

By Patricia Harty

“Waiting for the Wounded at the Battle of the Somme.” Maj. Bill Egan is pictured center.

“A British advance has just begun, and the surgeons of a Divisional Collecting Station near the Somme are awaiting the arrival of the first laden stretcher-bearers. In a few minutes the three officers will be at work, perhaps for twenty-four hours on end. At one Casualty Clearing Station a distinguished surgeon performed, without resting, nineteen difficult operations, each lasting more than an hour, in cases of severe abdominal wounds, where delay would have meant the loss of life. In almost every case the man was saved. Another surgeon operated for thirty-six hours without relief. Such devotion is not exceptional in the R.A.M.C.” – Muirhead Bone, British War Artist.

W

e didn’t talk much about my grandfather (pictured center in the sketch above) when I was growing up. He had been a doctor in the British Army, decorated for his service in the First World War, but the bitter War of Independence had left its mark on Ireland, and while many families had relatives in the British Army who fought at the front, it wasn’t something you bragged about. It’s only as an adult then that I have started to look deeper into my grandfather’s life.

His name was William “Bill” Egan and

94 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

he was born on September 30, 1881, into a farming family outside the town of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, the youngest of three sons of Anne Duggan and Maurice Egan.

He was educated at St. Vincent’s College, Castleknock; Queens College, Cork, and the Royal University of Ireland, Dublin.

After graduating from medical school in 1906, he worked as a resident surgeon at the Waterford Infirmary for 12 months before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps and embarking on his first tour of India. Over the next several years, he served in Rawalpindi,

Ferozepore, Multan, Rangoon, and Mandalay. In 1912, he returned to Ireland and did a short stint at the Curragh before leaving to take the Senior Officer Course at the Royal Army Medical College, London.

The First World War began on July 28, 1914, and two weeks later, my grandfather was on active service in France and Belgium. He was captured at Landrecies on October, 18, 1914 and interned at Sennelager Prisoner of War Camp in Germany.

Following his release on June 26, 1915 (in what I can only guess was a prisoner exchange), he returned to London and immediately married Norah Wall, a girl from his hometown. A month later he was back on active service, first with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Malta, then Gallipoli and then back to France and Belgium where he served as the Officer Commanding No. 44 Field Ambulance until near the war’s end in November 1918.

While his Army records afford us a timeline on his service, they don’t reveal much about his experiences on the battlefield.

Thankfully, the surviving sketch of him at the Battle of the Somme, and the accompanying caption by the artist Muirhead Bone (printed at the beginning of this piece), help to fill in the gaps. The original, entitled, “Waiting for the Wounded,” is housed in the Imperial War Museum, London.

When I was a child a copy of this sketch hung in my parents’ bedroom, but I didn’t know its importance. Now, as we commemorate the centenary of the Great War, it has taken on new significance for me.

At the Battle of the Somme alone, 1,000,000 were wounded or killed. But my grandfather didn’t die in the war.

Incredibly, he survived the battlefields, malaria, “a whiff of gas,” and a German prisoner of war camp, only to die in 1929, from a ruptured spleen as a result of a fall.

By this time he was in Jamaica, in charge of the British Military Hospital there.

My mother, who was 10 when her father died, had few insights to offer on her father’s wartime experiences. She had her own war stories but they were all from

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LEFT: Major William “Bill” Egan, Royal Army Medical Corps.

cle at Gallipoli. There’s also a photograph of him in the German prisoner of war camp. I think it was probably staged for propaganda purposes (or perhaps it was used as documentation in the prisoner exchange). He has a look on his face that says, “don’t believe this.” I know from research that officers were reported to have been treated better than enlisted men, but according to one prisoner’s account of Senneglager camp in September 1914 when my grandfather was there, “it was an open field enclosed with wire... there were no tents or coverings in it of any kind. There were about 2,000 prisoners in it – all British. We lay on the ground with only one blanket for three men.”

“From a medical standpoint, World War I was a miserable bloody affair,” U.S. historian John Campbell wrote, giving me further perspective on my grandfather’s war years. “Generally there were four kinds of cases: gas injuries, shell shock, diseases, and wounds. World War I was the first conflict to see the use of deadly gases as a weapon. Gas burned skin and irritated noses, throats, and lungs. It could cause death or paralysis within minutes, killing by asphyxiation. As soon as troops learned that gas was in their area, they had to put on masks. Even having the fumes in their clothing could cause blisters, sores, and other health problems. Bathing and changing clothes immediately helped but was not always possible. Many thousands of gas victims suffered the painful effects of damaged lungs throughout their lives.”

Campbell also wrote about the lice, quoting a soldier from North Carolina. “At first we had only one kind [of lice] but now we have the gray-back, the red, the black, and almost every color imaginable.” And the conditions in the trenches: “After they stood in water for weeks at a time, their socks would begin to grow to their feet. In severe cases, the soldiers’ feet had to be amputated.”

THE FRONT

WWII, when she was on the medical staff of St. Mary’s Hospital, London. Most memorable for her was working with Alexander Fleming, the Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin, and tending to French and British soldiers who had been invalided out following the Battle of Dunkirk.

My own insights into WWI come from books: British writer Sebastian Faulk’s Birdsong (1994) – so descriptive that 20 years after reading, I shiver at the images the author conjured up of the lice that lived in the dank wool of the men’s uniforms.

The Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s book A Long Long Way (2005), also struck a chord with descriptions of the lives of the soldiers in the trenches and the gas attacks. Barry’s book is also insightful in exploring divided loyalties on the homefront as some Irish fought for independence and others fought at the front.

Both of these books made me think more deeply about my grandfather’s life and I wanted to know more.

Before he died, my Uncle Billy gave me an old photo album of his father’s, and, as the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words. Here were photographs of my grandfather as a young doctor at the Waterford Infirmary before he enlisted in the Army. Pictures of his life in India, before and after the war; my mother as a baby under the watchful eye of a turban-clad servant. Pictures of Kashmir; beautiful landscapes that my grandfather captured with his keen surgeon’s eye. There’s even one of my grandmother and him at the railway station in Quetta (now Pakistan). He was stationed there, on the Afghan border, during the Third Anglo-Afghan war.

There are also many happy photographs of the family in Jamaica.

Most poignant, for me, are the WWI photographs. There’s one of him on the boat to Gallipoli, another of him supervising the unloading of medical supplies; a photo of the camp in Alexandria from where he was invalided out after the deba-

I keep returning to the photo of my grandfather on the boat to Gallipoli. He

GALLIPOLI

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HISTORY looks happy. He clearly didn’t know what was coming.

Intending to secure the capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) on the northern bank of the Dardanelles, a strait that provided a sea route to the Russian Empire (one of the Allied powers during the war), Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula.

The naval attack was repelled and after eight months’ fighting, with thousands of casualties on both sides, the land campaign also failed and the invasion force was withdrawn to Egypt.

My grandfather was invalided out of Alexandria, and two months later he was back at the front where he would stay until close to the end of the war.

If my grandfather kept a journal, it’s been lost to time, but some members of his unit, the 44 Field Ambulance, did put together a book of remembrances that my brother Noel discovered and put online (noelharty.net). The following unattributed excepts offer an insight into the daily life of the medics: “One sometimes got downhearted at appalling casualties in obtaining what, in our hearts we knew were meagre results.

“It was always sad, after big pushes, to see bad cases, such as abdominals, put on one side to die, in order to give those less badly wounded the chance of recovery. . . .

One abdomen, one laparotomy, means a whole hour devoted to an altogether uncertain result; it means, at most, half a chance of saving one man. An hour given to other

THE SOMME, 1916

The caption from the photo album reads, “Billy on board Gloucester Castle on his way to Gallipoli, September 29, 1915.”

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Bill Egan is pictured in Gallipoli, circa 1915.

severe wounds (heads, limbs, etc.) means that you will save three at least. Therefore, as the stream of wounded increases, one has to make a choice among the abdominal cases.... At last an hour comes when one hesitates no longer, when one abandons to their uncertain fate all those with abdominal wounds, hoping, in order to calm the revolt against one’s own helplessness, that the very refusal to operate may be rewarded by some cures.

