Irish America August / September 2004

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IRISH AMERICA August/September 2004 Can. $4.95 U.S. $3.95

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Corrs The Irish pop stars talk love, music, family and fame with Louise Carroll

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IRISH AMERICA August/September 2004

COVER 36

The Corrs Are Back

By Louise Carroll They are arguably Ireland’s most successful family. The three sisters and brother of the Corrs have sold over 30 million albums and fused Irish traditional music with pop.

Before their largest North American tour ever, they discussed Ireland, love, life, and their new album.

Cover photo by Kevin Westenberg

F E AT U R E S 12 President Reagan Remembered

76 Young Lonigan In honor of the centenary of author James T. Farrell’s birth, Pete Hamill describes the first time he read Young Lonigan.

An examination of the late President’s Irish heritage and his visits to Ireland.

41 Wall Street 50

80 The Not-So-Great Escape

The best and brightest Irish-Americans on Wall Street are honored in this issue.

Notorious Brinks robber Sam Millar discusses his incredible heist, getting caught, and doing time.

84 Finian’s Rainbow Redux

67 Chile’s Irish Flavor One of South America’s most stunning countries has an unexpected Irish history.

The revival of the classic Broadway musical presents issues of race and wealth in the U.S.

91 Solo Tenor

72 Tilting Towards Ireland

Ronan Tynan has left the Irish Tenors in favor of a solo music career.

A tiny village in Newfoudland has retained the charm and cheer of its early Irish settlers.

ALSO

D E PA R T M E N T S 8 10 16 88 94

First Word Letters to the Editor Hibernia Sláinte Books

97 98 99 100 102

An American in Ireland Crossword Roots Last Word Photo Album

51 University of Dublin Trinity College Supplement

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VOL XX NO. 4 • Aug/Sept 2004

IRISH AMERICA 875 SIXTH AVENUE, SUITE 2100 N.Y., NY 10001 TEL: 212-725-2993 • FAX: 212-244-3344 e-mail: irishamag@aol.com WEB ADDRESS: http://www.irishamerica.com

Mortas Cine PRIDE IN OUR HERITAGE

Founding Publisher Niall O’Dowd Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief Patricia Harty Advertising Director Patricia Daly Art & Design Director Michele Barber-Perry Deputy Editor Louise Carroll Copy Editor John Anderson Marketing & Events Coordinator Christine Rein Financial Controller Kevin M. Mangan Editorial Interns Brendán Cummings Julia McAvoy Gottlieb Irish America Magazine ISSN 0884-4240) © by Irish America Inc. Published bi-monthly. Mailing address: P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 08099-5277. Editorial office: 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10001. Telephone: 212-725-2993. Fax: 212-244-3344 E-mail: Irishamag@aol.com. Subscription rate is $21.95 for one year. Subscription orders: 1-800-5826642. Subscription queries: 1-800-582-6642, (212) 7252993, ext. 16. Periodicals postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Postmaster please send address changes to Irish America Magazine, P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 08099-5277. IRISH AMERICA IS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Contributors Louise Carroll interviews the famed Irish singing group The Corrs in this issue. She joined the magazine as Deputy Editor in January 2003. Carroll moved to New York three months previously, having worked as a journalist in Dublin and London for over five years combined. She has written for Ireland’s Sunday Business Post and the U.K.’s Closer magazine. Louise is from San Francisco and her parents were both born and raised in Ireland.

Phil Fisk is a freelance photographer based in London.

He found the residents of “Tilting” the most warm-hearted and jovial he has ever encountered on his travels and plans to return “when it gets a little warmer.” Back in London he is documenting the eccentric passion of the city's urban farmers. For more information about his work, visit www.philfisk.com.

Nancy Griffin is a freelance writer who lives in mid-coast Maine. She loves to travel and writes about the Irish side of Chile in this issue. She grew up in Charlestown, then a nearly all Irish-American enclave of Boston, Massachusetts, having arrived there at a tender age from a nearly all Irish enclave in Newfoundland, Canada. Before the nuns told her otherwise in fifth grade, she actually thought everyone was Irish. She is a former wire service reporter, newspaper reporter and editor who spends as much time as possible in Newfoundland and Ireland.

Pete Hamill writes in this issue about the Irish-American novelist Jamest T. Farrell. Hamill, who began his career as a reporter for the New York Post, is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, among many other prestigious newspapers and magazines. His books include ten novels, most recently the bestseller Forever, and his memoir of growing up Irish in Brooklyn, A Drinking Life. He is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Frank Shouldice, who interviews Brinks robber Sam Millar in this issue, was born in Dublin and has worked in all forms of media, including print journalism, television, radio and theater.

He was scriptwriter of the award-winning short film In Uncle Robert’s Footsteps and has written and directed a number of plays in Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow. His play Journeyman was produced by RTÉ Radio Drama. He writes regularly for the national press in Ireland.

Elizabeth Toomey was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, and is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Trinity College, Dublin. She lives in New York and works for a children’s charity. Toomey writes about the current revial of Finians’ Rainbow in this issue.

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LETTERS MAUREEN O’HARA Thank you for a wonderful issue.

The articles on Maureen O’Hara and her beloved husband Charles Blair were fabulous! Maureen has been an inspiration to me my entire life and will continue to be for as long as I live.

Ella Maria Foster Received by e-mail I can’t thank you enough for the wonderful cover and story about Maureen O’Hara; the fans on the [Maureen O’Hara] website are delighted. This issue will be a collector’s item for fans.

June Beck Editor Maureen O’Hara Magazine www.moharamagazine.com

THE OLD IRISH NEIGHBORHOOD Michael Scanlon’s wonderful article prompted me to pick up the phone yesterday and call my dear friend Jackie, who, like Mr. Scanlon, was born and raised in the High Bridge section of the Bronx.

Jackie is now a widow, living in Florida, and as June 1st would have been her 57th wedding anniversary we reminisced about her wedding day back in 1947 at Sacred Heart Church in High Bridge. Over the years she has shared many wonderful stories about growing up and so I was happy to tell her about this terrific article in Irish America.

Thank you Mr. Scanlon for sharing the story of your family. My husband and I, both second-generation Irish-Americans, took a trip to Ireland in 2000 to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. It was the trip of a lifetime. We spent ten days discovering and visiting the homes of our grandparents, including the Rowley farm. Two years ago, when our youngest daughter, now a high school history teacher, graduated from Marist College, our gift to her was a trip to Ireland. She loved it also.

Please keep up your terrific writings Mr. Scanlon. I look forward to reading your book about High Bridge when it’s complete.

Kathleen Rowley Holbrook, New York

THE FIGHTING RACE My family and I have always been avid readers of your wonderful magazine.

However, I have always found it odd that 10 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

the magazine constantly promotes the annual “Business 100” and other notable achievements by Irish and Irish-Americans in other fields of endeavor, but never have I read anything about the above-and-beyond success that Irish-Americans currently achieve in the military.

Every reader of this magazine will acknowledge that long before the Irish were noted “captains of industry” they were great leaders of men and made up the vast numbers that filled the rank and file that fought and won this country’s wars. From John Barry to Audie Murphy, the Irish above all have been lauded as the epitome of American martial greatness.

I would argue by celebrating the recent emergence of Irish dominance in industry and finance that you cannot forsake what brought that dynamic about as we view it today. It has and always will be the grand characteristics of the “fighting race” that allow the Irish such versatility as championed CEOs and generals. The leadership traits are one in the same and quite often running a business is referred to as warfare without the tangible loss of blood. Should we not recognize those who have and still do battle with the sword versus the pen?

Today more than ever in recent American history has the military been at the forefront of thought, mind, and deed. We extol the

Irish heroes of 9-11 and their sacrifices on that terrible day. What of the thousands of Irish-Americans that fight daily in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti?

I look at the names of the Marine commanders that have broken the backs of the insurgents in Fallujah; at least two of the three battalion commanders that surrounded the city are obviously Irish, and who knows how many more dominate the ranks of those units? The commanding general of all the Marines in Iraq is an Irishman. I can’t even begin to mention the notable Irish commanders in the Army, Air Force, and Navy that are here in the Middle East.

I ask only that in addition to paying tribute to those who lead and protect the nation on the home front that your splendid magazine devote the well-deserved attention to the Irish-Americans that lead and fight in the military. Thank you and I look forward to your future issues.

Lt. Francis L. McCabe USMCR Platoon Commander 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Camp Fallujah Fallujah, Iraq Editor’s Note: Irish America is proud of the contribution that Irish-Americans have made and are making in the armed services. Indeed, to cover the story adequately we would have to devote an entire issue to the subject. However, we have published many fine articles on the topic, including features on both John Barry and Audie Murphy, and more recently, “The Irish on the USS Theodore Roosevelt” (commanding officer Richard J. O’Hanlon, Admiral Fitzpatrick and Captain McCarten included), and a history of the 7th Calvalry from “Big Horn to Baghdad.” Also, many of our Top 100 honorees over the years have served in the armed forces. Included on this year’s list are Lt. Jeffrey Quinn for his service in Somalia and at Ground Zero, Pfc. Joseph Dwyer, for his courage as a medic in Iraq, and Colonel James Hickey who captured Saddam Hussein (Col. Hickey’s parents attended our awards dinner in March).We will continue to feature stories on the Irish in the military in upcoming issues. In the meantime our prayers are with you and all the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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LETTERS BRITAIN IS GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER In recent months, coverage of events in the north of Ireland has been so rare that Americans might be under the impression that nothing at all is happening there, or that somehow, everything has been resolved. In fact, there is news.

On April 1 the Cory Report, a damning indictment of British misrule in Ireland, was published. But like so many events that put Britain in a bad light, it hasn’t appeared in a single U.S. newspaper.

Judge Peter Cory, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, was appointed by the British and Irish governments to investigate collusion between British security forces and loyalist death squads in the murders of Irish citizens from 1989 through 1997. (His definition of collusion ranges from the security forces turning a blind eye to the wrongful acts of their agents to actively assisting loyalist murderers.)

Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged he would release the entire report and follow through with public inquiries if the Judge recommended them. Cory ordered inquiries in all cases.

Among his findings, Judge Cory confirmed that there was official collusion and a subsequent cover-up by the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and army intelligence in the 1989 murder of prominent attorney Patrick Finucane.

Mr. Finucane, 38, was shot 14 times while eating dinner with his family at his Belfast home. During his short career, he had successfully challenged the British government over several important human rights cases.

Despite his promise, Blair released a heavily-censored version of the report, deleting pages in order to “protect people who might be at risk.” (He was referring, of course, to those responsible for the crimes.) And he is blocking the inquiry into the Finucane murder.

That Blair went back on his word is not surprising. The security forces report directly to Downing Street, where political clearance was given for collusion, and where the responsibility lies.

Sinn Féin’s assertions of systematic collusion, dismissed for so long, have been vindicated. President Gerry Adams said, “The murder of citizens through collusion has been and remains a British state policy in Ireland. The British response to the Cory Report proves this.”

It’s ironic to hear Tony Blair talk about the importance of bringing a “stable government and democracy” to Iraq, while denying it in the north of Ireland.

His refusal to hold an inquiry has been condemned by the US, the UN and every major human rights organization.

Amnesty International called Britain’s actions “shameful” and “a mockery of its commitment to ascertaining the truth and to the rule of law.” On May 4, the US Helsinki Commission, an independent federal agency that investigates human rights abuses around the world, heard testimony from Judge Cory and Finucane’s widow, Geraldine. The commission, composed of Congressional Representatives and Senators, demanded that Blair immediately conduct a public inquiry into the killing “with no more exceptions or excuses.”

April 10 marked the sixth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the treaty meant to right the wrongs in the north of Ireland. At the time Blair said, “Today I hope that the burden of history can at long last start to be lifted from our shoulders.” Yet the British political and security establishment continues to frustrate the full implementation of the accord.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is also anxious to prevent the facts from emerging. No wonder. The instigators and facilitators of all of these murders, Special Branch agents, moved directly from the RUC into senior positions in the PSNI. The power of this police force cannot be overestimated. In October 2002 Orde, acting as judge and jury, said he “felt” the IRA was running a “spy ring.”

Incredibly, the political institutions were suspended on the basis of this hunch, and, even though the charges were dropped, they are still, after a year and a half, shut down.

No, everything is not okay in Ireland.

The peace process is in serious danger of collapse. If allowed to succeed, it would begin to unravel the truth about the 35year- long conflict. But there will be no prospect of progress until Britain’s part – both past and present – is revealed. The British government is an actively-engaged combatant, not the impartial mediator it pretends to be.

Pat Kempton Concord, Ohio Pat Kempton is a Public Relations Officer for Irish Northern Aid.

BLAME THE KENNEDYS In your June-July issue Laura Farrell states “The fact that Irish-Americans have developed a reputation for being a particularly racist group is an issue that is rarely analyzed in our communities.”

I believe the racist tag Farrell says we’ve been labeled with probably came about through the actions of the Kennedy clan of Massachusetts. These people were forever dictating to their poorer constituents that they should spend hours each day on school buses so that racial harmony could be achieved and everyone would be happy. The trouble was that the Kennedys didn’t practice what they preached. All of them and their kids went to expensive, exclusive schools that didn’t have many people of color.

Jim Lundrigan New Haven, Connecticut Congratulations to young intern Laura Farrell for an excellent insightful article on Northern Ireland. She was able to capture the subtle feeling permeating the countryside and express it intelligently. I had been to Ireland many times searching out my family roots in Cork and in June 2003 I decided to visit the North. A prominent tour company took us from Dublin north to Belfast and Derry. Twice on our route we were one step behind car bombings, which the guides played down to misinformation but they would not let us off the bus on Shankill Road to photograph anything because it was considered dangerous. We did walk along Derry’s medieval wall and experience the eerie Army tower surveillance, mentioned by Farrell. We were not sorry we went to Northern Ireland, which is also very beautiful, but came away saddened. I hope and pray that there will be more political progress so that one day my granddaughters (10 and 2) will be able to visit a whole Ireland undivided.

Marilyn Ewald St. James, New York Correction: In our Maureen O’Hara story (June/July) we incorrectly stated that Ms. O’Hara’s maiden name was FitzSimmons. It is FitzSimons.

Please address letters to Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10001.

Or E-mail: irishamag@aol.com. Fax number: (212) 244-3344. Tel: (212) 725-2993. Correspondence should include the full name, address and home telephone, and may be edited for clarity. Ancestral research letters will have the writer’s full address printed.

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President Reagan ★

★ Remembered

From Ballyporeen to the White House, Niall O’Dowd looks at President Reagan’s Irish background, and recalls an interview with the president’s brother, Neil.

“T

oday I come back to you as a descendant of people who were buried here in pauper’s

graves.”

Thus did President Ronald Wilson Reagan announce himself when he visited the Irish village of Ballyporeen Co. Tipperary. It was in June of 1984, and it was, perhaps, the President’s most explicit statement on his pride in his ethnicity.

It’s a long way from Ballyporeen to Dixon, Illinois (population 15,700) where Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, spent his formative years from 1920 to 1929. Though he was born in nearby Tampico in 1911, the years Reagan

spent in Dixon shaped the man more thoroughly than any others, he claimed in many interviews throughout his life.

Dixon is a typical Mom and Pop town, deep in the heartland of the Midwest – dusky hot summers, wrenching cold winters, and conservative values that change little with the seasons. During those hot summer nights Ronald Reagan and his brother Neil would often cross the street to O’Malley’s, the home of their best friends, Edward and George O’Malley.

Back in 1984, on the eve of Reagan’s historic trip to Ireland, Ed O’Malley, then 73, and a lawyer in his hometown, recalled his boyhood friend. He was the same age

as Ron and Ed’s older brother, George, was the same age as Neil. They had been an inseparable foursome for 10-odd years.

“No, I never thought he’d make President,” he told me. “He was just one of us, an Irish kid growing up on our block.”

Actually, Ed remembered Neil as the outgoing one, while Ron would hold back, often staying in to read books in his bedroom.

Over at the O’Malley’s though, Ron seemed happy. Oftentimes he and Neil would stay over, sleeping together in wicker chairs on the outside porch as the hot Midwestern nights rolled by.

Mrs. O’Malley was Mary MacIntyre,

Above: President Reagan on his trip to Ballyporeen in 1984. Opposite Page (left ot right): Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey, Speaker Jim Wright and President Reagan share lunch and a bottle of Irish whiskey on Capitol Hill in 1987.

12 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

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utive living in San Diego, had long conversations with the President about the family’s Irish roots. He remembered that after his brother’s visit to the “old sod” in the late 1960’s when he was Governor of California, he came back more enthused than ever about the genealogy of the family.

“We had just completed research of our family tree and Ronald and Nancy visited all the places in Tipperary that were the family stomping grounds. He had a whole

Slieve Bloom Mountains in Ireland for 11 centuries. The clan’s motto, “The Hills Forever,” was one often quoted by Reagan. Unfortunately, he had the wrong branch of the family. However, another claim that he was related to the High Kings was true. The O’Regans were once one of the four original tribes of Tara, seat of the high kings.

Unlike John F. Kennedy, the only other President of identifiable Irish Catholic roots, Reagan’s knowledge of Ireland, its history and culture was patchy at best.

fund of stories about the people he met,” Neil remembered. On the eve of Reagan’s second visit there, the President told him he “would look on it as one of the highlights of his travels as president.”

Despite his enthusiasm for his Irish roots President Reagan had often gotten them

Though Reagan made reference to “the very rich heritage my father has left me,” the late Charles McCabe an influential San Francisco columnist, once went so far as to speculate that Reagan had deliberately obscured his Irish Catholic roots, deeming them unhelpful in his rise to political

“He was just one of us, an Irish kid growing up on our block.” originally from Co. Leitrim. Mr. O’Malley, a first-generation IrishAmerican, was, in the words of a neighbor, “a great Irish storyteller.”

On the day we spoke Ed recited the tale of Granuaile O’Malley, the pirate queen, who once stood alone against the British Queen Elizabeth. These were the kinds of stories Mr. O’Malley told his children and the neighbors’ kids.

On St. Patrick’s Day the kids would talk about whose parents were the most Irish. Jack Reagan, Ron’s father, would sing Irish ballads and seemed acutely aware of his Irish heritage. “Jack Reagan was certainly the most Irish thing in that household,” O’Malley remembered. “No one could say a bad word about the Irish when he was around, no sir.”

Jack Reagan was remembered as a “black Irishman,” tempestuous, given to drinking bouts, and often out of work in the Depression. But O’Malley confirms that Ron took far more after his mother, a Scotch Presbyterian of strict morality.

Though he may have taken after his mother, President Reagan had more than a passing interest in his Irish roots. On his 73rd birthday, he stopped by to say hello to the neighbors and his childhood friends in Dixon and discovered another Irish family of Reagans living there. “He mentioned to his brother Neil that that they were direct from the old country,” remembered Ed, who unfortunately, was too ill to greet his old chum on that occasion. “He was very interested in finding out more about them.”

The 40th President of the United States also regularly perused articles about his Irish ancestry, often clipping them and sending them to selected friends and relatives around the country. His brother, Neil, who gave me an exclusive interview in 1984, confirmed this habit. He revealed that the President had sent him a photo clipped from an Irish newspaper of a bar in Ballyporeen, which has changed its name to The Ronald Reagan Lounge. “How about that?” an accompanying note ran. “I thought the Irish only honored people when they were dead.”

Neil, by then a retired advertising exec-

Unlike John F. Kennedy, the only other President of identifiable Irish Catholic roots, Reagan’s knowledge of Ireland, its history and culture was patchy at best. wrong. For years he proudly displayed a coat of arms given to him in his California governor days by an amateur genealogist.

Once he discovered it was bogus, a furious Reagan ordered a new coat of arms, this one bearing no references at all to his Irish ancestry.

For years, Reagan proudly referred to his ancestral clan, The O’Regans, as the branch who defended the pass through the

power, particularly among his wealthy WASP friends. Reagan took the time to deny the charge, a clear indication that the allegation stung.

Ronald Reagan was very much the product of an emigrant Catholic ethos. He was the great-grandson of Michael Reagan, a poor County Tipperary emigrant who settled in Illinois in 1858. The 1860 census of the town of Fair Haven, Carroll County,

★

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Illinois lists Michael Reagan, then 25, and his wife Catherine Mulcahy, five years older and their four children. Michael, a soapmaker in England after leaving the scrub town of Ballyporeen, turned to farming in the Midwest, helped by generous government allowances to settle. His income is reckoned at $1,200 in the same census, a handsome living for the time, especially for an emigrant so lately come to the U.S. Michael Reagan’s daughter Margaret, married to Iowa shopkeeper Orson Baldwin, was the person who brought up her orphaned nephew, Jack Reagan, Ronald’s father. It was from her that Jack got his conviction and pride in his Irish heritage. The Reagans, in fact, were all raised Catholic until Ron’s generation, when he took his mother’s religion, while his brother Neil kept his father’s Catholic faith.

Jack and Nelle had been married in Fulton, Illinois in 1904 and Ron was born in nearby Tampico in 1911. His brother Neil had been born two years earlier.

The early Irish influences of family and friends were to leave a mark on the young Reagans. Neil became a committed Catholic and the family historian, whose knowledge of his Irish roots and history was far more extensive than the President’s. Ron on the other hand often gravitated towards people of like backgrounds, most notably in his Hollywood days when he became part of the “Irish Mafia” of film stars, counting Pat O’Brien, William Holden, and other Irish-Americans among his closest friends.

Indeed, his Irish-born building contractor who lived in Southern California at the time remembered meeting Reagan at St. Patrick’s Day functions during the 1950’s.

“Like a lot of Irish-Americans in Los Angeles at the time, he had not met any native Irish people,” he remembered. “We were sort of exotic creatures then because travel to Ireland was still difficult, not like today.”

Reagan was very curious about Ireland, he recalled, and subsequently several Irishborn people were invited out to the Reagan residence for “Irish” parties. “We would sit around the pool and shoot the breeze,” he remembered, “Ireland would often

come up in conversation. Reagan was keen to know all about it.”

Reagan, of course, visited Ireland during a diplomatic mission to Europe he undertook for President Nixon when he was Governor of California. His son Ron remembers Reagan Sr. telling him excitedly about his experiences. At the time it was still not clear where the family roots went back to. (When he was elected President, a branch of the family in Co. Cork tried to claim the roots.) Accompanied by his wife Nancy, Reagan spent considerable time on that trip speaking with genealogists about the background to his family name and where the Reagans might have come from.

When he assumed the Presidency, Reagan, apart from St. Patrick’s Day platitudes, made only one major statement on his interest in things Irish. That was his statement to the New York based American Irish History Society in November of 1981.

There was some controversy before the

and Irish-Americans, and the platitudes covered up a multitude.

The White House denied there was any deviation from the set speech.

Before his trip to Ireland, Reagan’s Irish connections came out publicly when he and then House Speaker Tip O’Neill engaged in periodical Irish joke-telling orgies. Cartoonists, most notably Oliphant in The Washington Post, regularly portrayed them as two Irish fishwives haggling over budgets. O’Neill, interviewed

by Irish America in 1986, said “I get along with him all right. We never talk about Ireland. To be perfectly truthful, I see him as someone who forgot his roots, forgot where he came from…”

Less publicly, Reagan continued correspondence with the Irish genealogists who finally set him right on his family background. According to Neil Reagan, the President regularly called him when new information was revealed.

Irrespective of what Ronald Reagan’s real opinions on his Irish roots were, and there is little evidence really to work on, there is no doubt that a visit to the land from whence 40.7 million Irish-Americans had sprung was a good election year ploy.

The 40th President always had an exquisite sense of timing and a trip to Ireland in June, with the election in November, can only have helped his prospects.

The President of the United States, returning, a century and a quarter later, to the land his ancestor Michael Reagan had left in abject poverty in 1858 was a great moment for the millions of IrishAmericans who shared his heritage.

Reagan was acutely aware of that.

After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on his life, President Reagan called in the secret service guard Timothy McCarthy who had saved his life by stopping a bullet intended for the President. He read the list of names of those injured on that fateful day, Delahanty, Brady, Reagan, McCarthy. “Do you think he (the shooter, John Hinckley) had something against the Irish?” he asked McCarthy smiling. President Ronald Reagan with his extraordinary gift of the gab, and his humor could certainly count himself among that tribe. IA

President Reagan often gravitated towards people of like backgrounds, most notably in his Hollywood days when he became part of the “Irish Mafia” of film stars, counting Pat O’Brien, William Holden, and other IrishAmericans among his closest friends.

★

14 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

dinner when Irish Northern Aid, (Noraid), claimed that they had successfully prevailed upon Teddy Gleason, an honoree at the dinner and head of the powerful Longshoreman’s Union to convince Reagan not to launch an all out attack on IRA supporters in the United States as originally planned. Noraid claimed that British and U.S. network TV crews had asked them in advance to prepare responses to the anticipated Reagan assault.

But Reagan’s speech was awash with shillelagh schmaltz, full of dripping antiquated sentiment about the “Colleen of Ballisodare,” the “wee people,” “top o’ the morning” references, and closing with the hackneyed Irish blessing which begins “May the road rise up to meet you.”

Privately, dinner organizers afterwards admitted they had been hoping for something far better researched and documented but perhaps Reagan steered a clever path through opposing forces, the British

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HIBERNIA PEOPLE

H E R I TAG E

EVENTS

ARTS

HISTORY

E N T E R N TA I N M E N T

Ireland’s Season of ReJoyce

Above: A poster of James Joyce at Martello Tower. Bloom writer/director/producer Sean Walsh (right). Below: Participants in the ReJoyce festival.

For millions of people, June 16 is always an extraordinary day. On that day in 1904, Leopold Bloom made his epic journey through Dublin as described by James Joyce in Ulysses, one of the world’s most highly acclaimed modern novels. “Bloomsday” – the St. Patrick’s Day of literature – has become a tradition for Joyce enthusiasts all over the world.

Nowhere is Bloomsday more rollicking or exuberant than in Dublin, home of Molly and Leopold Bloom, Buck Mulligan, Stephen Dedalus, Gerty McDowell and James Joyce himself.

The Irish, who reviled Joyce when he was alive, now reverently tramp the streets of Dublin retracing the footsteps

of Leopold Bloom, visiting the various places immortalized by this latter-day Edwardian Odysseus.

But this year Bloomsday was extra special. It is 100 years since that first journey took place, and the Irish are in the midst of a huge, ebullient, multifaceted celebration with the jubilant title ReJoyce. Only the Irish could turn the events of a single day one hundred years ago into a five-month world-class festival, with a spectacular range of theatrical, artistic, musical and educational events.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is hosting “High Faluting Stuff,” an exhibition of Joyce-influenced art, while the

Royal Hibernian Academy presents another exhibition of art and installations

by Joyce-inspired artists such as Matisse, Brancusi, Jess, Man Ray and even Joyce himself. The National Library of Ireland is featuring an extensive literary exhibition devoted to Joyce, displaying a number of previously unseen notebooks, drafts, and correspondence. Concerts, plays, a film festival, photographic exhibitions, lightshows, pageant and streettheatricals are all part of the fare planned.

For those who wish to learn something about Joyce, three venues are in the must visit category.

The first is the Martello Tower at Sandycove, (eight miles south of Dublin)

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:20 PM Page 17

HIBERNIAEVENTS which is now the site of the James Joyce Museum. Built as a cannon installation in 1804 against a possible Napoleonic invasion, it is now filled with Joycean memorabilia including rare first editions of his writings (including an edition of Ulysses illustrated by Henri Matisse), personal possessions, letters, documents, photographs and portraits. The top of the tower commands an imposing, and often breezy, view of Dublin Bay, while the room immediately below is still maintained as it was during Joyce’s stay (as a guest) in the Tower. Books, cards and souvenirs are available, with staff on hand to provide a guided tour and answer queries.

Across the city, past Trinity College to Dublin’s north side, is the James Joyce Centre (North Great George’s Street) which is located in a beautifully restored 18thcentury townhouse. Here a wide range of material connected with Joyce, including rare translations

of his work, is on display. Also at the Centre, visitors can books guided walking tours that explore the north inner city – Joyce’s creative heartland.

The last of the three sites, The James Joyce House, on the banks of the River Liffey at 15 Usher’s Island, is still a work in progress. Dating back to the 13th century, it was the home of Joyce’s aunts, and it was here that “The Dead,” one of his most famous short stories from Dubliners, was set and was later brought to the screen in John Huston’s last film, The Dead. Having lain derelict for nearly two decades, the house was saved from the wrecker’s ball by Dublin barrister Brendan Kilty, who is restoring this important landmark to its former glory. When renovations are completed, visitors will be able to stay at Usher’s Island. The venue can currently be hired for corporate functions and intimate Edwardian dinners, similar to those which Joyce

would have attended. Art works by leading Irish artists are on display, and guided tours of the house are available.

ReJoyce commenced on April 1 and ends on August 31, bringing Dublin to the focus of world attention. The newly confident, multicultural, refurbished, effervescent, affluent Dublin is seemingly ready not only to embrace its Joycean past, but also to welcome a superfluity of tourists keen to join in and celebrate.

This, above all, is the season to visit Dublin to rejoice in ReJoyce.

– John Hagan For more details on ReJoyce 2004 visit www.rejoycedublin2004.com

Bloomin’ Joyce on Film Sean Walsh, the writer, director and producer of Bloom, which stars Stephen Rea as Leopold Bloom and Angeline Ball as Molly, talks to John Hagan.

Bloom was screened in New York on June 10 by The Irish Repertory Theatre.

At press time, its American distribution was still being negotiated.

John Hagan: Most people give up on Ulysses by page eight. What ever possessed you to make a film of it?

Sean Walsh: For that very reason! I was attracted to the fact that while Ulysses is recognized as the greatest novel of the 20th century, few people have ever read it. I wanted to bring the story to a wider audience, and reveal the humor, and most importantly, the humanity of the novel.

My hope is that anyone who watches it will sympathize with the characters.

More importantly, I hope that they will see a part of themselves reflected on the screen.

JH: In a previous film of Ulysses made in 1967, its director Joseph Strick believed that a filmmaker’s duty to great books is to copy them literally. Does your approach differ?

SW: I believe that the filmmaker should remain faithful to the integrity of the text, but I also think that you have to be aware of the medium of film. We begin with a portion of Molly Bloom’s

soliloquy and return to the same point in time at the end of the film. In Joyce’s novel, the soliloquy only occurs in the last chapter but I felt that this wouldn’t work for the movie audience.

JH: Bloom is not a big-budget film.

How did you manage to attract actors such as Stephen Rea, Hugh O’Connor and Patrick Bergin?

SW: All of the cast, and indeed crew, were attracted by the nature of the project, by the script, and also the opportunity to work on an adaptation of the greatest novel of the 20th century. In terms of direction, my approach was fairly simple – I surrounded myself with a highly talented and motivated cast and crew, and I sought their ideas and input at every stage of the film. Honesty and integrity also played a key part; and the atmosphere on the set was amazing. I can honestly say that I can’t imagine ever doing anything as challenging or exhilarating again.

JH: How faithful have you been to Joyce’s Dublin?

SW: It was impossible, because of budget, to re-create all the areas depicted by Joyce. However, we spent years looking for and securing the right locations in Dublin that would provide us with the right “feel” and “look” for the film.

JH: What difficulties did you face in

Top: poster from Bloom. Bottom: Stephen Rea and Angeline Ball in a scene from Bloom.

making the movie?

SW: It was all about money. All about raising the five million euros needed to bring it to the screen. Nobody believed we could actually make a film of Ulysses.

• For more information on the film, visit www.ulysses.ie AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 17

IA18_19 6/21/04 4:51 PM Page 1

IRISH EYE ON

d o o w l y l o H

By Tom Deignan

But because Moore has been dominating the spotlight, lots of other Irish movie activity at festivals across the U.S. has gone unnoticed. Some of the movies have been seen already, but others are exciting projects to keep a look out for.

At Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Film Festival back in May, there was an impressive amount of Irish talent on display.

First up was Irish-American actor/director Ed Burns trying to get his career back on track with Looking for Kitty.

Directed by and starring Michael Moore takes on President Bush in Burns, Kitty is the story of a Fahrenheit 9/11, which was a winner at Canne. high school baseball coach Denis Leary will appear in the new FX series Rescue Me. hen it comes to film festi- (David Krunholtz) and a down-on-his- experiences in Irish America). vals, the biggest news of the luck private investigator (Burns) who The documentary, directed by year has been Michael’s searches New York for the coach’s Michael McHugh, explores Moore’s big win of the Palme d’Or at wife, who has taken off with a fading Tereshchuk’s involvement in, and memCannes for Fahrenheit 9/11, his contro- rock star. ory of, this seminal event in the North. versial documentary on President Then there was the highly praised Also shown during the festival was George W. Bush.

Blind Flight. In this drama, an Irish Brotherhood, a documentary about the Moore has always worn his Irish- nationalist (Ian Hart) and an English FDNY which features unprecedented American roots proudly on his sleeve, journalist (Linus Roache) forge an access to various firehouses in going so far as to say they played a unlikely bond as they are held captive Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan role in his desire to question authority. for nearly five years in Beirut. Based on loaded with Irish-American firefighters.