“Poor abandoned ones! We trust that God especially covered you with His wings, and that your people at home never knew the tragedy of your last hours.”

Also from the journal of the 44th Field Ambulance is this account of the Battle Arras: “An event which greatly impressed itself upon the minds of the nursing orderlies occurred on 2nd April, at about 8 a.m.

A crowd of men walked in, and said that a gas shell had dropped in their billet. They were put on stretchers and oxygen administered, but all were dead shortly after noon. Two days later we buried them; and, while we were in the cemetery, Fritz treated us to a small bombardment of gas shells, so we had to finish the burial with masks on. Col. Egan, by the way, got a whiff of gas a short time before.

“A general attack was made on 3rd May, the fighting with us being round Cherisy The unit dealt at Mercatel with ‘walking wounded’ only, and, roughly, two thousand casualties passed through our hands on the day of the attack.”

ARRAS 1916

The journal writers also grappled with returning to normal life, as the following shows: “The cessation of hostilities found most of us with feelings hard to analyse.

The change came so quickly, and we were out in an odd corner of Belgium, with few other troops and with no civilians to rouse us up to work off our feelings. It was hard to realize that slime, mud, and blood would cease to be part of our life, or that timber and concrete would no longer be our normal environment. No more washing in water already twelve thick; back we were going for good to real beds, clean sheets, and clothes that knew not lice. Hurrah! Some regrets popped up, though. There were past failures and lost opportunities, e.g. why had we not handled that wounded limb more tenderly, why had we not spared a smile for that poor chap in pain on the stretcher, or had we done enough for that dying lad? But the Army is no place for much over-thinking, so off we went to drag out the baron’s piano for song and dance. After a thanksgiving service we settled down to ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag.’”

WAR’S END

Following the war, my grandfather did a second tour in India. Then, from 1923 to 1927, he served with the Scottish Command in Edinburgh. (His image is on the Scottish National War Memorial). He was posted to Newcastle, Jamaica, in March, 1927 and served there until his death on December 11, 1929. (He fell from a veranda onto concrete.)

IN HIS OWN WORDS

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FAR LEFT: Bill Egan, pictured on the right, supervising the unloading of medical supplies in Gallipoli.

LEFT: 09/2013: Patricia Harty at his grave in Jamaica.

Following his funeral my grandmother the scenes where these achievements were EPILOGUE In September, 2013, I visited my grandbrought my mother and her two siblings enacted, I can picture some of them as back to Ireland. They never went back. vividly as when they occurred. The mud and father’s grave, located on what is now a From not having had a strong appreciation drudgery of the ‘Salient’ are almost forgot- Jamaican Defence Force facility. A young for my grandfather, I’ve come to admire him, ten; but memory still clings to the football officer helped me to locate the spot and and to treasure each photograph, and the matches we won and the races we pulled off. once there, he gave my grandfather a military salute, as my friends and I stood “Waiting for the Wounded” sketch. to attention. It was an emotional visit.

Other than some handwritten I was struck by how young my grandcaptions to photos, and a note on father was when he died – only 48. His a studio picture of him in uniform age hadn’t registered until I saw it on to his daughter Patricia (who his tombstone. I imagined my mother passed it on to me), few words as a 10-year-old, standing where I now survive him. The exception is the stood, saying goodbye forever. introduction he wrote to the aforeI was sad to leave, but I was mentioned journal of the 44th strangely comforted when I noticed Ambulance, which I find myself that the grave next to his was that of a returning to. I believe I get a sense young Irish boy who died in 1926. of him from the small things; menJohn Francis, 8 year-old son of Patrick tions of sport, and the importance and Anne Quinn. They would continue of sticking together. He seems to to keep each other company, as they have a yearning to focus on the had for so many years, on this island positive that he can’t quite manage. Bill Egan, at table (left) Senneglager Prisoner of War Camp, 1914.

IA so far away from home.

On being asked to write an introductory note to the record of the 44th Field Who can forget that memorable day at Ambulance, many thoughts assail me. In the Ecquedecques, when the Ambulance was first place, the assurance of our Reunion broken up, and the cadre moved off, leaving gatherings, which has made the publication those who stayed behind with lumps in their of the book possible, is foremost in my mind. throats and tears in their eyes, unable to do We have now tided over four years of post- more than wave a sad good-bye to their dewar struggle – a struggle in many ways parting comrades? With what joy we all met more strenuous than our four years in the again at Bournonville, a few weeks later, on field – and I am delighted to see that my old the unit’s re-formation! The memory of comrades of the 44th have still the power of Noyon, where we left so many of our best, sticking together, a characteristic for which will always be a sad one; but, after all, Grandfather’s medals: The first medal is the DSO they were always famous. May that char- death but joins us to the great majority. I (Distinguished Service Order). The second medal acteristic continue ’till the last of us goes wish this record every success. It should be is the OBE (Officer of The Order of the British Emover to the best of us! treasured by each and every one of us as a pire). The third medal is the 1914 star. The bar on the medal was awarded to those who served In the following pages a general survey souvenir of the bad old days; as a glorious under fire during the period August to November of the life of the unit, from its formation to record of the deeds of our brave dead; and 1914. The fourth medal is the British War Medal.

The fifth medal is the Victory Medal. The Bronze its demobilisation, is most excellently pro- as an inspiration in the days to come. duced by the Committee, and I heartily conW. EGAN. oak leaf was added to those who were mentioned in dispatched. The sixth medal is the India Gengratulate them on their success.

Quetta, Baluchistan, eral Service Medal, the bar showing service in the Situated many thousands of miles from May 24, 1922 Afghanistan North West India campaign of 1919.

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Bahrain

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HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

The Trouble in

Brian Dooley writes about Irish-trained doctors imprisoned for treating protesters.

sk most people what they know about Bahrain and chances are it won’t be much – the smallest country in the Middle East is known a bit for being on the Grand Prix circuit and for its pearl industry. In the last few years it has also gained a reputation as the place where the government attacked its nurses and doctors after they treated injured protesters as part of the 2011 “Arab Spring.”

In response to calls for democracy in March and April 2011, the regime arrested thousands of people. Several dozen medics were arrested, leading to an international outcry when they told consistent and credible stories about their mistreatment in custody. Some had worked and trained in Ireland.

Bahrain’s an old-fashioned dictatorship where the king controls the island kingdom’s government and constitution – his uncle has been the unelected prime minister for over 40 years, and most of the cabinet are members of the ruling family.

The U.S. government sees Bahrain as a necessary albeit unsavory ally, and despite some Congressional voices speaking out against the human rights abuses – notably Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts – criticism of the Bahrain regime has been generally muted. The United States supplies the Bahrain military with nearly all of its equipment and Bahrain is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

On visits to Bahrain for Human Rights First, I’ve recorded testimonies from the medics – how they were handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured into making absurd confessions about conspiring to overthrow Bahrain’s government by armed force. I also attended Bahrain court hearings for the sham trial of 20 medics who were charged with felonies (and another where 27 other medics were charged with less serious offenses), witnessing how their

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claims of torture were dismissed by the judge.

Four of the doctors in the “felony medics” trial had trained in Dublin at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland, another had taught at the RCSI campus in Bahrain opened in 2004.

All had been tortured into signing confessions to crimes they’d never committed – all were found guilty by a military court and sentenced to between five and 15 years in jail.

Protests from the United Nations, the United States and other governments resulted in a civilian appeal in June 2012 that produced acquittals for nine of them, but Dr. Al Alekry, an orthopedic surgeon who trained in Ireland from 1999-2002 and worked in Temple Street hospital, remains in jail, serving a five-year term.

Another orthopedic surgeon, Bassim Dhaif, also trained in Dublin, as did his brother Ghassan, a consultant in maxillofacial surgery, and Ghassan’s wife Zahra Alsammak, a consultant anesthetist. They were all tortured in custody. So was Fatima Haji, a rheumatologist who taught at the RCSI campus in Bahrain.

Ghassan told me how he was stopped at the airport trying to leave Bahrain in early 2011 with his family. He was beaten by men in masks in front of his wife and children before being taken into custody and tortured for days afterwards.