A recent New Yorker magazine profile actual events, Blind Flight was directed Meanwhile, Irish talent old and new, of Moore was particularly intriguing by John Furse. with indy flavor or Hollywood hype, when it depicted the best-selling In fact, Ian Hart (who, coincidentally, was offered up at April’s Philadelphia author and filmmaker talking before a is from Liverpool, with deep Irish roots) Film Festival. crowd in Liverpool, that famous Irish won the Best Actor in a Narrative The highest profile Irish film to be city in England.

Feature Film Award for his perfor- shown during fest was Laws of mance in Blind Flight at the Attraction, Pierce Brosnan’s latest. Set third annual Tribeca fest. in New York City and Ireland, Brosnan Also screened at Tribeca stars alongside Julianne Moore in what was An Unreliable Witness, was described as a romantic comedy in the latest movie to explore the the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn events surrounding Bloody tradition. The stars play dueling lawyers Sunday in 1972. Thirty years who also end up entangled romanticallater, in the film, journalist and ly, but the film didn’t fare well at the eyewitness David Tereshchuk box office. travels back to Northern Perhaps the film at the other end of Ireland to testify as part of an the hype scale, a small Irish independent inquiry into the tragedy. (You film called Cowboys & Angels, will fare may remember that better when it is released later this year.

Actor Ian Hart portrays an Irish nationalist in Blind Flight.

Tereshchuk wrote about his The coming-of-age tale follows two

W

18 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

IA18_19 6/21/04 4:51 PM Page 2

Oscar for her role in Monster. The eyes of the entertainment world are very much upon her to see what she does next.

For Townsend, however, things have not gone so well.

He was solid in the Irish film About Adam but that didn’t get a very wide release. He famously lost out on a big role in the Lord of the Rings series, and his only other notable film, Queen of the Damned, made it to theaters simply because the film’s other star, Alliyah, had died in a plane crash.

Byrne’s career has also cooled off considerably, following roles in hits such as The Usual Suspects, and a big turn on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten.

Still, Shade apparently has enough going for it to earn a theatrical release, rather than a straight-to-video deal, of which there was much talk.

English actress Samantha Morton apparently enjoyed playing an Irish immigrant in In America so much she has decided to head over to Ireland for her next film.

Morton, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for playing the harried wife and mother of an immigrant family in New York, will star in a comedy called Farmers on E. The film, which also stars Robert Carlyle, will be shot in Ireland and revolves around a community of rural residents asked to turn their farms into a theme park. The film will begin shooting in September.

As with Morton, Carlyle (a Scotsman) has also apparently taken a liking to

best friends in Ireland – one gay, one straight – as their worlds change, and they move from the uncomplicated travails of youth to the very messy complications of adults.

Cowboys & Angels was written and directed by David Gleeson. It’s his feature film debut. It won the Best Screenplay Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival this year, and is expected to hit select theaters in the fall.

Finally, at the Philly Fest, there was Shade, starring Dublin actor Stuart Townsend, as well as Irish film veteran Gabriel Byrne. The film is set in the world of highstakes poker playing, and tells the story of three con-men looking for one more big score which would allow them all to retire.

Shade has a high-profile cast.

Besides Townsend and Byrne, there are Sylvester Stallone, Thandie Newton, Jamie Foxx, The movie Cowboys & Angels will be released in the fall.

Melanie Griffith and Hal Holbrook. playing Irish characters.

However, the buzz on Shade has been Carlyle (best known for roles in quite tepid. This is just the latest tough Trainspotting and The Full Monty) just break for both Townsend and Byrne. finished shooting a film in Belfast with Townsend, of course, is dating X-Files star Gillian Anderson. The film Charlize Theron, who recently won an will be titled The Mighty Celt.

Anderson will play the lead female role alongside Irish newcomer Tyrone McKenna who portrays Anderson’s teenage son. Carlyle plays a family friend who returns home after a decade abroad.

The Mighty Celt was written and directed by Pearse Elliott, and delves into the world of IRA operatives. It also becomes clear, as the film progresses, that Anderson and Carlyle’s characters have a long personal history.

Around St. Patrick’s Day next year, look for Russell Crowe to be starring in a movie about famed New York Irish boxer James J. Braddock.

The film, directed by Ron Howard, will be called Cinderella Man, and will recount the Depression-era life and times of the famed boxer who was seen as more or less a loser until be beat the feared Max Baer in 1935. The film’s title itself is an allusion to Braddock’s wild career. He was such an underdog in the battle against Baer that legendary journalist Damon Runyon dubbed Braddock the “Cinderella Man” after he won the heavyweight title.

Braddock was a heavyweight from the get-go. One of seven children raised

by Joseph Braddock and Irish immigrant Elizabeth O’Toole on Manhattan’s West Side, Braddock was said to be 17 pounds at birth.

Finally, on the TV front there is good and bad news for Irish American talent.

Perhaps most disappointing, ABC TV has canceled Bonnie Hunt’s idiosyncratic show Life With Bonnie.

In somewhat less painful news, the Boston-set It’s All Relative – a culture clash sitcom pitting sophisticated gays against, um, earthy Irish Catholics – is also gone.

But there is an Irish flavor here this summer. Starting July 21, The FX channel will present Denis Leary in a 13episode FDNY drama called Rescue Me. Also starring in the show, set amidst the anxieties of a post 9/11 firehouse, is Jack McGee, himself not only an Irish American but one who served 10 years on the FDNY. And proving once again that the Kennedy clan can always be called upon, the WB network will present Jack & Bobby, about the boyhoods of JFK and RFK. One can only speculate just how authentic the show’s depiction of the brothers (Bobby was generally seen as the more “Irish Catholic” of the brothers) will be. IA AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 19

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HIBERNIAPEOPLE

Russert Speaks at Fordham University Tim Russert was presented with an honorary doctorate from Fordham University after speaking at the graduation ceremony in New York on May 22, 2004.

Russert has hosted Meet the Press for 12 years and is a political analyst for NBC Nightly News and the Today show. He anchors The Tim Russert Show on CNBC, MSNBC, and is a senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of NBC News. Russert has also recently published a new book about his relationship with his father called Big Russ and Me: Father and Son—Lessons of Life.

Russert’s main message for the graduates was to remember the people less fortunate. He said, “St. Luke tells us that to whom much is given, much indeed is expected. Remember the people struggling alongside and below you, the people who haven’t had the same opportunity, the same blessings, the same Fordham education.” Russert reinforced the need for empathy in today’s world by reciting disarming statistics about American children without a good education, and included the plea, “If we are serious about continuing as a world’s premiere military, economic and moral force, we have no choice. We will need all of our children contributing and prospering.”

– Julia McAvoy Gottlieb

The Thrills Conquer the U.S.

Photo: Shannon Finnerty

The Irish rock band The Thrills have been taking the U.S. by storm this summer, and recently played a sold-out show in New York City.

Following the success of their debut album So Much For the City, the Dublin band’s new album, which is not yet titled, is due to be released on September 13. Meanwhile, they are touring North America and Europe, playing summer festivals.

20 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

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HIBERNIAENTERTAINMENT

Irish Host Amanda Byram Continues on FOX For all you reality television viewers, Amanda Byram’s face may be recognizable. The Dublin-born and raised television presenter has been associated with three controversial reality television shows; one of which was cancelled before airing.

Byram relocated to Santa Monica, California for her Hollywood career and because it reminded her of the relaxed atmosphere of her hometown. Even though she has hosted two successful reality television programs, Paradise Hotel and The Swan, she still misses “everything” about Ireland but admits that “work-wise there isn’t that much opportunity there.”

Her latest project in the U.S. was presenting for the Fox show Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay which was filmed in February and canceled before ever airing after causing controversy with gay rights groups.

Byram claims that the show was innocent and funny and the publicity made it seem more controversial. Regardless, the show was dropped after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation labeled the show an “exercise in systematic humilia-

tion.” But Byram took the cancellation in stride. “Of course it is always disappointing when things don’t air, but TV and the FCC is very sensitive right now and I roll with the decisions made by the Fox network, as they have been and continue to be very supportive to me.”

Between her two hits Paradise Hotel and The Swan, Byram was more invested

in The Swan. The show featured contestants who went through intense plastic surgery and competed to be part of the final beauty pageant at the end of the series. The show moved Byram and she said that she and the participants were in tears everyday. She has been desensitized to plastic surgery in general. “It has become an everyday thing, I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing,” she says.

She is lined up to present The Swan II , which is currently in the process of casting new contestants.

Byram has had more than a few problems with people who mistake her accent. This past season on Saturday Night Live, comedian Maya Rudolph parodied The Swan and said Byram was British. She retorts, “It’s so annoying because no one can distinguish my accent!” Perhaps that is because Byram lived in London for four years. Whether or not she sounds like she’s from Ireland, she certainly credits her Irishness for her success. She says, “My ability to sit down and talk to anyone and everyone is my most Irish characteristic.”

– Julia McAvoy Gottlieb

The Irish in King Arthur MooreWins at Canne

Moore with his wife, Kathleen Glynn, at Canne.

One of this summer’s biggest blockbusters, King Arthur, has a very strong, yet subtle, Irish influence. Moya Brennan, former lead singer in Clannad who was interviewed in the June/July issue of Irish America, features prominently on the film’s soundtrack.

Lending her signature ethereal and timeless sound, Brennan contributes vocals and co-wrote some of the music with the composer Hans Zimmer. Adding to the Irish feel of the movie is the location – most of the film was shot in County Wicklow.

22 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s damming documentary film on President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, won the prestigous Palme d’Or at Canne. The jury of four Americans and one French person awarded Moore on “merit” not on “politics,” according to jury President Quentin Tarentino. It was the first time since 1956 that the top prize has gone to a documentary. In his accceptance speech, Moore quoted Abraham Lincoln, “If you give people the truth, the Republic will be saved.”

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:35 PM Page 25

HIBERNIAHERITAGE

Flatley Receives Medal of Honor

Michael Flatley accepting his medal.

Lord of the Dance and Irish America’s Irish-American of the year for 2003 Michael Flatley was awarded with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor at a gala ceremony on May 15, 2004 at Ellis Island. Chairman of the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) Denis Fugazy said, “The Ellis Island Medal of Honor Awards allow us an opportunity to honor the best in America – those who lend their talents, time and energy to making our country a better place for us all.” Fugazy explained why Flatley was chosen to receive the medal. “Michael Flatley is not only an accomplished entertainer, but someone who has dedicated his life to helping others. He exemplifies all that is great about America,” he said.

Now Flatley has one more accomplish-

ment under his Irish-dancing feet. “It was a wonderful and moving ceremony and I feel so proud to be a recipient of such an illustrious award,” Flatley said. His achievements include entries in the Guinness Book of World Records for tap dancing speed, being the highest paid dancer, and the highest insurance premium placed on a dancer’s legs – $40,000,000.

Since its beginning, the NECO has honored more than 1,300 ethnic American citizens and Native Americans. Michael Flatley is now among esteemed company including six presidents of the United States, members of Congress, Nobel Prize winners, Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, scientists, businessmen, entertainers, and military heroes.

– Julia McAvoy Gottlieb

A Taste of Freedom on Ellis Island

Photos: Michele Barber-Perry

New York Museum Presents a Drama About the 20th Century Immigrant Experience.

Of the many reasons for taking the ferry out to Ellis Island, The Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation’s current production, A Taste of Freedom is certainly on the top of the list.

Written by the playwright Aurorae Khoo, the twenty-five minute drama follows the experience of an endearing Polish girl named Kasia on her journey to the United States through Ellis Island in 1914.

Accompanied by her mother, Kasia makes the difficult transatlantic voyage to join her father, a factory worker who left Poland when Kasia was a young girl in order to make a better life for his family in America. Along the way, the women encounter other immigrants including a

character named Louise Delaney Flaherty from County Cork, a saucy young woman who laments the fact that she was not on a boat that gained a reputation for fun because it transported women only.

Directed by Marci Arlin, the play illustrates the challenges for the immigrants, from the difficulties of being at sea — including food shortages, over-crowding and illness — to their first emotional glimpse of Lady Liberty.

They also endure the naturalization process at Ellis Island, with its terrifying medical examinations and intimidating immigration officers.

A Taste of Freedom takes place on a ship that is loosely modeled on the Scythia, an actual vessel that carried immigrants to the U.S. The characters are based on immigrants who arrived between 1892 to 1954, when Ellis Island was the port of entry for U.S. immigration. During the show, photos of real immigrants are projected against the backdrop screen, adding to the drama’s authentic atmosphere. A Taste of

Freedom captures all the joy, anticipation and fear that comes with being transplanted in a strange, new land.

• A Taste of Freedom will be running through November 2004 and is performed seven days a week, from 10:45 to 4:00pm daily (with a break for lunch) at the Ellis Island Museum. For more information, visit the Ellis Island Museum’s website at www.ellisisland.org or call Carrianne Dugan (212) 561-4539.

– Michele Barber-Perry

Top: Veronica Newton, Jenny Greemand and Tzahi Moskovitz as a reunited immigrant family.

Right: Jenny Greeman as the sassy Louise Delaney Flaherty. from Co. Cork.

AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 25

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HIBERNIAEVENTS

American Ireland Fund

Museum Honors the Irish County Mayo family lauded for its many achievements

The American Ireland Fund held its Twenty-ninth Annual New York Gala at the Waldorf-Astoria on May 6, 2004.

The lavish event was led by dinner Chairman Robert McCann and attended by 1,400 guests. The international organization reached its goal of raising over $2.5 million to support its many cultural and humaitarian programs.

Top: The Humanitarian Award and the Leslie C. Quick Jr. Leadership Award; The Waldorf Astoria’s Grand Ballroom.

Bottom: AIF President Loretta Brennan Glucksman and tenor Ronan Tynan, who performed at the gala; Bob McCann presents the AIF Humanitarian Award to Dan and Patricia Rooney. Photos by James Higgins.es Higgins

The O’Dwyer family was honored at a benefit for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City.

Three generations of the O’Dwyers, both immigrant and American-born, have worked to improve the lives of citizens of New York City, and many of them have been in Irish America ‘s Top 100.

The oldest of seven children, William O’Dwyer came to New York from County Mayo in 1910 and had a stellar career. Beginning as a policeman, he later became a magistrate, the D.A. of Brooklyn, the Mayor of New York, and the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

William’s brother Jim, who worked at the FDNY fire brigade, died in 1926 in the line of duty. The youngest brother Paul was a member and president of the New York City Council and was the

N.Y.C. Commissioner to the United Nations. Paul also promoted peace and equality in Northern Ireland, and the founding of the State of Israel.

The O’Dwyers remain dedicated to positions of service and social activism through the law firm O’Dwyer & Bernstien, a civil and human rights law firm. Paul’s son Brian O’Dwyer is a partner at the firm and is the Chairman of the Board of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center. He is also a former U.N. Human Rights Commissioner.

His uncle Frank Durkan – son of Mary O’Dwyer Durkan – is also a partner at O’Dwyer & Bernstien. The family also boasts two local Supreme Court Justices in its ranks, Joan O’Dwyer and John Byrne.

The O’Dwyers were honored because their achievements are rooted in their immigrant experiences and uphold the ethos of the Museum “to promote tolerance and historical perspective by the presentation and interpretation of immigrant and migrant experiences.”

Recently real estate tycoon and Irish-American Raymond O’Keefe was named Chairman of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. The Museum is preparing for its upcoming Irish family apartment opening, set for May 2005.

The Meehan-Moore family has been chosen to be immortalized in an exhibition to symbolize the Irish immigration story. – Julia McAvoy Gottlieb Above: The O’Dwyer Family.

Left: Former New York Mayor, Mario Cuomo was one of many who honored the O’Dwyers at the celebration.

26 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:35 PM Page 27

HIBERNIAEVENTS

Women of Concern Luncheon The Irish humanitarian aid agency Concern hosted its second annual Women of Concern Luncheon at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Plaza on June 17. The event honors women of accomplishment in both the developed and developing world.

– Photos by Ben Assen

Top left: 2004 Women of Concern Honoree Carole Black Bottom left: Fr. Aengus Finucane, Honorary President Concern Worldwide U.S., Deborah Shah, Board Member, Concern Worldwide U.S., Carole Black, President & CEO of Lifetime Entertainment Services, 2004 Women of Concern Honoree, Tamala Edwards, ABC News Now, Master of Ceremonies, and Willa Addis, Concern guest speaker.

Above: Chairman of Concern Worldwide U.S. Tom Moran, Willa Addis and Operations Director of Concern Worldwide U.S. Dominic McSorley.