Dr. Fatima Haji told me how she’d been “blindfolded and handcuffed with my hands behind my back, and beaten…. A female officer hit me on head on both sides at the same time – she was wearing what I later found out was a special electrical band on her hands and she electrocuted me a couple of times – I felt a shock wave through my head. It was very painful and the whole world was spinning.

TOP: Dr. Al Alekry, an orthopedic surgeon who trained in Ireland, is still in jail. LEFT: Dr. Fatima Haji who taught at RCSI was tortured.

I was beaten again on the head.”

Damian McCormack, a surgeon at Dublin’s Mater Hospital, trained some of the Bahrain doctors in Dublin and has been a prominent campaigner for justice for them. “I remember Ali Alekry as a big, gentle man,” said McCormack.

“A hard worker, a mature and spiritual man. To my mind he’s a modern hero.”

McCormack led a delegation of Irish medics and politicians to Bahrain in July 2011 to investigate what had happened, and is disappointed at the reaction from the RCSI and other Irish medical bodies to the targeting of the Irish-trained doctors and other medics in Bahrain. He’s been vocal in criticizing the RCSI’s Bahrain branch for forcing its students to swear an oath of loyalty to the king and to sign a non-protest pledge.

The controversy has exploded with new life in recent months as the RCSI in Bahrain seeks accreditation from the Irish Medical Council (IMC). At an Oireachtas committee hearing in April 2014, former Professor of Medicine and Chairman of the Department at RCSI-Bahrain Prof Jim Finucane denied torture ever occurred in Bahraini hospitals between 2008 and 2013, contrary to reports from leading human rights organizations.

The IMC is due in Bahrain soon to assess the college’s bona fides for accreditation.

Meanwhile, no senior Bahraini official has been held accountable for the torture inflicted on the Irish-trained and other medics, and Dr. Alekry remains in jail. IA Brian Dooley is the Director, Human Rights Defenders at Human Rights First @dooley_dooley

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Authentic Irish Foods

Enjoy a Taste of Ireland

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MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

Living With MS

Sharon Ní Chonchúir breaks her silence about living with MS to give people inspiration and motivation to help themselves. y name is Sharon and I’ve got multiple sclerosis. It sounds as though I’m introducing myself to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting but I have cause for solemnity. I was diagnosed with this condition four years ago but it’s only in the past few months that I’ve begun to be open about it with those around me.

There was a reason for my secrecy and an even bigger reason for coming out into the open. I will have to go all the way back to the beginning to explain both to you.

This particular chapter of my life started seven years ago. One morning in May 2007, following a particularly stressful few months, I woke with a tingling sensation down the right side of my body. It was similar to pins and needles but it didn’t go away. I rang my doctor and, fearful of a

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blood clot, she advised me to rush to the hospital.

A week and many tests later, doctors ruled out a blood clot but were worried I had MS. My test results were inconclusive at that stage so once the tingling subsided to the extent that I was able to ignore it, I was sent home and life returned to normal.

It stayed that way until 2010. That summer, my right side stopped working properly. It was weak and didn’t do what I asked of it. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t carry things without dropping them. I often missed the keys I was aiming for when typing, making work next to impossible. And I was in constant pain. Cue more tests and a definitive diagnosis of MS. Suddenly, I was very frightened. Every single association I had with MS to that point was a negative one. As someone who had always been healthy, I had naively as-

sumed I’d live to be one of those old ladies who inspire others with their vim and vigor. My diagnosis destroyed this vision of my future, replacing it with images of wheelchairs and disability. All I felt when I thought of MS was a deep and dreadful sense of panic.

Telling others made me panic even more. When I told family and friends, I saw shock and pity reflected in their eyes.

I’d never been on the receiving end of pity before and it was not a place I wanted to be.

So I kept my diagnosis relatively secret.

I live in Dingle, a small town where everyone knows everyone else. I didn’t want to be known as someone who was sick. I wanted to be seen as the same strong person I’d always been.

I didn’t have much professional support at that time. My neurologist responded to

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all of my questions with the same stock answer: the outcome is different for everyone; nobody can tell what will happen to you.

Her words made me feel powerless. They rendered everything beyond my control. My future – which had always shimmered brightly and enticingly in the distance – became a darker and more ominous place.

I turned to the Internet, but what I found there frightened me too.

Worst case scenario after worst case scenario: people in pain, people who were disabled, a litany of suffering…. I couldn’t bear to read about it and did not want to contemplate that this was what lay in store for me.

Instead, I started taking medicine and put MS to the back of my mind.

It sounds simple when put like that but I’d be lying if I said it was easy.

I had to inject Betaferon into my body every second day. It hurt. It left bruises. And for the first three months and intermittently after that, there were side effects.

Mostly, these consisted of flu-like symptoms. I’d take the medicine and within an hour, I’d be shivering with cold. I’d have aches and pains all over. And I’ve had a raging headache. I eventually learned to take the medicine at night time so that I wouldn’t have to spend all day in bed. At night at least, I’d be in bed anyway.

These side effects faded after three months (though they would flare up from time to time just to remind me how toxic my medicine was) and my life was able to return to normal. At that stage, I began

willing myself to forget about my diagnosis.

Life allowed me to do this too. In fact, it allowed me to become busier than ever. I did more writing. I started teaching. I even opened what became an award-winning café. I was so busy I didn’t have time to think about being or becoming ill.

That was until I got a wake-up call from a friend who rang to tell me that she too had been diagnosed with MS. She could hardly speak for crying, and in her eyes I could see all the fear and worry I had been repressing for so long.

Months passed and as she struggled with her diagnosis, I started to accept my own.

She discovered Dr. George Jelinek and his book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis and in introducing it to me, she changed my life.

Dr. Jelinek is a distinguished Australian physician. His mother had MS and took her own life when she was no longer able to live with the ravages of the disease. He was diagnosed with MS when he was in his 40s

Ní Chonchúir

NOTE: MS affects 2.3 million worldwide, including 8,000 people in Ireland.

According to the MS Ireland website, approximately, 250 people are diagnosed with MS in Ireland every year. In the North West the prevalence rate for MS can be as high as 1 in 400. MS is unique to each individual person. The presence, severity and duration of symptoms can vary drastically from person to person.

For this reason, there is no typical way to cope with MS. There are no generic steps to take to help day to day living. Understanding how MS affects your mind and body, availing of services and resources and building a supportive environment are all elements a person needs to consider when developing coping mechanisms for living with MS.

and because of his mother, had more negative associations with it than I ever had.

But as a doctor, he was able to do something about it. He did research and over time, compiled his findings into a book which sets out dietary and lifestyle changes that have been proven to minimize the long-term impact of MS. These changes are all healthy ones. The diet is a whole-food, plant-based one that reduces intake of saturated fat and harmful oils. Meat, dairy, fried foods, and chocolate are out but fish, vegetables, fruits, almonds and wine are most definitely in. This diet is combined with vitamin D supplementation, regular exercise and a focus on positive mental and emotional health.

Within four months of starting this diet last July, I was feeling a lot better. The tingling which had been a constant irritant since it first started seven years ago completely disappeared. I felt healthier than I had ever done before: so much so that I stopped taking my toxic medicine.

Things derailed at Christmas when I stuffed myself with turkey and chocolate.

But the pain I suffered in January convinced me never to do that again.

That minor derailment aside, I’ve followed the diet without deviation and now feel healthy and full of hope. This is why I’m writing this article today. MS is a serious condition. It’s not something you should ignore as I did; crossing your fingers that you’ll be one of the lucky ones with a mild form of the disease. Instead, you should do all you can to stay healthy.

Give your body what it needs to combat the condition and by doing so, you may just overcome your MS. I can’t promise you a cure but I can promise you some hope. When I was first diagnosed, I couldn’t see that there was any way in which I could control the toll MS would take on my body. But thanks to this new diet, I feel full of hope for what I once again believe will be a long, happy and healthy life. If you or anyone you know has MS, I feel it’s my duty to share that sense IA of hope with you.

For a complete fact sheet on multiple sclerosis, contact MS Ireland: www.ms-society.ie

Photography by Richard Smallwood

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Diet

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS The optimal diet is a plant-based wholefood diet, supplemented with fish. Here are four of Sharon’s favorite recipes.

MS Friendly Recipies A Summery Minestrone Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil 3 onions, chopped 8 cloves of garlic, chopped 4 large carrots, diced 6 celery stalks, diced 2 tins of chopped tomatoes 2 litres vegetable stock 2 courgettes, chopped 200g frozen peas 1 tin (400g) cooked cannellini beans 50g dried macaroni or other smaller-shaped pasta Salt and pepper (how much you will need depends on the seasoning of your stock, but provided the stock is not too salty, you’ll need at least one teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper) Heat the oil over a low heat and add the garlic, onions, carrots and celery.

Cook gently for ten minutes.

Add the tomatoes and stock and bring to a boil.

Simmer for an hour.

Add the chopped courgettes, peas, beans and pasta and cook for another ten minutes or until the pasta is cooked through.

Season with the salt and pepper.

Makes ten servings.

A Raw Brownie

(No refined sugar, no gluten, no dairy, just deliciousness!)

2 cups (160g) dates 1 cup (90g) pecan nuts or walnuts 5 tbsp cocoa powder 3 tbsp cocoa nibs 2.5 tbsp maple syrup 20 raspberries

Remove the pits from the dates.

Place the nuts and cocoa nibs in a food processor and grind until they resemble breadcrumbs.

Add the dates and blend.

Add the cocoa powder, maple syrup and raspberries and blend again.

Press the mixture into a lined baking tin and place in the fridge for three hours or until set.

Cut into squares and enjoy. These will keep in the fridge for four or five days (but that’s presuming you don’t devour them all at once!).

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Baked Egg, Smoked Salmon and Spinach Brunch 250 grams fresh spinach leaves 4 slices of smoked salmon 4 best-quality eggs* 1 ⁄4 teaspoon salt You will also need ramekins or a muffin tin

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius/350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sprinkle the salt over the spinach and cook in your preferred way. I cook mine in a steamer over boiling water for seven minutes or until wilted.

Let the spinach cool a little and once you can handle it, use your hands to squeeze out all excess water.

Divide the spinach between your four ramekins or four sections of your muffin tray.

Lay the smoked salmon on top.

Break an egg into each of the four ramekins or sections of the muffin tray, on top of the spinach and salmon.

Cook in the oven for ten to twelve minutes or until set.

Use a knife to cut the egg away from the edges of the ramekin or muffin tin.

Lift the egg-y muffin out of the tin using a dessert spoon (you don’t want to break that runny yolk just yet) and place on a slice of warm toast.

Dig deliciously in.

Serves four people or two especially hungry ones.

Rice and Beans 75g 1 1

1 400g 2 1

brown basmati rice garlic clove, chopped tablespoon olive oil Half an onion, chopped red pepper, chopped tin kidney beans, drained and rinsed tablespoons cider vinegar tablespoon runny honey Salt and pepper

1 ¼ ½ 2

avocado, diced red onion, sliced lime, juiced large tomatoes, chopped Salt to season Small handful coriander leaves, chopped

Cook the basmati rice until tender, drain and leave in a covered pot to keep warm.

Prepare the avocado salad by mixing the avocado, the tomatoes and the red onion in the lime juice. Taste and season.

Heat the oil over a medium heat and add the garlic and onion. Cook for one minute.

Add the chopped red pepper and cook until soft, three minutes or so.

Add the drained beans, the cider vinegar and the honey and season.

Cook for five minutes until the flavours come together.

Divide the rice between two plates, spoon beans over and serve with the avocado salsa. Sprinkle with chopped coriander before serving.

Serves two people.

Sharon Ní Chonchúir blogs about herself and the recipes she uses can be found at www.deliciousindingle.com.

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{sláinte}

The Mighty Salmon

By Edythe Preet

While health practitioners now praise the protein and amino acids provided by salmon, it has long had its place in Irish history simply because it is such good eating.

very year more than 180,000 people visit Ireland expressly to engage in an activity that has been one of the island’s top drawing cards since the first intrepid hunter-gatherers arrived over 7,000 years ago: Fishing. And it’s one fish especially these avid anglers are after. Sporting hip-high waders, they claim stretches along one of Erin’s many crystal clear rivers to try their luck at reeling in the mighty salmon.

From February to mid-September salmon migrate from the open ocean into the coastal estuaries then up myriad waterways to inland lakes where they spawn. They are found in almost every

acquired a red spot on his back and absorbed another portion of the Tree’s wisdom. Ultimately, the fish became The Salmon of Knowledge.

The same salmon appears in the Fionn Tales. When Fionn MacCumaill was a lad, he studied with the most famous bard in Ireland, Finegas, who lived beside the River Boyne. One night, the poet came home carrying a reed basket in which lay a magnificent salmon. “I have patiently waited seven years to catch this fish,” Finegas told the boy. “Cook it for my supper, but on no account may you taste it because it has been foretold that a poet will eat this fish and gain all the wisdom of the ages.”

Dutifully following his master’s bidding, Fionn broiled the salmon over a fire of sweet apple wood.

He watched carefully as the fish cooked, lest it burn, but when a blister appeared on the skin he pressed it flat with his thumb and the hot fat burned his skin.

Without thinking, Fionn put his finger in his mouth to relieve the pain and unwittingly had the first taste of the salmon. Instantly, he knew that something magical had happened and was afraid to tell his mentor what he had done. But Fionn was an honest man and Finegas was wise. The poet ungrudgingly forgave his pupil, knowing that Fate had bestowed the Gift of Knowledge on the proper man. From that day forSalmon on the River Shannon as photographed for PBS Nature show on Ireland’s longest river. ward, whenever Fionn wanted to see the future or solve a problem, he only had to suck his thumb and all was revealed. He was the wisest of men, and for stream, being most plentiful from May until late July, and fairly that reason the heroic Fianna chose him as their leader. dance up the weirs where the rivers meet the sea. While visiting The salmon was believed to be such a magical fish that it pepBallyshannon, County Down in 1776, Arthur Young wrote in A pers Gaelic phrases and proverbs. The old saying “Slainte an Tour in Ireland, “I was delighted to see the salmon jump...the Bradain chugat” translates to “May you be healthy as a salmon” water was perfectly alive with them” and conveys a wish for strength, agility and long life. The folk Young was far from the first to mention salmon in a literary belief that some mystical connection exists between the salmon work. The King of Fish appears over and over again in Irish and the essential divine force is evidenced by the phrase “Bradan mythology. Once upon a time, Lough Neagh overflowed its banks beatha” which means “life essence” or “soul.” submerging the palace of King Eochaidh. All the royal family Aside from its legendary mythic and divine qualities, the drowned but for one daughter, Muiraidhin (Born of the Sea). salmon is prized for its superior taste. In fact, it is probable that Trapped under the lake in her grianan (bower), the princess saw salmon acquired its place in folk history simply because it is such speckled salmon swimming all around her and prayed, “O Lord, good eating. In ancient times, salmon was always the central dish make me a salmon that I may swim with the others.” Her plea was served at royal banquets where the method of cooking was idenanswered. Muiraidhin was changed into a salmon, her lapdog into tical to Fionn’s. A whole fish was rubbed with salt, impaled on a an otter, and they lived happily together for three hundred years spit, basted with honey and butter, and roasted to a turn over an under the clear green waters. open fire. Accompanied by a salad of wild cresses, a loaf of crusty One of the most ancient sagas tells how King Fintan escaped soda bread and cups of golden mead, it was a kingly repast the Flood by leaping into Conla’s Well where he was changed into indeed. a salmon. Alongside the well stood a venerable hazel tree that was Salmon fishing is such an ubiquitous Irish sport that when a called The Tree of Knowledge because it produced both flowers country person engages an angler in casual conversation and and nuts simultaneously. Whenever a nut fell into the water, the asks if he has caught a “fish,” the question usually means “Have hungry salmon gobbled it up. For each nut swallowed, he you caught a salmon?” In Ballintrae, County Antrim, fishing

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boats and nets have traditionally been blessed on Saint John’s Day (June 21st) during the height of salmon season. After the ceremony, everyone sits down to a dinner where the menu features fish soup, fresh caught grilled salmon and the first harvest of new potatoes. Since Ballintrae stands on a bank of the River Bush, it’s not too surprising that the drink of choice is Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey.