Fleet Week in New York Sailors and Marines aboard the amphibi- from the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle formances and hangar bay reception folous assault ship USS Iwo Jima arrived in Corps and Honor Legion of the Police lowing were both grand successes. the Big Apple on Memorial Day week- Department, City of New York. The per“It was an amazing New York welend to kick off the 17th annual come,” said the Fleet Week celebration for the ship’s Commander Thomas U.S. Navy – and New York was McDonough. “Considering Iwo ready.

Jima’s maiden, eight-month Once safely moored, approxdeployment – from Operations imately 4,000 sailors aboard 12 Iraqi and Enduring Freedom to U.S. Atlantic Fleet and U.S. Joint Task Force Liberia – Fleet Coast Guard vessels poured Week serves as a meaningful into downtown Manhattan from testament to the phenomenal Pier 88 and Staten Island – performance of this crew," he many of them for the first time. added. "Conversely, it gives On Sunday evening the ship New York a chance to see just conducted a Sunset Parade on what a great job the men and the flight deck featuring women of USS Iwo Jima are demonstrations by the U.S. doing."

–Turlough McConnell Marine Corps Silent Drill Left to right: Turlough McConnell, Boston native Cdr. Thomas McDonough, Team, musical performances Air Boss Iwo Jima, Deborah Ripley and Patricia Harty.

AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 27

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HIBERNIACULTURE

War of the Rose

Photo: Nuala Purcell

Elizabeth Kee addresses the controversy about her past.

This year’s Rose of Tralee festival has been grabbing headlines over the controversy surrounding New York’s Rose Elizabeth Kee, who will compete in the festival at the end of August. Kee is a former star of the reality television show Temptation Island, in which she was acting like a true temptress. Kee was also attacked after publicity pictures surfaced from an all-female, Charlie’s Angels type show that she was cast for that never aired. Kee explained, “Apparently the producer didn’t get enough money and put all the pictures he had up on the Internet. I never got paid for that work. He bounced my check, and worse than that; now I am being bashed for it.”

Kee, whose ancestors hail from Counties Down and Dublin, has defended herself vigorously in the press. She said, “If they knew what really happened, then they would make a decision based on that and not on hearsay.

If they were informed they would have a different 28 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

opinion of me.” Trying to stay focused on the positive aspects of the Rose pageant, she said she is excited to visit her Irish relatives when she gets to Tralee.

The Rose of Tralee prides itself on being more than a beauty contest.

Inspired by the love song “The Rose of Tralee” by William Mulchinock, the winner is picked for her modesty and charm rather than her beauty. At the competition, 26 contestants from all over the world represent countries including Italy, Australia, Dubai, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland.

Regardless of the current controversy, the Rose of Tralee has always been a much-anticipated event since its start in 1959 when a group of businessmen wanted to encourage tourism to the Tralee area after the post-war emigration. To find out who wins the 2004 Rose of Tralee title, we’ll have to wait until August 24 when the winner will be announced.

– Julia McAvoy Gottlieb

Last Comic Standing

Irish-American comic Kathleen Madigan has slowly but surely been climbing to the top of the comic heap since she got her start at an open mike night in 1990. She has appeared on The Tonight Show a dozen times, a high point for any comic. But if her latest stint is any indication, her quest for success does not stop there. She is currently starring in a reality show called Last Comic Standing. In its second season, the series has provided a new spin on the reality television genre, featuring a nationwide talent search for professional and non-professional comedians (both male and female). The second half of the show’s run focused on the final 10 contestants, of which Madigan was one.

They lived together sequestered in a house and competed for the ultimate prize – an exclusive talent contract with NBC. Madigan’s achievements include being recently voted best female standup at the American Comedy Awards and producing her own specials for the Comedy Central network, both here and in Australia. She also pokes fun at her Irish-born parents’ lack of technical prowess. “I also like to spend a lot of time responding to my parents’ emails that read, ‘Are you getting these? We’re not sure if this is working,’” she says.

Madigan’s current status in the contest is unknown because as Irish America went to press the show’s finale had not yet aired. Last Comic Standing airs Tuesdays at 9pm (8pm Central & Mountain) on NBC.

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:35 PM Page 29

HIBERNIAEVENTS

Photo: AP/Wideworld

Brían O’Byrne Wins a Tony

When he learned he had just won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a play, Irish actor Brían O’Byrne took to the stage looking stunned.

“I’m not sure if a grinning Irish guy who’s speechless for 45 seconds is going to make good TV,” he said. “But it might be just what you get.”

Who cares if it makes for good TV? O’Byrne has shown he can rule the Broadway stage like few other actors, so forget about TV. Meanwhile, Hollywood has also come calling. The morning after his big victory, O’Byrne had to get right back to shooting his next movie, which could be the big Hollywood break he has been waiting for.

O’Byrne will be seen alongside Clint Eastwood, Hillary Swank and Morgan Freeman in the upcoming movie Million Dollar Baby, slated for release next year.

It was a great week for O’Byrne, a native of Mullagh, County Cavan, whose “overnight success” story at the Tonys has actually been years in the making.

O’Byrne has toiled in all sorts of roles on the New York stage, and even won

two previous Tony nominations for Broadway roles in The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West.

He has also appeared in numerous Irish films, including An Everlasting Piece and, most recently, Intermission, as the hilariously disgruntled bus driver.

But it was the role of a pedophile and killer in Bryony Lavery’s chilling play Frozen that exposed O’Byrne to the masses. He beat out stiff competition for the statue, including fellow Irish actor Aiden Gillen, who himself earned raves for his role opposite Patrick Stewart in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. Also up against O’Byrne was Tom Aldredge for his role in Twentieth Century, Ben Chaplin for his turn in The Retreat from Moscow, and Omar Metwally from Sixteen Wounded.

In his Tony speech, the first thing O’Byrne conveyed was his deep respect for his competition and the craft of acting in general.

“There is no such thing, I believe, as competition between actors. You can’t really award any of us. What we try to do is be good. The nomination hopefully

means that we’re good. Any of the actors in this category would be standing here if they had my part. There are great parts. I have the best part on Broadway.”

It is the type of reserve that has been evident again and again in the interviews O’Byrne has been doing, now that he’s in greater demand.

But since he had the ear of the entire theater-loving world, O’Byrne also figured it was a good time for a plug.

“If you are listening at home on television, I’ve just said that, so it’s true, so you better come and see our show. Our show is called Frozen. In theater, in plays, in which I am passionate about, we don’t have scores underneath. When I was watching these musical numbers, it was fantastic. I sat back and went, ‘Wow.’ In theater, on stage, we sit on the edge of our seats. We are part of the play, and it is every bit as electrifying. Come see Frozen! And thank you so much. I am very honored.”

If you don’t get to see Frozen, however, it looks like we will be seeing plenty more of O’Byrne down the road.

– Tom Deignan AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 29

Hibernia 6/28/04 1:36 PM Page 31

HIBERNIANEWS FROM IRELAND

Photo: EPA/John Giles /Landov

Bush Greeted With Antagonism in Ireland U.S. was the only poll that concerned him.

He was concerned, however, about how he was depicted by the Irish media. The White House lodged an official complaint with the Irish embassy in Washington, over the tone of an interview conducted by RTÉ’s U.S. correspondent, Carol Coleman.

During her interview with the President on the eve of his visit, she quizzed him about Iraq and his religious beliefs. When his answers became somewhat rambling, she intervened, to the clear annoyance of President Bush who repeatedly asked her to stop interrupting him and to U.S. President George W. Bush (left) with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (center) and Romano Prodi, allow him finish his sentence.

Chairman of the European Commission (right) when the leaders met in Dromoland Castle, County Clare.

Washington has claimed that the RTÉ reporter was disreThere was no Céad Míle Fáilte for There were no well-wishers when the spectful and cancelled an interview that President George W. Bush when he made President and his wife Laura descended Coleman had arranged with Laura Bush his first visit to the Irish Republic. the steps of Air Force One shortly after in Ireland the following day.

Thousands of soldiers and police were 8.00 pm on Friday 25th June. President The Government appeared to back the drafted in to keep protestors away from Bush waved for the cameras, but there Bush complaint. A spokesperson told the President and his entourage as he was no one to wave back. reporters that: “it had been conveyed to made a brief visit to Co. Clare at the end It was a far cry from the days when the U.S. that the Irish government would of June.

President Clinton attracted tens of thou- be sympathetic to that view”.

The biggest security operation in the sands of well-wishers onto the streets.

The Government also tried hard to ban history of the State was mounted for the It was left to President Mary images of the President in his night-wear visit, which was opposed by the majority McAleese to convey the feelings of the at the window of his bedroom at of the people of Ireland. nation. The President told the American Dromoland Castle. The President had Some 20,000 people demonstrated in leader of the “deep disquiet” among the retired to his room within an hour of Dublin and another 2,000 protested in Irish people and many Europeans about arriving at Shannon, only to be spotted, Shannon during the President’s brief the war in Iraq. in a t-shirt and shorts fixing the curtains, stay, but the anti-war activists were kept In what was described as a frank by a TV crew. well away from the E.U.-U.S. Summit exchange of views, she spoke of her Despite attempts by the Government to that was held in Dromoland Castle. shock at what happened to Iraqi prisoners stop the images being broadcast, they A convoy of tanks lined the roads from in Abu Ghraib and told the U.S. appeared on the front page of most the Castle while military helicopters hov- President that it was time for Western tabloids the following morning, and were ered overhead, drowning out the chants leaders to “communicate and connect” also broadcast on TV stations abroad. and jeers of the demonstrators. At least with their people.

Iraq dominated the agenda at the sum4,000 police officers manned the walls of The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern also raised mit. Bush acknowledged Europe’s conthe Castle, backed up by 2,000 soldiers concerns about the treatment of prisoners cerns over the war but insisted: “my job on the ground. in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as human is to do my job and I will do it the way I The American embassy had warned its rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay with think is necessary. We will set a vision. citizens to keep away from the protests in President Bush. He later told reporters I will lead and we’ll just let the chips fall case they turned confrontational, but there that he was satisfied with the response he where they may.” was no trouble at any of the marches. got from the U.S. leader.

The summit concluded with a joint Church leaders, trade unionists, Bush didn’t seem overly upset at his statement from the U.S. and the E.U. lawyers and politicians from Labour, the unpopularity. When asked about his poor expressing support for the new governGreens and Sinn Féin joined in marches ratings in opinion polls in Europe he ment in Iraq.

– Mairead Carey in Dublin and Shannon. replied that the November election in the AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 31

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:26 PM Page 32

HIBERNIABUSINESS

Irish Companies Thrive in the U.S.

Above: Orbiscom’s Dublin headquarters, where the technology company has been developing its security software. Below: President and CEO of Performix Technologies Cathal McGloin.

Since we published last year’s Wall Street 50 issue and highlighted some homegrown Irish technology businesses, many of them have been cementing their Stateside success. Even in the economic downturn and technology bust, these companies have thrived.

Another thing they have in common is that they rely on Enterprise Ireland, an Irish Government agency charged with assisting the development of Irish enterprise. Enterprise Ireland’s core mission is to work in partnership with client companies to develop a sustainable competitive advantage, leading to a significant increase in profitable sales, exports and employment. Here is a snapshot of some of the most innovative Irish businesses providing technology to the finance and other industries.

WBT Systems is sewing up the market in the e-learning space. Its software platform, called TopClass, runs the technology that helps large companies train their employees. TopClass manages all the content and tracks the progress that employees are making in their training programs.

Companies like Ryanair use TopClass for pilot certification, and the company has many customers in the financial services field including CSFB (Credit Suisse First Boston) and the UK bank Allfirst.

WBT Systems has been recognized in Ireland as an outstanding business; this year it won the Company of the Year Award at Ireland’s annual ICT Excellence Awards, beating out over 100 other applicant companies in the software, information technology and communications sectors. Duncan Lennox, CTO WBT 32 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Systems, said, “We are one of a few elearning companies that is profitable. We had 40 percent revenue growth last year and we’re on target for the same revenue growth this year. And 40 percent of our revenues are from the U.S. market.”

Another Irish company that currently

derives 40 percent of its sales from the U.S. market is Norkom Technologies.

This year a host of new financial services firms signed up for Norkom’s anti-moneylaundering software and fraud and risk management applications including HSBC Group, Bank of Montreal Group, and AIB Group. With Norkom’s products, these banks are better able to detect fraud and analyze user behavior – a vital function in this era of corporate greed and scandals. With a growing U.S. base in Boston, Norkom’s slogan is “from analysis to action” indicating the thorough job that its products perform.

Norkom is not the only Irish software company that monitors employees to ensure that they are doing their job properly. Performix Technologies monitors

agents at call centers to help improve the profitability of the company by running its employee performance management software on their computers. This year, Performix raised more than $10 million in investment funding proving that many in the industry believe in its products.

The company’s customer base now includes five of the world’s top 10 banks, two of the world’s top three credit card providers and two of world’s top telecommunication companies. Said Cathal McGloin, President and CEO of Performix Technologies, “Our focus is on employees; our impact is on the balance sheet.”

Also working in the competitive and complicated field of finance and hightech is Irish management and technology consulting company VISION. With clients including Citibank, General Motors and Warner Music Group, VISION is sharing its expertise in helping the financial sector boost growth through technology. VISION has provided essential systems integration work for banks during their mergers and acquisitions. The company’s pipeline for new contracts is up 100 percent this year and it has recently secured two new contracts in the New York City region.

This year banks and websites have embraced solutions from Orbiscom, an Irish security software company. With identity theft on the rise, particularly on the internet, Orbiscom offers one of the best ways to make online shopping safe.

Orbiscom’s technology hides your credit card number when you’re making an online transaction so cyber thieves and fraudsters can’t get a hold of your real details. The system creates a ‘one time use’ credit card number and expiration date that are disposed of after the purchase of the goods, so that the customers’ real details remain a secret. The clever idea was conceived of by Irishmen Ian Flitcroft and Graham O’Donnell when they were waiting out a storm in a sailboat off the west coast of Ireland in 1997.

Today the technology is used by companies including Discover, MBNA and Citibank. These three credit card providers were commended for their online shopping security this year by the Credit Card Monitor Report – proving how well Orbiscom’s technology works.

– Louise Carroll

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:26 PM Page 33

HIBERNIABUSINESS

Despite Globalization, Ireland Draws Businesses The dragging economy, the technolo- make sense, you’ll do that in Asia or gy bust, and increasing competition in Eastern Europe. But why not set up the global market have not stopped your European headquarters in businesses from locating their opera- Ireland?” tions in Ireland. In fact, despite the draw A company’s headquarters manages of cheap labor in Asia, in 2003 the its finances, personnel, management United States invested 2 1/2 times more structure, intellectual property, and the money in Ireland than in China. This company’s entire supply chain. By setfigure is surprising when you consider ting up a European headquarters in the cost of living and the relatively high Ireland, a business can find the highly salaries Irish people are paid compared skilled, English-speaking accountants, to their Asian and Eastern European counterparts.

And on May 1, 2004 the European Union expanded by 10 countries, eight of which are former Communist nations with large and inexpensive labor forces ready to do business.

Observers wonder if these nations will compete with Ireland, which started out as one of the poorest nations in Western Europe and has transformed itself into a wealthy and successful country.

Its cost of living has since risen accordingly, and Ireland is now changing gears in the kind of industry it is attracting.

The Irish government founded an organization specifically designed to keep Ireland at a competitive advantage relative to other countries. The IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Authority) attracts and retains businesses to Ireland. Its many achievements include the huge plants, development and business centers that companies like Intel, IDA Ireland executive vice president Eamonn Ryan Apple, and Microsoft have located in Ireland. managers, and technicians it needs for Eamonn Ryan, the executive vice these jobs. Says Ryan, “When that adds president of IDA Ireland, is at the fore- up, it becomes a substantial structure. front of attracting these businesses and It’s not just about going to Ireland to communicating to companies about the save money. It’s about putting part of virtues of moving into Ireland. Having your strategic business over in Ireland.” spent three decades working for the And businesses have responded to IDA, Ryan is based in New York City this suggestion. Among many other and is responsible for Asia Pacific, successful U.S. companies, Netscape, North America and Europe. Part of the Doubleclick, and Google have placed IDA’s strategy that he is implementing their European headquarters in Ireland. tackles the new issues Ireland faces in Aside from these high-tech firms, a the global economy. plethora of pharmaceutical companies And the burning question now is, will have set up shop in Ireland also, and the big companies disappear and move aim to stay because of their requirement to Poland for cheaper labor? Ryan does- for a skilled workforce. Says Ryan, n’t think so. He explains, “We know “Ireland has become a high quality, that manufacturing in Ireland doesn’t knowledge intensive country.”