At three years of age, a salmon weighs 8-12 pounds, and while it can be baked, broiled, or smoked, the most common cooking method is poaching. One 18th century recipe called for the whole cleaned fish to be seasoned, in and out, with a mixture of salt, pepper, dry breadcrumbs, finely grated horseradish, minced capers and a few chopped anchovies. It was then poached in a court bouillon made from equal parts of claret, white wine, apple cider and water.

In years past, when salmon runs were so abundant as to be considered “poor people’s food” vast numbers of the catch were filleted, poached briefly, then pickled for several days in a brine

RECIPES

made from vinegar, onions, carrots and lemon juice. According to A Sportsman in Ireland (1897), a favorite breakfast consisted of “a bowl of fresh milk, a liberal allowance of cold salmon soaked in vinegar and a bottle of port wine.” When millions of Irish fled during the Great Hunger of the 19th century, tons of pickled salmon found a market in America where the immigrants hungered for a familiar taste.

While there is hardly a more delectable treat to bring home as a souvenir from a trip to Ireland than a side of oak smoked wild salmon, a fine Irish meal can be prepared by journeying no further than your favorite supermarket. The simplest way of preparing the King of Fishes is one of the best. Place salmon steaks on a foil-covered grill, season with salt and pepper, top with a pat of parsley-lemon butter, and broil until the flesh flakes easily (approximately 10 minutes). Add some finely ground hazelnuts to the butter, and perhaps you too will become as wise as Fionn MacCumail.

IA Sláinte!

People who say that eating fish is boring and they’d rather dine on meat have it backwards. The only thing that alters the taste of poultry and red meat is the way it’s prepared. Every fish has a unique flavor, and is a more easily digested, healthier source of protein. And the mighty salmon is the best of the best.

Not only is salmon a great source of lean protein and packed with nutrients like vitamin B12, vitamin D, selenium, calcium and iron, but it also has high amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids that are associated with many health benefits, from warding off depression and cognitive decline to reducing inflammation and the risk of heart disease.

Green Mayonnaise

1 cup water ⁄2 cup white wine 1 carrot, peeled and sliced 1 onion, peeled and sliced 1 stalk of celery w/ leaves, cut in pieces 1 sprig of thyme 2 bay leaves 1 bunch of parsley 10 whole peppercorns 1 whole 8 pound salmon, scaled and gutted Put the water, wine, vegetables, herbs and peppercorns in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Line a baking pan with a large piece of heavy foil. Place the salmon in the center of the pan, and wrap it loosely with the foil.

Pour the poaching liquid over the salmon inside the foil envelope, then crimp the edges closed. Bake in a preheated 300 F oven for approximately 1 hour. Let the salmon sit in the foil for 20 minutes, then lift it onto a large serving platter, and carefully remove the skin. Serve hot or chilled with boiled new potatoes and green mayonnaise. Serves 10.

1 side of wild Atlantic salmon (skin on), approx. 3 lbs.

2 large dill bunches, stems removed 1 ⁄2 cup kosher salt 1 ⁄2 cup sugar 1 heaping teaspoon white pepper Mix salt with sugar and pepper, and set aside. Line a glass baking dish with plastic wrap. Cut salmon side in half. Place one piece, skin down, on the wrap. Cover with one-half of salt mixture. Place a thick layer of dill sprigs over the salt-sugar, reserving some for garnish. Spread remaining salt-sugar on the other piece of salmon. Place second piece on top of the first, this time with skin up. Completely wrap salmon with plastic wrap. Place another slightly smaller baking dish on top of salmon. Put two heavy weights in the uppermost baking dish.

Refrigerate salmon for four days, turning salmon over twice each day. On the fifth day, brush dill and salt mixture off salmon, place salmon pieces end-to-end in a large platter and garnish with fresh dill sprigs. Slice thinly and accompany with slices of hearty bread. Serves 8 to 12 as an appetizer.

Whole Poached Salmon (personal recipe) 1

(Traditional Irish Cooking - Biddy White Lennon) 1 ⁄3

cup mayonnaise cup packed fresh sorrel and watercress leaves, stems removed Blanch the leaves for 2 minutes in a pot of boiling water, then rinse under cold water and drain. Chop the leaves very finely and stir into the mayonnaise. Whirl the mixture in a blender to achieve a really smooth green sauce. Makes 1 cup.

1

Gravlax (Ancient Viking Salt-Cured Salmon Recipe)

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 105

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POETRY

Soda Bread She said she’d lost the knack—not the recipe, which had never been written down— but the knack of mixing the dough just so, not too much, not too little, so that the moist, buttery loaves rose into their perfectly rounded shapes, the cross impressed in the top revealing itself as the crust hardened, sure as the Annunciation.

It was because my father had innocently asked for soda bread, the kind he remembered from Ireland, which she had not made for decades, that the kitchen was transformed into an assembly line, batch after batch of dough, loaves emerging from the oven to cool, be sampled, then discarded behind the garage as not quite right.

“Soda Bread” is from Timothy Walsh’s new poetry collection, When the World Was Rear-Wheel Drive (Main Street Rag, 2014), which has many Irish-American themed poems (including “Grandma Walsh’s Wake” and “The Stones of Culdalee” (both have appeared in Irish America). To purchase a copy, visit: mainstreetrag.com/ bookstore/product/when-theworld-was-rear-wheel-drive

Once, she’d baked the loaves in great iron pots suspended over open fireplaces, a glowing turf on the lid, in the thatched cottages at Carane, at Culdalee, at Mass Hill.

Once, she’d turned them out effortlessly every day as easily as a pot of tea.

Once, she had bricks of ancient peat turf cut from the living bogs to heat her cottage, cook her food.

Now she was inconsolable as she sat down to her sewing.

Peat smoke, she said with a sigh. Peat smoke.

How could anyone hope to make a good honest loaf without a smoldering turf fire infusing its delicate flavor?

All that week, the squirrels, raccoons, and crows feasted on soda bread, blackbirds and blue jays carrying chunks up into the trees, crumbs raining down like stardust seeding a recalcitrant world.

– Timothy Walsh

106 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

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{review of books}

Recently published books of Irish and Irish-American interest.

Fiction Someone

By Alice McDermott

omeone captures the universal experience of life’s joys and tragedies in the story of Marie Commeford, a most unremarkable woman. The novel begins in Depression-era Brooklyn as Marie, a myopic 7-year-old sitting on the stoop waiting for her father, chats with a teenage neighbor, Pegeen.

Despite Marie’s bottle-bottom glasses, she still notes the young woman’s long instep and crowded teeth. And, as Pegeen opens the front door, Marie suddenly foresees her death, “her thin image in the glass shuddered like a flame.” That night Pegeen falls down a flight of stairs, dying instantly. It seems that the young girl with terrible eyesight sees everything.

At 17, Marie, believing she’s in love, finds herself engaged to a vile character named Walter Hartnett. When her fiancé invites her downtown to a swanky restaurant she dresses in her best Going-toMass clothes. It doesn’t take Walter long to announce that he’s marrying Judge Sweeney’s daughter Rita, explaining that it’s not because of her money but Rita is, well, better-looking and that makes for better-looking kids. Marie stumbles home to her brother Gabe, a still-devout ex-priest, who takes her on a long walk.

When the heartbroken girl asks him if anyone will ever love her, he whispers, “Someone. Someone will.”

Someone does love her, the loving and loyal Tom; after her first child is born, Marie finally forges a bond with a lifelong antagonist, her tough-minded mother. Both women embrace the secret code of Irish Motherhood: don’t brag about your children or exult in good fortune— that’s inviting bad luck. As her mother feeds her first grandchild, Marie’s infant son, she’s lost in a rapture she must conceal: “My mother glanced at me with sly eyes warning against the risk of drawing too much attention to the deepest joys.”

So much of Someone is not in what McDermott writes but what she doesn’t write, what lies in the spaces. She leaps back and forth through time and place, between the living and the dead, using scattered images, smells and sounds to

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108 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

spin her intergenerational narrative of Irish-Americans. Quick glimpses – a soldier’s uniform, a hospital waiting room, laundry on the clothesline and a half-cooked loaf of Irish soda bread – are subtle markers of where Marie is in the world of Someone.

The book ends where it starts as Marie’s mind goes back to that Brooklyn stoop with the doomed Pegeen and all the other ghosts that passed her way. Only a quiet genius like McDermott could manage to reveal the cycle of life in this small book with a big heart.

– Rosemary Rogers

(FSG / 232 pages / $25)

One Hundred Names

By Cecilia Ahern

rolific Irish author Cecilia Ahern is known for her sparkling prose and plots that hook you and pull you in. One Hundred Names fits the bill. Part mystery and part coming-of-age story with a dash of romance, the novel follows Kitty Logan, a young and eager journalist whose commitment to getting the scoop has landed her in a heap of trouble.

Following a false accusation, Kitty becomes a journalistic joke and a national pariah, and after the death of her beloved mentor and editor, Constance, it begins to seem like nobody is left in Kitty’s corner.

Grief-stricken and downtrodden, Kitty throws herself into her last shot at redemption: crafting the piece that Constance has left behind as the one story she always wanted to write. But there’s a catch: all Kitty has to go on is a list of seemingly random names she finds in Constance’s desk, and with a deadline looming, it’s up to her to piece together the story.

As she begins the daunting task of tracking down the owners of the names, she’s faced with the twin obstacles of a belittling new editor who’s skeptical of her talents and the disapproval of her oldest and dearest friend, Steve. Kitty will need her best reporting chops to pull it

P

off, but she’ll also need to learn that there’s more than one way to get a story.

– Kara Rota (William Morrow / 480 pages / $15.99)

A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing

By Eimear McBride

hen Eimear McBride sent the manuscript of her debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing to the editors at Galley Beggar Press in Norwich, the company hadn’t actually published anything yet. To say it was fledgling would be generous. But now McBride and the small U.K. press are near ubiquitous names in the books sections of both U.K. and Irish periodicals.

Despite taking nine years to publish and giving the editor who eventually did recognize its worth anxiety attacks over whether he should have listened to the big houses, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing has been nothing short of a phenomenon. McBride won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and was shortlisted for the Folio Prize (she lost out to George Saunders). In July, she was announced the winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize, one of the most prestigious for first novels. The path McBride took to get to this place contributes in no small part to the novel’s appeal, which, one expects, will continue on this side of the Atlantic when Coffee House Press publishes it in the U.S. in September.

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is not an easy read, emotionally or technically. It challenges our ethics as much as our confidence in language to accurately express our fears, desires, drives, and histories.

Narrated by an unnamed female protagonist literally from the womb to death in what McBride has termed “pre-consciousness” (as opposed to stream-ofconsciousness), the book tackles head-on themes of sex, religion, child molestation, mental illness, family, and the divide between childhood and maturity.

These may be familiar “Irish” themes embodied by traditional “Irish” characters – the molesting uncle, the religious

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mother, the “culchie” siblings – but McBride navigates the tension between cultural inheritance and contemporary reclamation deftly. In the end she produces a novel that is wholly unexpected, a novel that questions the very linguistic foundation of our identity. At the same time, McBride restores our faith in small presses and debuting authors to radically reinvent the genres we thought we knew.

– Adam Farley

Poetry

(Coffee House Press / 227 pages / $24)

The Holding Centre: Selected Poems, 1974 – 2004

By Harry Clifton

he author of seven previous collections of poetry with another forthcoming, Harry Clifton is experiencing a bit of a comeback, so the timing of this volume is no surprise. Nor is it surprising that the Blackrock-born poet’s first English-language selected poems in over two decades terminates at 2004, forgoes his most recent book (The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass – Bloodaxe, 2012), revises old poems (including the title poem), and includes previously uncollected

T

History

works, for the Clifton The Holding Centre offers is one caught in the perpetual throes of modern movement.

Taking for granted the facts of international travel and commitment, Clifton becomes a stand-in for the Irish diaspora, but also questions the formation of a global ethics and identity. He draws personas from an international coterie of poets and thinkers, from Kierkegaard to Euclid, Sandro Penna to Morton Feldman, in an attempt to work through the problems inherent in being an Irishman, or any contemporary citizen for that matter, abroad. Ireland appears between the lines and in the background of the Blackrock-born poet’s work, rarely coming directly to the fore (“After Ireland,” a brilliant exception).

But despite the collection’s diagnosis of a deracinated modernity, early in the second of its six sections, Clifton acknowledges the terminality of disquietude in “Loneliness in the Tropics”: “Already this restlessness, / an hour old by the clock, // is wearing off….”

Clifton here posits that sooner or later there will be equilibrium (though the ellipsis suggests an anxiety over just when that

might materialize) and asks, resisting conclusion, of which two states will that equilibrium be born? He also asks whether equilibrium, as a form of stasis, is generative or destructive.

The title of the collection itself offers no such resolution. It performs double-duty work between its literal meaning as a detention center – a limbo between arrest and trial or escape and refuge, as is the case in the titular poem, set at the Mairut refugee camp between Thailand and Cambodia – and its figurative implications – a firm center in the middle of implied turmoil (Yeats’s gyres also alluded to). As a collection then, a minor critique may be that the poems are too regular, too similar, too settled in tone and diction while addressing the unsettled condition of a poet who has lived on at least four continents. But they also define a trajectory that is at once rooted in form and tradition that promises the potential for what some might call a late renaissance in his career. He has, after all, been living in Ireland now for the last decade.

– Adam Farley (Wake Forrest UP / 156 pages / $16.95)

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

By Terry Golway

ammany Hall has been synonymous with corrupt politicians ever since famed political cartoonist (and blatant anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigot) Thomas Nast painted “Boss” William Tweed and his Irish American cronies as the “40 Thieves” of New York City. Irish American historian Terry Golway presents the Manhattan-based political machine in a much more complicated light in his new book Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the C reation of Modern A merican Politics. Golway argues that the Irish Catholics who ruled Tammany actually influenced the progressive legislation more generally associated with the New Deal ideas adopted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This is a controversial, revisionist take, in part because the social legislation so beloved by liberal historians has not generally been associated with devout Catholic Irish Americans. Especially those whose record on race relations is not exactly pretty. Nevertheless, Golway makes a convincing case that less-prominent Tammany leaders – Richard Croker, “Silent” Charlie Murphy – made a great difference in the lives of the urban ethnic working- and lower-classes. Once Tammany graduate Al Smith became the first major Catholic political candidate to run for president in 1928,

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many of the legislative pieces of the New Deal puzzle were already in place. Perhaps the most interesting thing Golway does is make strong connections between the Irish struggle in the old world and the new. Too often, the Irish experience in America is depicted as a brand new beginning, wholly separate from what the Irish endured in Ireland. Aside from outlining Tammany’s role in social welfare legislation, Golway also convincingly argues that the trauma of the Irish Famine – exacerbated by Anglo-Protestant laissez faire attitudes in Britain and Ireland – fueled Tammany’s belief that government in the U.S. could be a solution to the problems facing many poor, urban ethnic groups. Golway, currently director of the Kean University Center for History, Politics and Policy, is not attempting to hide or cover up Tammany’s many sins. Still, Machine Made is a fresh, important look at a central subject in Irish and Irish American history.

– Tom Deignan (Liveright / 400 pages / $27.95) AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 109

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{crossword}

By Darina Molloy

2 See 9 down (2, 5) 6 Middle daughter of Bob Geldof who died tragically in April (7) 8 (& 37 across) One of NY’s five boroughs (6) 11 (& 50 across, & 31 across) Midsummer solstice celebrated with bonfires in, mainly, the west of Ireland (2) 12 See 40 down (1, 7) 14 (& 4 down) This political party performed very well in recent local elections in Ireland (4) 17 Niall Horan, from 10 down, is from this Irish town (9) 19 See 28 down (1, 6) 21 According to Upton Sinclair: “All ____ is propaganda.”