There is no doubt that Ireland needs substantial U.S. investment and depends on American businesses to keep its economy strong. Ireland currently derives 32.5 percent of its total revenues from North America, making it the second most dependent country in Europe on the U.S. behind the Netherlands. The exposure of the Irish economy to the whims of U.S. businesses is huge, so Ireland must constantly adapt to the needs of the American economy.

So far Ireland has done so. It began in manufacturing-based jobs in the 1960s and 1970s and progressed into call centers in the 1980s. In the 1990s Ireland graduated into the high-tech boom. Today, Ireland has positioned itself as a knowledge economy, one with a highly educated and highly skilled workforce, which will continue to command higher salaries for more complex labor. This trend will in turn boost Ireland’s standard of living, which has been steadily on the increase since the early 1990s.

This may be good news for Ireland, but it also is beneficial for American businesses. U.S. companies go to Ireland to help their bottom line, and maintaining a healthy profit margin is foremost in their mind. Recent data shows that they are getting their money’s worth. U.S. affiliate earnings in Ireland reached record highs in 2003, and with the help of a weak dollar, profits earned in Ireland rose 45 percent.

The challenge now is for businesses to understand what Ireland has to offer so that they can take advantage of Ireland’s labor force and tax incentives.

Ireland has repositioned itself to attract the core functions of multinationals and process complex transactions, but it is vital for businesses to be aware of Ireland’s strengths in order to consider moving into it. Ryan concludes, “It’s a world economy out there. So as well as the old reliable strengths, with the headquarters expertise, we have a new product line that we can chase, and the future is brighter for us.”

– Louise Carroll AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 33

QUOTE

Hibernia 6/25/04 4:26 PM Page 34

“George O’Dowd has the soul of a poet and he wrote the most extraordinary score I’ve ever seen.”

Raul Esparza on receiving a Drama Desk Award for his role in Taboo. which was written by Boy George.

“I made all my sacraments here, I went to school here, and I come here every morning. It was just my understanding that I was going to be buried from this parish, and now I don’t know where I am going to go.”

Mary Walsh, 77, whose church, St. Catherine of Siena in Boston, will be closing.

– The New York Times

Regarding Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s popularity declining after splitting with long-time girlfriend Celia Larkin.

– Sunday Independent

“What a ride this life is, what a time for amazing opportunities for women.”

Donna Murphy on winning the Drama Critics Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical for her work in Wonderful Town.

Voters reject automatic citizenship for babies born in Ireland “I simply cannot accept that it is desirable or just to introduce a change that will determine that two children born in the same maternity ward on the same day will enjoy different legal and constitutional rights.”

Michael D. Higgins, a prominent member of Parliament from Ireland’s Labor Party, which campaigned against the measure.

– New York Times

“I’m an Irish Catholic, so a Democrat by blood. But I’m 100% for Bush. I want my President to be like my agent: not afraid of people, but wants my best interest.”

Lara Flynn Boyle – AM New York

Rush and Molloy – New York Daily News

“It would be ironic if, having fought to keep tax breaks attracting filmmakers to Ireland, they then stayed away for the lack of a fag [cigarette].”

Dennis Quaid – Sunday Tribune

“A year since their split, it appears that the Taoiseach is desperately in Lara Flynn Boyle.

34 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Donna Murphy.

unQuote

Dennis Quaid.

While Bill Clinton was writing his 900-page memoir, his friends were apparently griping that he kept calling them to read them passages.

Now that he’s finished, they’re griping that he’s calling them to fact check it at all hours of the morning.

[Irish American Top 100 honoree] Rep. Peter King (RL.I.) one of four Republicans who voted against Clinton’s impeachment, says he was woken up the other day at 6:30 a.m. by Sen. Hillary Clinton, letting him know that her husband needed to check a few facts. But when Bill got on the line, King says, “He didn’t seem like he needed to check facts so much as try out what he’d written on somebody. He was like a guy with a new Cadillac ... He’s going to be the best book promoter the world has ever seen.”

need of a woman’s touch to boost his popularity, with opinion polls showing only around four in 10 people satisfied with his performance since the split.”

IA36_39 6/25/04 1:26 PM Page 36

TheAre Corrs Back Following the release of their latest album, Borrowed Heaven, The Corrs spoke to Louise Carroll just before they started their largest North American tour.

36 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

IA36_39 6/25/04 1:26 PM Page 37

W

ho could imagine that a group of siblings from Dundalk, County Louth would fuse Irish traditional music with modern pop, sell over 30 million albums and gain worldwide attention and acclaim? Young, rich, and gorgeous, The Corrs have taken the mantle as the representatives of the new Ireland, where massive success is a possibility and life is good. Very good.

It all began almost fifteen years ago, long before they broke through in America with their 2000 smash hit “Breathless” off the album In Blue. In Dublin in 1990, there was a casting call for a musical comedy called The Commitments. Jim Corr decided he and his sisters should audition together as the band from Roddy Doyle’s novel. Although none of them made the cut as the lead characters, Andrea was cast as Sharon Rabbitte, sister to the band’s manager Jimmy. But more importantly, they met the film’s musical coordinator John Hughes, who is still their manager today. So important to The Corrs is Hughes, that when they are spilt two and two on a vote, he casts the tiebreaker.

The Corrs haven’t changed their roles since those early days. The exception is that initially Jim was the leader of the band, being the eldest in the family (he’s now 39). But before long, the others were also taking charge and now they make decisions together. Jim plays guitar, and Sharon plays the violin and fiddle.

Caroline plays drums, and is one of the

few highly successful female drummers “We have got a following in in the music industry. America. But really, in the scale Andrea, the youngest, is the lead of things, it hasn’t touched what singer and plays the it could be. I think that it could Irish tin whistle. The band writes and explode over there now.” arranges the songs – Andrea together, and Sharon and Andrea pen most of the lyrics. optimistic. I have an absolutely blind faith Given that their audition for The that she is in a better place.” And Sharon Commitments launched them into a wildly wrote “Hide Away” a lovely ballad, to successful music career, you might think encourage a friend of hers who was having that the band would credit the movie as a difficult time. She explains, “Sometimes being their big break. But you’d be wrong. people need to realize their potential and Jim displays the cool confidence of a tal- not hide behind other people; because that ented artist who was bound to be discov- always leads to frustration. You have to ered in time. “The Commitments was the grab the bull by the horns and be what you catalyst, I suppose,” he says. “But I think can be. ‘Hide Away’ is really just about we had the determination and the ambition taking control and using your potential.” to make it work anyway, no matter what The Corrs are good at following their was going to be the catalyst. It could have own advice. With the new album, they been lots of other things.” have taken their sound in a different This confidence, rooted in optimism, is a direction, making it more guitar-based quality that The Corrs credit to their and less overtly pop. You could say it’s Irishness. “Optimism is really a very Irish their most rock ‘n’ roll album to date. thing,” says Andrea. “That and a belief in “It’s slightly edgier and I feel that’s people rather than to rage against them.” because we are older,” Sharon says. “And And Sharon adds, “The Irish have a natur- as you get older you get a little bit more al optimism. We’re not as stressed-out as confident. I think that maybe it has a little other nations.” bit more depth to it.”

Their music reflects the upbeat nature of Deep it may be, but it has lost none of their personalities, and their new album The Corrs’ trademark ebullience. The Borrowed Heaven explodes with exuber- melodies and production have a distinct ance. Even their 1980s flavor, most obviously on the about per- album’s first single, “Summer Sunshine.”

“Some people would say that we songs sonal tragedies “In the 1980s, I was in my teens and music are ambassadors of the country. have a positive was very important,” says Andrea, who aura. Andrea wrote wrote the track. “I think subconsciously I don’t think we see ourselves as “Angel” for their it’s there.” Then she adds as an influence, Jean who “I love Prince.” Caroline says, “It wasn’t a that!” Jim laughs. “But it’s very mother died in 1999. conscious effort, though. It wasn’t like we Andrea says of the said, ‘Oh we’re going to make an 80s flattering, it’s certainly a very song, “It’s very record.’ It just happened. But we’re happy nice thing to hear.” hopeful; it’s very with it.”

AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 37

IA36_39 6/25/04 1:26 PM Page 38

Not all of Borrowed Heaven is a throw- your clothes,” she sings. The song is the you are listening to an Irish band with the back to the 80s. “Time Enough for Tears” opposite of her romantic relationships, she occasional fiddle, tin whistle or even the was written by Bono, Gavin Friday and says, which are anything but domestic. “In bagpipe. “It’s important to us to have a real Maurice Seezer for the 2003 Jim Sheridan my life, everything is very high intensity in Irish flavor on our albums. Part of us movie In America and doesn’t echo any love; because I’m always moving and it’s would be missing without it,” says Sharon. specific musical era. It’s a timeless, deli- never domestic and mundane.” Andrea Thematically, Borrowed Heaven delivcate ballad that captures Andrea’s voice and Jim are the only unmarried Corrs, and ers a carpe diem message. “The album’s at its best. Nominated for a Golden Globe collaborated together on “Humdrum.” title is the time that we have, the place award, “Time Enough for Tears” is the They enjoyed poking fun at settling down where we are,” says Andrea. “Right here only song on the album not written by with the kind of dry wit you’d expect from and now – that’s heaven. All that is light The Corrs, which explains why is doesn’t the Irish. and dark, all that is beautiful and ugly, all sound like the rest of the album. In addiAlthough the album permeates with dis- pleasure and pain are transient. We have to tion to Bono, other collaborators on the parate influences, its polished sound and live for today.” record include the South African band upbeat lyrics tie it together as a cohesive With their confidence, new songs and a Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who sing on work. Throughout all the songs you know reputation for fantastic live performances, the title track, bringing African The Corrs are hoping to really chants and a prayerful tone to “I love old Ireland. I love the break big in America this sumthe song. mer. Says Andrea, “We have got In contrast to that reverence, traditions of Ireland. I would a following in America. But the song “Humdrum” exhibits a really, in the scale of things, it modern techno influence and like to keep them in my life and hasn’t touched what it could be.

Andrea depicts married life with have my children understand The reaction we’ve had over the more than a touch of irony. “I years with audiences over there want to take you for granted/for- Irish culture and traditions.” would lead us to believe it could get your birthday/drift while so much bigger if people just – Caroline be you’re talking/and shrink all got to hear our music. And I do

I

n addition to being the band’s lead singer and tin whistle player, Andrea is the family thespian. Her first film was The Commitments, and she was cast in another Alan Parker film Evita, playing Peron’s mistress and Madonna’s nemesis. Her upcoming feature is her most significant role to date and combines both her acting and musical talents.

Andrea plays Anne, a fiddle player living in County Clare in the 1970s. The film is going to be

same time it is very dramatic and it can be very sad.”

Andrea felt that she related very closely to her character in the film.

“The thing is I believed everything that was in the script that the girl said and what she went through. I believed it. And that’s half the battle.” Andrea had a particularly unusual coming-of-age herself, becoming a famous pop star as a teenager. And a few years ago she was voted the most beautiful woman in the world in a UK poll.

Hollywood Calling...

38 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Asked if she has adjusted to all the attention paid to her beauty, she says it has become less and less important as she gets older.

She happily says how much she enjoyed turning 30 this year.

“You’re very vulnerable anyway as a woman, and in those adolescent years it’s more difficult.

Now I have the spectrum of seeing how little it matters. I feel just the same as everybody but Andrea as Anne (top) and with Shaun Evans more exposed because I’m in in the upcoming film The Boys and Girl from the public eye,” she says. IA County Clare.

First Look Media

retitled for its March 2005 release, but so far has been called The Boys and Girl From County Clare.

Andrea admits that she hasn’t had the time to focus on Hollywood. “Music has been completely all-consuming,” she says. “And I mean it in a good way. But then this script came along by Nick Adams and I thought it was beautiful, true and honest. It’s very true of Ireland.

This film is a comedy and at the

Photo: Collins/Colin Keegan

IA36_39 6/25/04 1:26 PM Page 39

From left: Sharon’s wedding to Gavin Bonner at the Church of St. John in Co. Clare in 2001. Andrea at the Special Olympic World Games in Ireland in 2003.

Top right: Andrea serenades the crowd in Germany, June 2004 and below, the band on their tour jet. think that it could explode over there The Corrs the icons of modern Ireland, an Caroline. “I love the traditions of now.” Sharon concurs, “And the signs association that makes them proud. “It is Ireland. I would like to keep them in my are really good. The tour is selling really very nice if people do say that about us, it life and have my children understand well, and that’s really positive. I feel like means we’re representing the country in a Irish culture and traditions.” it’s our time.” positive way, which is always a good The Corrs may have houses in France Jim is pleased that despite a four-year thing,” says Sharon. And Jim says, and Spain, but they all live in Ireland and break, American fans are still interested in “Some people would say that we are call it home. “To have a background and the band’s new material. “It’s surprising ambassadors of the country. I don’t think a bond with a culture is one of the most that we can come back after all this time we see ourselves as that! (He laughs). But important things you can have.” Jim and have this,” he says. “There is an it’s very flattering, it’s certainly a very says, “I love this country and I think it’s increased audience for us in fact, and nice thing to hear.” a great country to live in. I live between that’s very encouraging. Would Dublin and Belfast and I wouldn’t we like to do better in the United “We can call on both the change that.”

States? Yes. We’ve done very Looking forward to their conquest well, but we certainly would like classical and the traditional of the United States, The Corrs are to do better.” as ambitious and confident as ever.

Irish music, and that’s part Although large-scale commerWith 15 years in the music business cial success in the U.S. takes a fair of the secret of our success,” under their belt, they still see a long amount of luck, The Corrs have a future before them. Jim – Jim musical distinct business-savvy that has says, “We love what we are doing served them very well over the years. Jim The Corrs are happily following in the and we’ll continue doing what we’re explains, “We’ve known intuitively what footsteps of U2, who when they burst on doing as long as we love it, and as long as is going to work for us and what isn’t.” the music scene almost 25 years ago, people love listening to it. IA Aside from good instincts, it has only brought forth a new representation of helped their appeal that the sisters are as Ireland. As well as collaborating with photogenic as they are.

U2 as musical peers, The Corrs But being good-looking does not a deeply admire the band. “One of our music career make. Real talent is a require- greatest influences would have to be ment. And The Corrs are unique because U2,” says Sharon. “They sort of there is no other group that sounds like allowed us to believe in the dream, them. Whereas Jessica Simpson could because it became possible for them. change places with Christina Aguilera They were the first Irish band to make tomorrow; no other band could fill the it globally. For that reason, a lot of shoes of the Corr family. They are true Irish musicians felt better about themmusicians who take their craft seriously. selves and went and took the risk of The diversity of their musical skills and getting out there.” their ability to play various instruments Like U2, The Corrs are intensely enables them to create a unique sound. proud of being Irish, which they “We can call on both the classical and the never exploit by the cliché of shamtraditional Irish music, and that’s part of rock and leprechaun Ireland. They the secret of our success,” Jim says. truly value their country and its hisTheir success has led the press to dub tory. “I love old Ireland,” says AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 39

Wall St 50 template 6/28/04 11:56 AM Page 41

50

The 7th Annual

WallStreet

The 2004 Wall Street 50 is Proudly Sponsored by

Wall St 50 template 6/28/04 11:56 AM Page 42

50

The 7th Annual

WallStreet

The Thief of Time A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Co-Host / Title Sponsor:

Sponsors:

Mutual of America PR Newswire Coca-Cola Waterford Crystal 1-800-Flowers.com The American Ireland Fund The Merrion Hotel, Dublin Trinity Foundation Enterprise Ireland IDA Ireland Exclusive Resorts The Wall Street 50 was compiled by Irish America’s Marketing Department, under the direction of Patricia Daly, advertising director.

Profiles by Louise Carroll and Julia McAvoy Gottlieb.

42 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2003

T

ime catches up with everybody, but not Don Keough it seems. At a stage of life, 77, when most people are catching the senior specials at McDonald’s or watching the sunset from a rocking chair over the Florida coast, Don Keough is as hard-charging and successful as ever.

Warren Buffett suspects that his friend from their Omaha days half a century ago has a nuclear reactor for a heart and says he still hangs around with Keough because he is one of the few people in life who move him up. He recently appointed Keough to the board of Berkshire Hathaway because he is the most trusted pair of hands Buffett knows in the business world, a man he would trust with his life.

Buffett also insisted that Keough rejoin the board of Coca-Cola when the company hit troubled waters.

“Don Keough introduces you to his world and people respond to that; it is very unique. When you are around him, you are learning something all the time. Like all top businessmen, he is functioning at a very high level. It is like watching Ted Williams swing a baseball bat – if you watch it long enough, you will learn how to swing better yourself,” Buffett said in an exclusive interview with Irish America.

Buffett’s opinion is shared by many other giants of American business. Keough has carved out a unique niche as the elder statesman of American business, a man of absolute integrity whom the rich and powerful turn to for advice.

It is easy to see why he is considered such a powerhouse. As President and Chief Operating Officer of Coca-Cola, he and Chief Executive Roberto Goizueta oversaw the growth of the company from a $4 billion evaluation when they took over in March 1981 to over $80 billion when their reign ended. It was the most successful tenure in the history of the world’s most famous franchise.

Keough was not done, however. Soon after retirement, he took over as Chairman of the New York investment bank Allen and Company and has helped put together some of the biggest deals of the past decade.

Not bad for a farm boy from Maurice, Iowa, whose family farm was burned down when he was just two years of age and the family had to start all over again in nearby Sioux City.

Not that the Keoughs were unused to hard times. His great-grandfather had sailed from Wexford to escape the Irish famine. His grandfather was an Iowa pioneer, eking out an existence for him and his family from the unyielding plains. So nothing ever came easy to the Keoughs.

From such unpromising beginnings, Don Keough rose through the business world to the very pinnacle of the most famous company on earth. It was a Horatio Alger type rise, one that defies comparison in this

From right: Don Keough with his son, Michael.

modern era. Through it all he has maintained the kind of business discipline and foresight, sunny disposition and optimistic outlook that mark him as a true original.

And he is far from finished. This year he was in the headlines again, including several front-page articles in the Wall Street Journal and a cover story in Fortune magazine as he managed the search for the next Chief Executive of Coca-Cola.

Needless to say, he got his man in the end and the company looks poised for new growth and direction. As with everything else he gets involved in, Don Keough was a steady hand on the tiller and a cool head in a crisis. We are delighted he has agreed to be our keynote speaker for our 2004 Wall Street 50.

— Niall O’Dowd

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Thomas A. Barry Thomas Barry, a first-generation IrishAmerican, is a senior vice president with the wealth and asset management division of Lehman Brothers. He manages the investment portfolios of high net worth individuals and covers middle market equity and fixed income managers. He has worked for the firm for over

Michael Brewster

11 years. Barry has focused his work on introducing Irish technology companies and entrepreneurs to his private equity and investment banking colleagues.

A native of New York, Barry earned his bachelor in business from Trinity College Dublin. He earned his MBS from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at University College Dublin.

Barry is very active in charitable causes and serves on the board of the Irish aid organization GOAL His father, Thomas, is from Dublin and his mother, Patricia Sheehan, is from County Leitrim.

Senior Vice President and portfolio manager at Lehman Brothers Michael Brewster works in the wealth and asset management department establishing personal investment programs for high net worth individuals, trusts and endowments. He also works to serve the needs of corporations through every phase of the business cycle. The department has recently been integrated with the Neuberger

Berman Trust Company which has assets of over $60 billion.

Brewster earned a bachelor’s of science degree in business administration from Thomas Edison State College. He joined Lehman Brothers in 1993 and he was promoted to vice president and in 2001 he was promoted again to senior vice president.

A member of the Irish-American council, Brewster immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland when he was 20 years old. His father is from Fermanagh and his mother is from Longford. Dedicated to charitable causes, he works with SSP (Student Sponsored Partners), helping to mentor and finance at risk inner city kids to receive a private education from New York Catholic high schools.

With over 23 years of experience in the equity markets, John Brown is a managing director at Merrill Lynch. He is the global head of Global Equity Financing’s funding business including structured equity financing, securities lending and balance sheet management function for the Global Equities Trading department.

Previously Brown served as managing director of the Global Convertible Product Group from 1990 to 1995. He was the head of

the convertibles businesses at UBS Securities and SG Cowen Securities from 1995 to 2001 at their respective businesses. He rejoined Merrill Lynch in Equity Trading in 2001.

He has been married to his wife Pat for 20 years and they have five children: Caitlin, Erin, Tom, Caroline and Kevin. He also has deep Irish connections in Co. Wexford, where his mother was born, and to Co. Mayo on his father’s side. In 1998 he and his brother Tom purchased his mother’s home in Enniscorthy.

Being very active in various charities, Brown works for the NYPD Boxing Association on September 11 related fundraising, St. Christopher Ottile, St. Francis Prep Principle’s Cabinet.

John Brown

Peter Cahill Principal in Adams, Harkness, & Hill’s Investment Banking Group, Peter Cahill is a fourth-generation Irish-American. Cahill’s focus has been specifically on the resource optimization technologies franchise. Since joining the Boston investment banking group in 1996, Cahill has obtained 200 clients and works with $70 million in total revenue.

Christopher M . Condron Christopher “Kip” Condron, president and chief executive officer of AXA Financial, Inc., is also a member of the AXA Group Management Board. Condron joined AXA immediately following his role as president and COO of The Mellon Financial Corporation and chairman and CEO of the Dreyfus Corporation.

Condron began his career at C.S. McKee and Co. before forming his own financial planning firm, Condron Associates. When the firm was acquired by 44 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Within the eight years Cahill has been at Adams, Harkness & Hill, he has also successfully completed more than 40 transactions, including public and private equity placements, mergers, and acquisitions advisory. Founded in 1969, Adams, Harkness, & Hill’s Investment Banking Group is one of the largest independent research, brokerage, and investment banking firms serving the institutional market.

California native Cahill received a BA from the University of Colorado, and an MBA from Boston University. Prior to relocating to Boston, Cahill served as a Lieutenant in the Navy, stationed at the 32nd street naval station in San Diego.

AYCO Corporation, he became co-president. In 1989, Condron joined The Boston Company, now Mellon Private Asset Management, where he was named executive vice president. In 1995, he took over the responsibility for the Dreyfus Corporation.

Condron received his bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Scranton where he is a former trustee and heads the President’s Business Council. He is a member of the Investment Company Institute’s Board of Governors and its Executive Committee, a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, and a director and treasurer of The American Ireland Fund.

Married with three children, Condron is a third-generation IrishAmerican with roots in Donegal and Cork.

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Marion S. Cox Marion Cox is a senior vice president of MBNA America, the world’s largest independent credit card issuer. Cox joined MBNA in 1991 and is currently responsible for directing the company’s E-Business online banking and operations. She directs production processes for MBNA’s online banking websites, products and services, and she is responsible for ShopSafe; the online virtual account number service, and Visa and MasterCard’s secure authen-

Kathleen M. Cronin Kathleen Cronin is the managing director, general counsel, and corporate secretary for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a position she has held since August 2003. Cronin, a second-generation Irish-American whose mother's family originated from Killarney, graduated summa cum laude from Boston College with a BA in psychology. Cronin then went

Robert Cunningham Currently serving as a governor on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), Robert Cunningham is a managing director in the Equity Markets Division of Merrill Lynch.

He assumed his senior management responsibilities on the NYSE and American Stock Exchange floor operations in 1996. He has been a member of the NYSE since 1983 and a partner at Merrill Lynch

David J. Duffy On June 1, 2004 David Duffy relocated to West Cork in Ireland and he will be commuting to Amsterdam to take on his role as the global head of the ING Wholesale Banking Network. In 1998, he joined ING as global head of human resources. The following year he was promoted to global chief operating officer

John G. Duffy John Duffy has been with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. for more than 24 years and became CEO in September 2001. Prior to that, from July 1999, he was president and co-CEO. For nine years up to that date, he was executive vice president and in charge of the firm’s Investment Banking Department. There he was responsible for managing the firm’s substantial merger and acquisition practice in the financial services field as well as Keefe, Bruyette & Woods’ corporate finance activities in the equity and debt markets.

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tication services.

Prior to joining the E-Business Division in 2000, Cox directed the Information Security Division for the corporation worldwide. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English and French from University College Dublin, Ireland. She obtained her CISA in 1991 and is a member of the Computer Security Institute, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, and has been active with Girls, Inc., the Boys & Girls Club of Delaware, Meals-on-Wheels, and Child Inc. Her parents Gerard and Breda O’Leary are from County Cork. Cox is married with one daughter and her notable personal quote is: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” on to graduate cum laude from Northwestern School of Law. Before serving as a managing director at Chicago Mercantile Exchange which during 2003 peaked over $544.8 million in revenue, Cronin served as its corporate secretary and acting general counsel from November 2002 through August 2003. Prior to working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Cronin was a corporate attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from September 1989 through July 1995 and from April 1997 through November 2002. Cronin has also previously served as chief counsel of corporate finance for the Sara Lee Corporation from August 1995 through March 1997. since 1987. He was also on the Board of Directors of Merrill Lynch Specialists from 1995-1998. Cunningham remains very active, currently serving on the NYSE Arbitration Committee and NYSE Technology Committee. He is also on the Board of Directors of the NYSE Luncheon Club and St. Ignatius grammar school. He was raised in Woodside, Queens and attended St. Sebastian's grammar school, Msgr. McClancy High School, and is a 1981 graduate of St. John's University.

An active member of the American Ireland Fund, Cunningham resides in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife Maeve and their three sons.

and a member of the management committee. He was promoted again in 2000, being appointed as president and CEO of ING Wholesale Banking Business in the Americas.

Prior to joining ING, Duffy held a variety of positions at Goldman Sachs for 12 years.

Born and raised in Ireland, he earned BBS and MA degrees from Trinity College, Dublin. He moved to the U.S. in 2000 while he was working for ING. Married with three children,. Duffy says, "Being Irish means never having to say you are a foreigner."

Before joining KBW, Duffy was vice president at Standard & Poor’s Corporation. He received his BA in economics from the City College of New York and attended the MBA program at Bernard Baruch College. He serves on the board of trustees of the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College, Dublin, as well as Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont and The Ursuline School, New Rochelle, New York.

Duffy, a first-generation Irish-American, was instrumental in rebuilding Keefe, Bruyette & Woods after the losses they suffered on September 11, 2001. His son Chris, who also worked for the company, was lost on that day. Duffy’s mother is from Newtongore, County Leitrim and his father is from Culleens, County Sligo. He lives in Crestwood, New York, with his wife Kathleen and children Brian, Kevin, Kara and Caitlin.

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Mary C. Farrell Beginning her investment career in 1971, Mary Farrell is currently a managing director and chief investment strategist for UBS Wealth Management USA. She is an investment analyst and strategist with more than 30 years of experience. Beginning her career with Pershing & Co., she also worked for Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch before joining PaineWebber in 1982 as an investment strategist specializing in small and mid-capitalization issues.

Kevin M. Fee Kevin Fee is a managing director at Bear Wagner Specialists LLC. He joined the firm in 1991 and has been a specialist since 1995.

Currently a floor official and a member of the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) Market Share Committee, Fee is also one of several senior level specialists designated as a team captain,

Regina M. Feeney Regina Feeney is a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a sector captain of the financial trading team on the U.S. shares trading desk. Goldman Sachs is a global investment banking, securities, and investment banking firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, govern-

Thomas D. Gallagher Senior Managing Director of International Strategy and Investment Group Inc. (ISI).

Thomas Gallagher is a third-generation IrishAmerican. He runs ISI's Washington office analyzing the financial market implications of policy action and political developments. Prior to joining ISI in February 1999, Gallagher worked as managing director at Lehman Brothers where he served as a political economist for 13 years. Before being involved with Wall Street, he worked in the

Michael George Born and bred in Belfast, Michael George is the managing director of structured products for Deutsche Bank, overseeing the distribution of structured products to institutional U.S. clients. With a 2004 market cap of $45.5 billion worldwide, Deutsche Bank is a global financial service provider that serves

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Because of her expertise, Farrell is often quoted in leading business publications and on national television. She is a regular panelist on Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser and is the author of the 2000 book: Mary Farrell’s Beyond the Basics: How to Invest Your Money, Now That You Know a Thing or Two. Having received highly esteemed honors, Farrell was named the Financial Women’s Association’s Woman of the Year in 2002 and the University of Hartford’s Woman of the Year in 2001. She received her BA in economics from Manhattanville College and her MBA from New York University. A second-generation IrishAmerican, she traces her roots to Westmeath, Cork and Mayo. She is married with two children. overseeing special trading situations on nearby panels. He is a specialist in AZZ Incorporated, EDO Corporation, JC Penney and Texas Instruments.

Fee earned his BA in economics from Cortland State University in New York in 1990. A second-generation Irish-American with roots in County Mayo and County Longford, he stays connected to his roots as a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Irish American Cultural Institute and the American Ireland Fund. He resides in New Jersey with his wife and three children.

ments, and high-net-worth individuals.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in March of 2003, she worked at JP Morgan, where she was responsible for financial and media equity trading. Previous to that, Feeney worked 11 years at Merrill Lynch, where she was also responsible for financial and media equity trading.

Feeney, a fourth-generation Irish-American, received her bachelor of science degree in finance from CW Post College in 1986. She is an affiliate of the American Ireland Fund and currently resides with her husband Bernard and two children in Summit, New Jersey.

federal government for eight years.

Gallagher has been ranked on the Institutional Investor's AllStar Team for Washington research for the past 11 years, and he was rated the number one Washington analyst in 2003. He is also a regular panelist on Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street. He serves on the Community First Bankshares Board of Directors as well as being on the Editorial Advisory Board of Mental Floss magazine.

After obtaining a BS in economics and political science from the University of South Dakota, Gallagher went on to receive a masters of public policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

private and business clients as well as providing services to corporations and performing investment banking functions.

George joined Deutsche Bank in 1999 after spending 13 years working for Lehman Brothers. His most recent title at Lehman was that of executive director of mortgage-backed securities.

He earned his masters of arts degree from Cambridge University.

He immigrated to the U.S. in 1993 and became an American citizen in 2001.

A member of the American Ireland Fund, he has two children.

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University of Dublin

TRINITY COLLEGE A 16th Century University with 21st Century Knowledge

The historic Front Square at Trinity with buildings dating from the 18th Century.

T

rinity College, situated in the heart of the city of Dublin, was founded in 1592. Trinity’s full name bears witness to its heritage: “The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity near Dublin founded by the Most Serene Queen Elizabeth.”

The idea of an Irish university had been promoted for some time, and in 1592 a group of Dublin citizens obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth I incorporating Trinity College juxta Dublin. The history of the College can be conveniently divided into three epochs – a century or so during which the basis for a university of world-standing was laid, a period of colourful

expansion extending over the eighteenth century, and a century and a half of strenuous adaptation to a rapidly changing world. he importance of questioning, of continuously pushing the boundaries of knowledge, is a key function for a university. Trinity’s mission is the pursuit of excellence in research, scholarship, and teaching. As the oldest university in Ireland, and one of the oldest in Western Europe, the College is extremely conscious of its research heritage and how important research students are in fostering the intellectual drive that influences the development of our world in key areas of study.

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A selection of key research themes which are of key strategic importance

Dr. John Hegarty Provost, Trinity College Dublin “Here at Trinity you will find a beautiful old campus side by side with modern, state-of-the-art facilities. You will have a sense of the great minds that have passed through over the ages - among them Berkeley, Swift, and Beckett in the Humanities; Hamilton, Fitzgerald, and Walton in the Sciences. Their spirit of learning, of breadth, and of reaching beyond the conventional, is still our driving spirit across all of our disciplines.

In Trinity, we place great emphasis on the connection between teaching and research. In this context, all of us are explorers of knowledge. Our staff achieve this through research and scholarship, and we are fortunate to have many academic staff who are internationally renowned scholars. It is our intention that students learn to be active and independent explorers of knowledge also. In this way, students will develop the skills of questioning, problem solving and of communication. They will graduate equipped with the skills for lifelong learning. It is our firm policy that there should be no barrier to students coming through the gates of Trinity except that based on ability. It is our intention that all sectors of society be fully represented in our student body.

Trinity offers an environment for learning and development that combines the best of the old with the most exciting of the new. Whether you are a prospective student, a researcher looking for a collaborator, or a visitor to our campus, I invite you to take an interest in our work and to be a part of Trinity’s exciting phase of development.

Interior of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics.

Clockwise from top: Graduates Samuel Beckett, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde & Jonathan Swift.

THE INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION STUDIES (IIIS): The Sutherland Centre The IIIS is dedicated to the promotion of research and learning about the myriad dimensions of global and regional integration. Globalization, both an opportunity and threat for us all, is one of the main socio-economic processes that will determine the future of contemporary societies. The explosive growth of interest in this interdisciplinary project needs to be harnessed and focused by effective institutions, of which few currently exist. The IIIS, by bringing together a network of researchers from inside and outside of Trinity College, provides a range of in-depth analysis of globalization that should inform decision-making at every level. The essence of Trinity’s mission is the funding of a world-class interdisciplinary research initiative built around six core programmes: global capital flows, global business & industry, global flows of people, global governance, justice & human rights, the emergence of globalization, and the global exchange of cultures and ideas.