23 Irish author Colum _______ (2, 4) 24 Body that provides information on higher education and research in Ireland, abv.

(3) 26 See 31 down (7) 27 Rush or speed (4) 28 Actor Johnny ____ is set to play Whitey Bulger in the biopic (4) 29 See 7 down (1, 5) 31 See 11 across (3) 32 John Michael McDonagh movie with Brendan Gleeson & Chris O’Dowd (7) 33 Sounds like a lion (4) 36 The mother-and-babies scandal in Ireland erupted again this summer, centered on a home in this Co. Galway town (4) 37 See 8 across (6) 39 (& 1 down) This well-known rapper and his new bride enjoyed an Irish honeymoon in June (5) 41 “Let he who is without ____ cast the first stone” (3) 43 Not terribly active or motivated (4) 46 Être – ‘to ___’ in France (2) 47 (& 16 down) “If Tomorrow Never Comes” singer associated with concert debacle in Dublin in July (5) 48 Acronym still used in Irish politics which paraphrased then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey’s description of a “bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance” (4) 49 (& 35 down) New Ken Loach movie set in Ireland (6) 50 (& 31 across) See 11 across (5) 51 Gesture towards or indicate (5)

ACROSS

1 See 39 across (4) 3 This East Durham Arts Festival cele-

DOWN

brated its 20th birthday this year (9) 4 See 14 across (4) 5 See 34 down (2, 5) 7 (& 29 across) Modern Family’s irascible, but lovable, Jay Pritchett (2) 9 (& 2 across) She won the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction for her debut novel A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing (6) 10 (& 13 down) Best-selling boyband with one Irish member (3) 13 See 10 down (8) 15 Gaelic for ‘at me’ (4) 16 See 47 across (6) 17 See 25 down (6) 18 ______ House: Sligo residence with Yeats connection recently re-opened to public after court battle (9) 20 Irish soul (4) 22 ‘The Donald’ (5) 25 (& 17 down) She played Kathleen in Philomena, and has a recurring part in hit RTÉ drama “Love/Hate” (7) 28 (& 19 across) Irish sprint hurdles athlete who announced her retirement in June (6) 30 ____ Brennan: Castlebar-born engineer and inventor of the steerable torpedo (5) 31 (& 26 across) Former Labour

Win a subscription to Irish A merica magazine

Please send your completed crossword puzzle to Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001, to arrive no later than September 10, 2014. A winner will be drawn from among all correct entries. If there are no correct solutions, the prize will be awarded for the completed puzzle which comes closest in the opinion of our staff.

Winner’s name will be published along with the solution in our next issue. Xerox copies are acceptable.Winner of the June/ July Crossword: Catherine Winger, Scranton, PA.

110 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014

Party leader who stepped down in June (5) 32 See 38 down (3) 34 (& 5 down) Professional golfer from Holywood, County Down (4) 35 See 49 across (4) 38 (& 32 down) Pennsylvania railroad site where mass grave of Irish immigrants was found (6) 39 Beer receptacle (3) 40 (& 12 across) Co-host of “CBS This Morning” (5) 42. Son of Robert Downey, Jr. (5) 44. Ó Dόnaill ____! means O’Donnell Forever! (3) 45. Species of African equids with distinctive stripes (5) 48. Faigh, as Gaeilge, means ‘to ____’ (3)

June / July Solution

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Those We Lost

Jim Brosnan

Famed Irish-American baseball player and author Jim Brosnan passed away June 28 in Park Ridge, Illinois over complications from an infection. He was 84. Born in Cincinnati on Black Thursday, October 29, 1929, the day the market crashed, Jim was raised by an Irish father and German mother. He was an accomplished reader and musician in his youth and loved baseball, signing a contract with the Chicago Cubs on his 17th birthday.

Brosnan shot to fame as a pitcher in the major leagues playing for the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago White Sox. He had a lifetime 3.54 run average and once struck out Willie Mays three times in a single game. Jim was just as prolific off the field as he was on it. Donning a pipe and eyeglasses he was commonly known as “The Professor” for his intellectual style and love of writing. Brosnan’s breakout book was the The Long Season. Released in 1960, it quickly became a best-seller for the frank style in which it touched on such taboo topics as race, sex, and the politics of baseball. It was listed by Sports 1929 – 2014

Illustrated in 2002 as one of the top 20 sports books ever written. He retired from baseball in 1963 at age 34, becoming a TV and radio broadcaster while also publishing book reviews and writing for Boys Life, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times. He is survived by a brother, three children, and four grandchildren. – M.S.

Gerry Conlon

Gerry Conlon, one of the members of the “Guildford Four,” passed away in Belfast on June 21st following a long bout with cancer at the age of 60. Conlon made headlines in 1975 when he was convicted 1954 – 2014

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along with Paul Hill, Carole Richardson, and Paddy Armstrong for the bombing of two pubs in Guildford that resulted in the death of seven people and multiple other casualties. Although Conlon and the others denied any role in the bombings and the evidence used against them was tenuous, they were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1989, after fifteen years in prison, all four were set free following a campaign to have the convictions thrown out.

It was later revealed that crucial evidence which showed none of the four could have been present at the bombings was ignored at the trial. A number of Conlon’s relatives including his father Giuseppe, known as the Maguire Seven, were also imprisoned for the bombings but were later exonerated in 1991. Conlon’s father, however, died in prison in 1980.

Conlon became a symbol of British injustice, with his family saying after his death that “it forced the world’s closed eyes to be open to injustice. It forced unimaginable wickedness to be acknowledged. We believe it changed the course of history.”

Conlon was born in West Belfast in 1954 and later relocated to London at age 20 to seek employment. Following his prison sentence, Conlon wrote a memoir that was later turned into the Academy Award nominated film In the Name of the Father that starred Daniel Day-Lewis.

Adjustment to civilian life proved difficult for Conlon as he was constantly haunted by his time spent in prison, telling RTÉ this past March that “at the least drop of a hat, memories come flooding back.” A sense of healing was restored to Conlon and the other members of the ‘Guildford

Four’ when Tony Blair publicly apologized for the incident in 2005, saying “I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal of social injustice.” Conlon is survived by his partner, a daughter, and two sisters. – M.S.

Dermot Healy

Dermot Healy, one of Ireland’s great contemporary men of letters, passed away June 29. Healy’s sudden death at the early age of 66 came as a shock to many, but his artistic output will live on for many years to come.

Healy was a poet, playwright, memoirist and fiction writer whose work was praised for its originality, depth of feeling, and psychological insight. The Irish Times described his writing as “vivid and dreamlike with a generous helping of nightmare, Healy understood how the human mind ebbs and flows, invariably at the mercy that comes and can only be held at bay with liquor.” His style was unique and his work has been compared with the likes of Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, and Ernest Hemingway; Seamus Heaney deemed him “the heir of Patrick Kavanaugh.”

Healy was born in Finnea, County Westmeath in 1947. His father was a policeman who worked near the border of Northern Ireland and as a result his childhood was one of constant upheaval. In his widely acclaimed memoir The Bend for Home (1996) he would write eloquently of his turbulent early life, telling The Guardian in 2011 that “it was a leap from a village to a town, from a familiar world to an alien one.” School life proved just as 1947-2014

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tumultuous, as Healy was expelled from school at age 15, later returning to study at University College Dublin only to drop out at the end of his first year. From there, Healy worked as a security guard at Heathrow airport and then spent fifteen years in London working odd jobs, but always keeping up his writing. He released his first book of short stories, Banished Misfortune, in 1982 and traveled between Belfast and Sligo before finally settling down permanently in Ballyconnell, Co. Sligo.

It was in Sligo where some of his best works were completed including The Bend for Home and A Goat’s Song (1994).

Patrick McCabe called The Bend for Home “probably the finest memoir written in Ireland in the last 50 years” and Anne Enright commented that A Goat’s Song was “one of the big Irish novels…a wrangle, an existential tussle, one of those

books that makes its own language.”

Healy was also a noted poet and playwright; his last completed work was the poetry collection A Fool’s Errand in 2011 that had taken over 12 years to write and his plays included “The Long Swim” and “On Broken Wings.” Throughout his career he received the Hennessy, the Tom Gallon and the Encore literary prizes. He is survived by his wife Helen and two children.