IRISH ART RESEARCH CENTRE Irish Art: A Neglected Heritage Over the course of the last twenty years, interest in Irish art has developed in a remarkable and unprecedented manner.

The value of paintings by Irish artists has rocketed upwards, adult students flock to lectures and courses on Irish art, and Irish art exhibitions attract huge audiences. Yet the scholarly study of Irish art is still in its infancy. Addressing the need for building a knowledge base, Trinity College has established a Centre for the Study of Irish Art which will not only promote the study of Irish art and architecture with specialised graduate and extra mural courses; but will also conduct research into all aspects of Irish art and establish digital archives devoted to Irish art and architecture, accessible to all with an interest in Irish culture.

THE OSCAR WILDE CENTRE FOR IRISH WRITING The Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing was opened in January 1998 as the teaching and research centre for both the long-standing Masters degree in Anglo-Irish Literature and the more recently established Masters in Creative Writing. The Centre was originally the home of the Wilde family and it was

The Long Room of the Old Library 1732.

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in the Westland Row house that the famous son of Sir William and Lady Wilde (‘Speranza’) was born on October 16th, 1854.

As a fitting tribute to one of Trinity College’s best known students, the Oscar Wilde Centre will eventually house a library and reading room dedicated to his memory, along with a room dedicated to another great Irish scholar and writer, Vivian Mercier. As an interface between college and community, the Oscar Wilde Centre also plays a role in bringing the achievement and ambition of young writers and scholars to the attention of a wider public at home and abroad.

TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY The Library of Trinity College, the largest research Library in Ireland, is regarded as an international treasure. In addition to the purchases and donations of almost four centuries, the Library is privileged in having the right to legal deposit of British and Irish publications.

The Library contains a bookstock of 4.25 million volumes, thirty thousand current serials, significant holdings of maps and music and an extensive collection of manuscripts, the most famous being The Book of Kells.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STUDY IN LEARNING DISABILITIES (NISLD) The year 2003 was a particularly opportune time for the public launch of the NISLD. It was the European Year of People with Disabilities and the year when Ireland hosted the Special Olympics. Trinity College believed the time was right to put in place some longer term responses to address issues facing the disabled, one significant sector being those with learning difficulties. The NISLD is unique in Ireland because for the first time academics, parents, professionals and service providers will be dedicated to promoting social inclusion for people with learning difficulties. People with learning disabilities will be given the opportunity to participate in structured curriculum programmes. Transferable models of best practice in curricular innovation will be developed and disseminated to the wider national and international community.

INSTITUTE OF NEUROSCIENCE Studying the Brain in Health and Disease

Donald Keough Chairman Allen & Company “I have been a Board Member of Trinity Foundation since its establishment in 1994. The Foundation is the development arm for Trinity College and its founding represented the growing need for fundraising in the face of increasing competition in global education.

Thanks to the strong international recognition of the national and international importance of Trinity College, Trinity Foundation has enjoyed much success in its fundraising mission. Successful links have already been established with corporate America. However, there is still a lot to do to deliver the exciting worldclass projects that Trinity College is undertaking.

Coca Cola Company has been delighted to be associated with one such initiative – the Institute for International Integration Studies. This centre of excellence focuses on the importance of understanding the trends in globalisation from the perspective of all stakeholders. The Institute’s work is global and has already been successful in leading and contributing to the debate, which affects us all in business.

I would encourage you to establish links with Trinity Foundation to learn more about initiatives and to contribute to the future development of one of Ireland’s most prestigious universities.”

In the last 20 years neuroscience has become one of the leading areas of scientific research and is at the forefront of many major discoveries. This is of immense medical and social importance – recent insights are helping us understand the most profound problems of human existence. In September 2000, Trinity College Dublin announced the establishment of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, which is now already a world leader in several aspects of this field. The Institute gathers expertise from numerous academic disciplines. This provides a unique approach in an area that cries out for the social, scientific, ethical, commercial and educational issues provoked by neuroscience to be addressed with rigour and sophistication.

The clock in the Dining Hall.

The Rubrics: A residence block completed soon after 1700, and the oldest surviving building on campus.

A Lake Landscape by George Barrett, RA. Playing Rugby at the college.

Detail: Book of Kells, 7v.

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THE BOARD OF TRINITY FOUNDATION Lunch in Honor of Donald Keough

Pictured: Back Row (l-r) Mr. John White (Coca Cola), Sir Anthony O’Reilly, Mr. David Went, Dr. Martin Naughton, Prof. John O’Hagan (Bursar), Prof. Jane Grimson (Vice-Provost), Dr. Loretta Brennan-Glucksman, Mr.Terry Neill. Front Row (l-r) Mr. Michael Gleeson (Secretary), Senator Mary Henry, Dr. Donald Keough, Dr. John Hegarty (Provost), Mr. Rupert Pennant-Rea, Ms. Grace Dempsey (Treasurer). Absent: Mr. Brian P. Burns, Mr. Padraic Fallon, Mr. Donal Geaney, Dr. Thomas Mitchell, Mr. Paddy Murphy, Mr. Brendan McDonald, Rev. Tim Scully, CSC, Dr. Peter Sutherland.

It was recently announced that Dr. Martin Naughton, board member of Trinity Foundation, donated $5 million to support nanoscience research at the College. In thanking Dr. Naughton for this very generous gift, Provost John Hegarty, stated that when the College launched its Strategic Plan last summer, Trinity made clear its determination to confirm its position as one of the world’s leading universities. The Plan identified a number of key areas where Trinity could become world leaders and not just key players in helping Ireland compete internationally in the knowledge age.

Dr. Martin Naughton, Provost John Hegarty & Professor John Pethica.

“Friends and alumni of Trinity are excited about the College’s vision for itself and for Ireland. We are committed to helping Trinity confirm its position as one of the world’s leading universities and are equally committed to ensuring the university benefits the citizens of Ireland and the world. Trinity is part of us.

If we are to prosper in the challenging times ahead, the university sector must thrive. If we are to participate in a more innovative and efficient economy and live in a fairer and more just society, we will need the University’s research, independent opinion, and most of all its graduates to help us get there. To do this, Trinity needs our support!”

Mr David Went Chairman of Trinity Foundation, (Group Chief Executive of Irish Life plc)

The Façade of Trinity College; George Soros (right) lectured at the IIIS in March 2004 with former Taoiseach, Dr. Garret FitzGerald.

If you are interested in learning more about the initiatives in Trinity College Dublin, or if you are Alumni of the College, please contact us at: Trinity Foundation Trinity College Dublin East Chapel Dublin 2, Ireland Tel. +353-1-608-2088 • Fax. +353-1-608-2664 Email. foundation@tcd.ie • http://www.tcd.ie

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WallStreet Brendan J. Keane Brendan Keane is a managing director for Credit Suisse First Boston’s Asset Finance Group. As head of mortgage related asset finance, he oversees the group’s Real Estate Asset Backed Securitization practice, focusing on the securitization and financing of residential mortgage-related assets.

Prior to joining CSFB in 2000, Keane was with Prudential Securities for five years where he was head of the

Denis P. Kelleher Emigrating from County Kerry in 1958, Denis Kelleher began his career in America as a messenger with Merrill Lynch where, through dynamic financial talent, he rose dramatically through the company ranks.

In 1980, Kelleher took the experience he gained at Merrill Lynch and founded Wall Street Access. Serving as the CEO, Kelleher runs the

John V. Kelly With over 18 years in the brokerage business, John Vincent Kelly is the director of equity trading at Sterling Financial Investment Group. Prior to joining Sterling Financial in 2000, Kelly worked at Ryan Beck/Southeast Research Group where he was senior vice president of equity trading. He manages a staff of five agency and listed traders and uses his knowledge of electronic networks and routing systems to ensure that Sterling

Donald R. Keough This year’s Wall Street 50 distinguished keynote speaker is the legendary Don Keough. In February 2004 he was elected to serve on the board of CocaCola. He retired as president, chief operating officer and a director of The Coca-Cola Company in April 1993, positions he held since early 1981.

His tenure with the company dates back to 1950.

In addition, from 1986 to 1993 he served as chairman of the Board of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the world’s largest bottling system. From 1985 to 1989, he also served as chairman of Columbia Pictures, Inc., before it was sold to Sony,

Lance F. Lonergan Lance Lonergan was promoted this year to run U.S. equity sales trading for Citigroup Global Markets. He attended Pennsylvania State University on a football scholarship and graduated with a BS in finance in 1989 and then earned an

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mortgage-related asset finance practice. He previously spent four years in the real estate structured finance department at Moody’s Investors Service, most recently as a senior vice president.

He is a member of the American Ireland Fund and the Old Head Golf Links in Kinsale, Ireland. He earned his BS in business administration from the State University of New York at Albany and his JD from the Albany Law School of Union University.

He is married with two children and is a second-generation IrishAmerican. His father’s family has roots in County Kerry and his mother’s family are the O’Briens from County Cork. Keane advises, "You can never have too many ‘Ireland Arrival’ stamps in your passport. company, which is a diversified financial services organization with expertise in money management and trading for institutions and hedge funds. Billions of dollars are processed through Wall Street Access annually and it is a member of the New York Stock Exchange. That’s a big step from his first days on this side of the Atlantic.

A graduate of St. John’s University, Kelleher serves as its Chairman of the Board and is a board member of Independence Community Bank and The New Ireland Fund. He is married with three children and was proud to be recognized with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1995.

Financial customers receive fast and efficient transaction results.

Third-generation Irish-American Kelly has worked on both the buy and sell side, with an emphasis on Institutional Nasdaq market making. He is active in national security traders association, and is the immediate past president of the security traders association of Florida.

Kelly received a BA in finance and economics from Florida State University. His father's side of the family has roots in Kerry, and his mother's side of the family has roots in Roscommon. His personal quote is: "Customer satisfaction occurs when expectations meet reality."

Inc. He currently is chairman of the board of Allen & Company Incorporated, a New York investment-banking firm. He was elected to that position in April 1993.

Aside from all his professional success, Keough also treasures his Irish heritage. The Donald R. Keough Endowed Collection in Irish Studies was established by Notre Dame University in 1992 to honor him as he became a life trustee of the school. The Collection houses works relating to the social, economic, cultural and religious history of the Irish, Irish immigration history, and Irish women’s studies.

He has led several delegations of American business people to Ireland and he is a member of the Taoiseach’s (Irish Prime Minister) Economic Advisory.

MBA from Smeal College of Business at Penn State in 1991.

The following year Lonergan joined Smith Barney as a Nasdaq institutional salestrader. He became a top producer and excelled in salestrading and later joined Citigroup.

A second-generation Irish-American – his father’s family comes from Tipperary and his mother’s from Longford – Lonergan is married with four children. His personal quote is: "There is nothing quite so complicated as simplicity."

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Thomas P. Lynch With nearly 20 years of experience as an investment professional, Thomas Lynch is a vice president with Milkie/Ferguson Investments. Lynch's responsibilities include helping his clients make smart decisions about their money so they can achieve their most important financial goals. Lynch uses a very disciplined strategy of money management that combines

Timothy J. Mahoney Currently a managing director at Merrill Lynch Investment Management, Timothy Mahoney began his career at the firm as a summer intern on the floor of the American Stock Exchange in 1979. In 1983, he joined the Unit Investment Trust department where he worked in both equity and fixed income

Robert J. McCann As Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch’s wealth management group, Robert McCann is responsible for global private clients, Merrill Lynch investment managers and global securities research and economics. He is also a member of the firm’s executive management and operation committees.

James P. McCarthy James McCarthy is a managing director and senior fixed-income portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs. He heads the strategic cash and short duration strategies at the company’s Asset Management division (GSAM). He previously worked as a specialist on the mortgage-backed securities team. He joined GSAM in 1995

Herbert H. McDade III Managing director Herbert "Bart" McDade III has served as global head of the fixed income division of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. since 2002. He joined the firm in 1983 in corporate bond trading. He went on to become global head of debt capital markets in 1998 and co-global head of 56 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

fundamental research with point and figure technical analysis. He specializes in stocks and IRA rollovers. Throughout his career Lynch has earned Top Producer designations from mutual fund companies; including Franklin Funds, Oppenheimer, and Bear Stearns Funds.

Second-generation Irish-American Lynch graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His mother has roots in County Cork, and his father has roots in Roscommon. Lynch and his wife have two children and their family is active with Project Children, which brings children from Northern Ireland to the United States each summer.

trading. He was the Chief Investment Officer from 1999 to 2001. He joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers as head of equity trading in 2001.

Mahoney earned his undergraduate degree from the College of the Holy Cross and his MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He is a chartered financial analyst.

A second-generation Irish-American, his father’s family has roots in County Cork. He lives in Westfield, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

McCann rejoined Merrill Lynch in August 2003 from AXA Financial where he served as vice chairman and director of distribution and marketing. Prior to his departure from Merrill Lynch, McCann served as the head of global securities research and economics from October 2001 until March 2003, where he led efforts to restructure and refocus the company’s corporate institutional activities globally. His career at Merrill Lynch started when he was 23 years old. He is a second-generation Irish-American and his father’s family comes from County Armagh.

after working for Nomura Securities as an MBS trader.

McCarthy earned his BA from Rutgers University, where he is a guest professor. In addition to his academic interests, he enjoys charity work. He is an active volunteer for the Special Olympics, Junior Achievement and Habitat for Humanity.

A first-generation Irish-American, his Irish roots go back to his parents, Patrick and Mary, who are from County Cork. His personal quote is the famous Irish blessing, which begins, "May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back."

the fixed income division in 2000.

McDade is a member of Lehman Brothers’ Executive Committee, the board of governors at Winged Foot Golf Club, and is chairman of the Bond Market Association. He has previously served a member of Lehman Brother’s Operating Committee.

A New York native, he earned his BA from Duke University and his MBA from the University of Michigan. A third-generation Irish-American with roots in Belfast, he is married with two children.

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Brendan McDonagh Brendan McDonagh is the senior executive vice president responsible for retail and commercial banking for HSBC Bank USA. He is responsible for all branch banking and commercial lending activities across the U.S. HSBC Bank USA had 13,500 employees and $3.66 billion in revenue for 2003. An international manager for the HSBC Group for

William J. McDonough William McDonough served as the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for ten years before assuming the post of chairman of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in June 2003. The PCAOB, based in Washington, D.C. is a private, non-profit corporation, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect investors in U.S. securities markets and to further the public interest by ensuring that public company financial statements are audited according to the highest standards of quality, independence and ethics.

Kenny C. McGee A member of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians, Kenny McGee is an associate vice president and financial advisor with the brokerage firm Hefren-Tillotson. Since joining the company in 1997, he has earned the distinction of becoming one of its youngest associate vice presidents ever.

He specializes in comprehensive financial planning in the areas of investments, insurance, retirement, estate

Liam E. McGee Liam McGee, the president of consumer banking for Bank of America, was born in Ireland. In his role he manages the banking activities across 29 states and the District of Columbia. His division of the bank serves 33 million customer households and two million neighborhood businesses with more than

Kevin McGovern After serving at Deloitte & Touche LLP for 19 years, Kevin McGovern was recently appointed partner in charge of its New England financial services practice in May of this year. Prior to accepting his new role, McGovern served as national director of Deloitte & Touche's investment management business advisory services practice, which specializes in providing operational, risk management, and regulatory compliance consulting services to clients in the 58 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

over twenty years, McDonagh has extensive commercial and retail management experience and has held senior positions in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Most recently, he served as senior executive, strategy implementation at HSBC group headquarters in the UK. He is a member of the board of directors of the New York Bankers Association and the Consumer Bankers Association. He also serves on the board of Atlantic Corridor USA, an organization aimed at fostering closer economic relations between New York State and Ireland. A native of Dublin, Ireland, McDonagh is married with two children and resides in East Aurora, New York.

While at the New York Fed, McDonough served as chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a multinational body charged with modernizing international banking standards. He spent 22 years in the private sector banking at the First Chicago Corp., retiring in 1989 as vice-chairman of the board.

Early in his career, he served for five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy and subsequently worked for the U.S. State Department for six years. He earned an MA in economics from Georgetown and a BA in economics from Holy Cross College.

McDonough is married with six children and two stepdaughters. A first-generation Irish-American, his father emigrated to America from County Roscommon and his mother emigrated from County Mayo. and tax planning.