When news of his death broke, tributes came from across the literary and political worlds in Ireland. President Michael D. Higgins said of Dermot that he was a “prolific and most original poet, novelist, and playwright,” adding he “had received the recognition and tributes which his work long deserved.” Minister of Arts Jimmy Deenihan released a touching trib-

ute to the legacy of Healy remarking he was a “wonderful” talent and that he will be “remembered alongside the greatest Irish writers of any age.” – M.S.

Nancy Malone

Nancy Malone was a model, actress, director, and Emmy-award-winning producer who had been in the limelight since a photographer snapped her picture on a lark when she was still just seven-year-old Ann Moloney from Queens Village, Long Island (it was supposed to be her brother’s photo shoot). Four years later, she was on the cover of Life magazine’s tenth anniversary issue as the “Typical American Girl.” She debuted on Broadway six years after that, at the age of 17, in the title role of 1952’s “Time Out for Ginger.” A representative of Malone’s confirmed her death from complications of leukemia in early May. She was 79.

Born on March 19th, 1935, Malone took acting seriously from an early age and throughout her 20s and 30s appeared in numerous live soaps, TV shows, and plays, sometimes simultaneously. After her early roles in shows like “The Guiding Light” and “The Naked City,” Malone moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and would go on to appear in acclaimed shows like “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Fugitive,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Bonanza,” “The Rockford Files,” and “The Twilight Zone.” But by the early 1970s, Malone was becoming disenchanted with the position of aging female actors, telling an interviewer for the book Women Who Run the Show, “I’d seen actresses getting to the age of 45, having nowhere to go except Bloomingdale’s or regional theater.”

Moreover, she wanted to change the very roles being offered to actresses and turned away from acting to take positions behind the camera, first as a producer and later as a director, serving as the vice president of television at 20th Century Fox for three years in the mid-1970s.

Still, though a pioneer in the industry herself, Malone acknowledged that she was by no means representative and that even among women in the TV and film business there was still much growth that could be accomplished. So in 1973 she cofounded Women in Film, a group designed to provide a space to promote 1937 – 2014

networking possibilities for female film producers, directors, and executives.

“The guys were helping each other,” Malone told Mollie Gregory for Women Who Run the Show. “We all saw how the guys went into the men’s room and came out with a deal. How do we find a way to move up without using the men’s room?”

As a producer she had several early hits that challenged the image of women in film, including 1975’s “Winner Take All,” a TV movie for NBC about a woman (played by Shirley Jones) with a gambling addiction, and “Like Mom, Like Me,” a 1978 TV film that gave a frank image of divorce. More unusual for the times than an actress-turned-producer however, was an actress-turned-director. But Malone shrugged off the stigma and quickly rose to critical acclaim behind the camera.

Her directorial debut was a joint venture with Linda Hope, daughter of Bob Hope, called “Those Were Times: Dear.” It was a low-budget PBS drama about Alzheimer’s but when it aired in 1985 it led to numerous other offers, including the popular British soap “Dynasty.” Producers were so impressed that they asked her back for a total of 15 episodes. She stayed in the director’s chair until the early years of the millennium, working on shows as varied as “Cagney & Lacey,” “Melrose Place,” “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Dawson’s Creek,” and “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

In 1993 however, she returned to her executive roots, again partnering with Linda Hope, to produce “Bob Hope: The First 90 Years,” garnering her an Emmy.

“With her unfailing good taste and a heart of Irish gold, I loved working and playing with her,” actress Tyne Daly, who was directed by Malone in “Cagney & Lacey,” told People magazine. “If there is a heaven, Nancy has arrived by limousine, and the first word out of her mouth was her personal favorite code word for the IA ‘innkeeper’ – ‘NURSE!’” – A.F. AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 IRISH AMERICA 113

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By Bryce Evans

Granny Mac’s Centenary

y grandmother Nora MacNamara (née Hickey) turned 100 on June 15, 2014. From her retirement home on the Dingle peninsula, County Kerry – snuggled in the foothills of the Slieve Mish mountains and overlooking the clear blue Atlantic ocean – family and friends gathered to celebrate the centenary of a woman known to her grandchildren as simply ‘Granny Mac.’ What was the secret to Granny Mac’s old age and good health, many wanted to know.

Well, the beautiful surrounds of this corner of North Kerry provide a clue. The local area provides ample opportunity for fresh air, swimming, and mountain walking, even for a town girl like Nora, who was born and brought up in the county town, Tralee. As a teenager, Nora would cycle everywhere and swim often. A fellow resident in her retirement home is Mary Crean, daughter of Tom Crean, the famed Antarctic explorer, who left the nearby village of Anascaul to join Ernest Shackleton’s heroic polar expeditions of the early twentieth century. It would seem, therefore, that there is something in the Kerry air, in the people’s oneness with nature, that confers a resilience that matures into hardy old age. Not to mention the dietary benefits of plentiful local fresh fish

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and the pride that comes from her fluency in the Irish language, a linguistic identity shared with many in this part of the world.

But the romance of this explanation overlooks some of the harsh realities of my grandmother’s life. Born just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Nora lived through tumultuous events. As a child she remembers the cruelty of the ‘Black and Tans’ during the Irish War of Independence, a ruthless British military outfit sent to put down the nationalist Irish Republican Army. For six- year-old Nora felt the cold steel of a gun pressed against her young skull. Others were not so lucky. The young Granny Mac, who grew to be a devotee of the republican leader Eamon de Valera, was just eight years old when one of the worst atrocities of the Irish Civil War occurred on her doorstep. At Ballyseedy, just outside Tralee, a dozen republicans were shackled to a large mine, which was then detonated. Older than the Irish state (which came into being in 1922), and having seen the cruelties performed in its name, my grandmother has always possessed a certain wariness about the very state itself.

This wise skepticism – perhaps better described as quiet stoicism – was also forged by family circumstances. Nora’s grandfather was killed while a young man, trampled by a horse while laboring on a local farm.

Nora MacNamara (née Hickey), pictured second from the left, with her husband, William, and friends. Nora and William married in 1947. And, as was typical at the time, the groom was much older than the bride. William passed away 27 years ago, in 1988.

A wayward uncle then stole off with the inheritance, emigrating to America where he drank all the family money, dying penniless and vagrant, leaving the rest of the family facing hard times. Consequently, many in her family had to emigrate. Another uncle, Canon Bryan Hickey, moved to England, where he covertly assisted the old IRA by stashing sticks of dynamite in his Manchester parochial house. Yet another uncle, John F. Healy, moved State-side, where he rose to become a renowned Fire Chief in Denver.

Others in the family would die young: victims of Ireland’s poor public health record in the early twentieth century.

But the most important secret to old age, according to Granny Mac, is not diet, nor environment, nor the inner strength that comes by overcoming hardship. It is, for her, a matter of faith. On every wall of her creaking old house you are met with images of the saints, of the Virgin Mary, or of the dying Christ. Prayer is integral to her life and has guided her through much grief. It is this simple devotion to the Catholic faith (she still performs her daily decades of the rosary) that has sustained her so long. And so, if you are to ask her opinion on the secret to old age and good health, she will simply say ‘Le cúnamh Dé’ – with God’s IA help – all will go well.

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Everything in moderation.

Except fun, try to have lots of that.

Launched in 2005 by Boys & Girls Clubs of America with support from The Coca-Cola Company, the Triple Play program encourages kids to eat a balanced diet, become more physically active and increase their ability to engage in healthy relationships

Children of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America The United States of America

Today, physical inactivity and obesity are among the leading health challenges worldwide. By promoting balanced diets and active lifestyles, we can be part of energy balance solutions.

First, our portfolio: Currently, we offer over 3,500 beverages globally, and nearly 25% are reduced, low- or no-calorie options. The Coca-Cola Company has made a commitment to offer low- or no-calorie beverage options in every market where we do business.

As for packaging choices, we’ve created a variety of package sizes – in both glass and aluminum, including serving sizes of 250mL or less.

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Providing choice is important – but so is enabling informed choice and marketing our beverages responsibly. Nearly all our packaging provides nutrition information featuring calories ‘front of pack,’ and we do not advertise directly to children under 12.

While keeping track of calories is important, so is burning them off. Currently, we support over 290 active, healthy living programs in 118 countries and we are committed to having an active, healthy living program in every country in which we operate.

To learn more about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, visit http://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainability

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