McGee graduated cum laude from Alfred University with a BS in finance and a minor in economics. His community work involves advising Alfred University’s Student Managed Investment Fund and he helps others through organizations including the Loyal Order of Moose and the East Suburban Citizen Advocacy, where he is a board member.

A fourth-generation Irish-American, his father’s family has roots in County Antrim and his mother’s family has roots in County Cork. He is engaged to be married and has a great passion for cars and car shows. $300 billion in deposits. He also serves on the company’s risk and capital committee and management operating committee.

Having joined Bank of America in 1990, McGee earned a BA from the University of San Diego, an MBA from Pepperdine University and a JD from Loyola Law School. His father’s family is from Ballyshannon and his mother’s family is from Belleek.

He is a member of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.

He is married with four children and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. investment management industry.

Second-generation Irish-American McGovern has assisted many investment management firms in designing, implementing, and assessing risk management as well as compliance systems and performing risk and internal control assessments. He has served as an independent consultant in connection with numerous SEC administrative actions, and regularly assists clients and their attorneys on regulatory matters.

McGovern began his Deloitte career in 1985 after graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a BBA in accounting. His father’s side of the family has roots in County Cavan and the town of Glengelvin. Married with five children, he is a CPA and is licensed in Massachusetts.

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Charles E. Millard, Jr. A fourth-generation Irish-American, Charles E. F. Millard, Jr. recently became president of BP Investments, a subsidiary of Broadway Partners. Broadway is a real estate firm with approximately $850 million in assets.

Until this appointment, he was managing director at Lehman Brothers, serving as the head of wealth management services.

Previously, Millard served Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. In that cabinet role, he was responsible for the major real esate leases

Richard A. Monaghan Richard Monaghan joined Putnam Retail Management in 1998 and he currently serves as the president of Putnam Retail Management LP. Monaghan is responsible for managing the sales and marketing activities for all of Putnam's retail businesses including mutual funds, insurance products, and alternative investments, as well as Putnam's telemarketing, client-service organizations, and the mid-market 401(k) business. In addition, he is responsible for

Robert E. Mulholland With roots in County Down, Robert Mulholland is senior vice president and co-head of the Americas region for Merrill Lynch Global Private Client. He has worked for the firm since 1979 and is responsible for the firm’s advisory division, institutional advisory and private banking. He was promoted in December 2002 to his current position, having previ-

Conor E. Murphy Donegal-born Conor Murphy is a vice president and chief financial officer with MetLife Investments, a company whose revenues reached $36 billion at the end of 2003. He joined the company in October 2000 and at MetLife Investments he helps manage the general account investment portfolio of MetLife Inc. Aside from his work at MetLife, in 2001 Murphy and his brother Paul created MurphyofIreland.com, building off of their family store begun by their grandmother, in Ballybofey, County Donegal

Michael C. Nolan A second-generation Irish-American with roots in Counties Cork and Kerry, Michael Nolan is a senior managing director in Bear Stearns' Private Client Services Department. His responsibilities include acting as investment broker for high net worth individuals and for a select group of professional investment advisers (hedge funds). The team he manages produces over $4.5m in annual revenues and oversees in-house client assets 60 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

in Midtown Manhattan and the privatization of the United Nations Hotel for $100 million.

Millard has also served as a City Councilman from Manhattan's East Side and as a Managing Director with Prudential Securities and Cambridge Partners. He serves on the Boards of St. Aloysius School in Harlem, the New York League of Conservation Voters, the Gary Klinsky Children’s Centers, and the Pregnancy Care Center.

Millard earned his JD from Columbia Law School and a BA from the College of the Holy Cross. A member of the American Ireland Fund, his father’s family is from Cork and his mother’s family is from Clare. He is married with seven children. communications for all of Putnam investments.

Monaghan serves as a member of Putnam's Executive Board of Directors and Advisory Council, and is a partner with Putnam's parent company, Marsh & McLennan. Prior to joining Putnam, he worked for 13 years at Merrill Lynch, where he held the title of managing director and the head of U.S. institutional client division from 1995 to 1998.

A fourth-generation Irish-American, Monaghan is a contributor to the American Ireland Fund. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. He is married with two children and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. ously served as head of the client relationship group of the U.S. private client group. He is a member of the global private client operating committee and a member of the Merrill Lynch and Co. executive committee.

Mulholland earned his B.S. with honors in marketing and management from Lehigh University and in 2002 he attended the advanced management program at Harvard Business School. A thirdgeneration Irish-American and a Pittsburgh, PA native, he is married with two children. His motto is, "If you want to know if you’re a leader, turn around and see if they’re following." in 1939. In 2002 the Murphy brothers won the Donegal IBEC Excellence in Technology award.

Murphy began his career at Grant Thornton LLP in Dublin, Ireland. After five years he relocated and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), where he was a senior manager in the New York Financial Services Group for seven years.

Murphy attended the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

He is a CPA and a member of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs, as well as being a chartered accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He is also an active member of the American Ireland Fund and the Glucksman Ireland House.

Married with one son, his personal quote is: "We are our fathers' sons." approaching $600m.

He earned his MBA from Columbia University and in 1982 started working at Goldman Sachs. He worked for Morgan Stanley and later became a managing director at Bear Stearns in 1991.

A firm believer in "giving back", he is a board member of the Deafness Research Foundation (Washington, DC) and New Community Foundation (Newark, N.J.). He is also a member of the Finance Council of the Immaculate Conception Church in Montclair, N.J. where he has lived for 20 years. He is married to Alexandra Nolan and has three sons: Brian (17), Peter (15) and Stephen (12). He became a dual citizen in 2003, now holding an Irish passport and a U.S. one.

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James J. O’Donnell Managing Director and Head of US Equities for Citigroup since September 2003, Jim O'Donnell originally joined Citigroup in 1999 as managing director, head of European equities based in London.

In 2000, he was appointed head of equities for Europe-based Schroder Salomon Smith Barney.

Prior to working for Citigroup, O'Donnell was president and CEO

Ciaran T. O’Kelly Ciaran O'Kelly is the global head of equity trading at Bank of America Securities. He joined BofA as part of a management team hired in late 2002 to build a premier equities business.

Previously, he enjoyed an 11 year career at Smith Barney/Citigroup, where his most recent position was head of equity trading.

At BofA, O’Kelly is also responsible for institutional sales trading and risk arbitrage and is a member of the equity operating committee. In 2003, BofA was one of six companies in the world to post earnings of more than $10 billion. BofA's equities business

Christopher C. Quick

of HSBC Securities Inc. in New York. His responsibilities included all equity, debt, futures, and investment banking operations for the HSBC group in the US. O'Donnell was also CEO of HSBC James Capel and HSBC's Global Equity business. Before joining HSBC, he was president and CEO of NatWest Securities in the US. From 1986 through early 1990, O'Donnell worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. as head of sales and trading for international equities, and in 1989 he was made co-head of global equity trading based in New York. O'Donnell, a second-generation Irish-American whose family came from Galway, received a bachelor's degree in comparative religion from Princeton University. also enjoyed considerable momentum and market share gains as the firm managed more than $23 billion of equities business – the largest increase of any firm.

Born in Dublin, O'Kelly graduated with a bachelor’s of business studies from Dublin City University in 1989. He began his Wall Street career in 1990 at Lasser Marshall Inc., a New York-based inter-bank foreign exchange dealing firm.

He has appeared on CNN's financial news shows and has been quoted in several financial publications. O'Kelly stays in touch with his Irish roots through New York Irish organizations. He is a member of the American Ireland Fund and has served on the chairman's committee for the annual New York dinner gala for the last three years. He resides in Manhattan with his wife Lisa and their two sons.

Stock Exchange, and a trustee of Oak Knoll School in Summit, New Jersey. He is on the board of directors for Market Data Insite and Automated Trading Desk LLC, the Bishop’s Financial Council for the Diocese of Metuchen and the board of St. Bonaventure University. He is also the Chairman of the Campaign for the Heart at Morristown Memorial Health Hospital in New Jersey.

Heading up one of the largest specialist firms on the New York Stock Exchange is Christopher Quick, the CEO of Fleet Specialist Inc., a unit of FleetBoston Financial Corp. Fleet Specialist is a leading national financial services firm with assets exceeding $190 billion.

Quick was instrumental in the acquisition of Colin Hochstin by Quick & Reilly, which would later become Fleet Meehan Specialist. He was appointed presAppointed as president of the ident in 1986.

American Stock Exchange (Amex) in Holding executive positions in the May 2000, Peter Quick is extremely specialist business for more than 20 active in the business and financial years, Quick began his career after earncommunity. He serves on the American ing his BS in finance from Fairfield The Quick brothers with their late father, Leslie Jr. Stock Exchange Board of Governors, is University, of which he is a member of Clockwise from top left: Peter, Leslie Jr., Thomas, an active member on the Board of the Trustee Advisory Board. He is also Christopher and (front left) Leslie III. a member of the NYSE’s board of directors and a trustee of St. Vincent’s Directors of the Securities Industry Automation Corporation, the Medical Center. He is a Knight of Malta and serves on the Board of Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, and Reckson Associates Trustees of the New York Foundling Hospital. He and his wife Ann Realty Corp., Long Island’s largest commercial landlord. Prior to joining Amex, he was president and CEO of Quick & Reilly reside in Westchester County with their four daughters.

Inc., a leading discount brokerage firm.

Quick is dedicated to community organizations and he serves on the Board of Directors of St. Francis Hospital and Good Shepherd Leslie Quick is the chairman of Fleet Securities, Inc. and pres- Hospice. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in engineering from ident and CEO of U.S. Clearing. Previously, he had been president the University of Virginia, Quick attended Stanford University’s Graduate and COO of The Quick & Reilly Group Inc. In 1998, U.S. Clearing School of Petroleum Engineering. He was a lieutenant in the U.S. became part of Fleet Financial Group, now FleetBoston Financial Navy and served four years on active duty. He received the prestiCorporation, one of the nation’s largest and most successful gious Ellis Island Medal of Honor award in May 2001. financial services firms.

Continued with Thomas Quick on page 66 Quick is a current member of the Board of Governors of the Chicago

Peter Quick

Leslie C. Quick III

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Thomas C. Quick Vice Chairman of Quick & Reilly/Fleet Securities, Inc. Thomas Quick is dedicated to his career in finance and also to the many charitable causes he supports. In 1998, Quick & Reilly became part of Fleet, now FleetBoston Financial Corporation, one of the nation’s largest and most successful financial services firms and holding company of one of the nation’s largest banks. Previously, he was president and chief operating officer of the Quick & Reilly Group, Inc., the holding company for the firm’s securities businesses.

Brian A. Ruane An Executive Vice President, Brian Ruane is responsible for the securities industry division at The Bank of New York. The division has responsibility for relationship management and business development for the brokerdealer and hedge-fund industry globally.

Ruane joined The Bank of New York in 1992 and specialized in the securities industry at an

Michael J. Ryan, Jr. Michael Ryan is executive vice president and general counsel of the American Stock Exchange.

He is responsible for all aspects of the legal function at the American Stock Exchange and focuses on day-to-day operations, including business, operational, regulatory and membership.

Ryan is also part of the Office of the Chairman, working directly with Chairman and CEO Sal Sodano and President Peter Quick on the long-term strategic focus

Michael P. Ryan, CFA Managing Director and Chief Fixed Income Strategist for UBS Financial Services Michael Ryan has been with UBS and its predecessor firm Paine Webber since 1984. Ryan is a senior member of the firm's Investment Policy Committee and he heads up its Fixed Income Portfolio Strategy Group. Ryan's major focus involves relative value, sector, and yield curve strategies.

Ryan is a regularly featured guest on many shows including CNN-FN's Money Gang. He also has been quoted in the Wall Street

Anne M. Tatlock Chairman and CEO of Fiduciary Trust Company International, Anne Tatlock helms one of the oldest global investment firms in the U.S. She is also a member of Franklin Templeton’s Office of the Chairman and Board of Directors.

Tatlock is first-generation Irish-American. Both of her parents were born in Ireland; her father in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh and her mother from Ballyragget, County Kilkenny. With 40 years’ expe66 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

From 1985-1996 he was president of Quick & Reilly Inc., the leading national discount brokerage firm.

Quick received his bachelor’s degree in business from Fairfield University, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. He is a trustee for the Securities Industry Foundation for Economic Education and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. His charitable affiliations include St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Alcoholism Council of New York, the Inner City Scholarship Fund, and the National Corporate Theater Fund. Quick is a thirdgeneration Irish-American.

early stage in his banking career. He attended The Irish Accounting and Business College in Dublin and is a graduate of the UK Chartered Association of Certified Accountants. He received his MBA in international banking and finance from Hofstra University in 1995.

He is a member of The American Ireland Fund and The Irish Repertory Theatre. His father’s family comes from Crossmolina, County Mayo and his mother’s from Drumhaldry, County Longford. Ruane and his wife Anna live in New York with their children Sarah, Emma, Jack, and Ellie. of the American Stock Exchange’s three business lines. Ryan serves on the Board of Directors of the Options Clearing Corporation and the Children’s Neurobiological Solutions Foundation.

He earned his BS in accountancy from Villanova University in 1985 and his JD from the Catholic University School of Law in 1991. Ryan is a member of the bar in Maryland and a certified public accountant.

A second-generation Irish-American, his father’s family has roots in County Tipperary. He lives with his wife and two children in Ridgewood, New Jersey. His personal quote is, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time."

Journal, Dow Jones News Services, Reuters, Nikkei News and Bloomberg. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the Association for Investment Management and Research, the Fixed Analysts Society Inc., and the New York Society of Security Analysts. He is also a member of the operating committee for UBS Financial Services.

Ryan received a BA in political science and economics from the University of Rochester, and an MBA in finance from the University of Rochester’s William E. Simon School of Business. A second-generation Irish-American whose grandparents emigrated from Tipperary and Cork, he is married with two daughters. He has been a soccer coach for the past 12 seasons, and is currently coaching a 12 and under travel soccer team. rience in managing assets, she began her career at Smith Barney & Co. where she stayed for 22 years before joining Fiduciary in 1984. She also serves as director of Fortune Brands, Inc. and Merck & Company, Inc. Tatlock received her master’s degree in economics from New York University after earning her bachelor’s from Vassar College, where she serves as a trustee and chairman of the Investment Committee. She also serves as a trustee of the American Ballet Theatre Foundation, as chairman of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and as trustee of the Mayo Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Chile’s Irish Flavor Nancy Griffin travels to Chile and finds a beautiful country still celebrating its Irish founding father.

Sunrise over the Andes Mountain Range.

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hile is a long, narrow, mountainous, beautiful country on the Pacific Ocean, its tip so far south that the last water to be spied from the mainland is the Straits of Magellan and the next landfall after the islands just below them is Antarctica.

The Chilean national language is Spanish, but enclaves of different native Indian languages still persist. English is not widely spoken, being a second language mostly for urban dwellers or the emerging international business community.

So remote from Ireland and Irish culture is Chile that it seems incredulous to find that the most revered person in its history is an Irishman. And yet, coming from the airport into downtown Santiago, surrounded by the snow-capped Andes, with the bus passing a long, colorful line of “huasos” (cowboys) wearing the traditional horseman’s long poncho or “manta de castilla” headed for a Chilean rodeo, suddenly, incongruously, there it is: Avenida O’Higgins.

I remember Símon Bolívar as the liberator of Bolivia – they even named the country for him – because the nuns mentioned him when I was in grammar school. Maybe they told me about O’Higgins, too, but back then, the sound of an Irish name in Boston was so expected that perhaps it slipped by me unnoticed.

Spotting the street name made me laugh at first, then wonder. Finally, near the city center on the almost-two-mile-long Avenida O’ Higgins, we came to a statue

Photos: Embassy of Chile

C

Photos: Nancy Griffin

of Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins which identified him as the liberator of Chile.

The street also boasts a statue of José de San Martín, another military leader and republican.

Turns out, San Martín and O’Higgins, who were boyhood friends, collaborated and fought in concert with Bolívar.

Together, the trio eventually ended Spanish rule in South America in the early 19th century. And while Bolivar’s dream of a united Latin America did not succeed, he is credited with independence for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, while San Martín and O’Higgins led the battles that liberated Peru and Chile.

O’Higgins was the son of Ambrose

Bernard (later known as Ambrosio) O’Higgins, an Irish engineer born in Ballinary, County Sligo or County Meath – depending on the source – who was working for the Spanish colonial service as Intendant of Concepción at the time of Bernardo’s illegitimate birth in 1778. Later Ambrosio became Governor of Chile and Viceroy of Peru.

He took the boy from his Chilean mother Isabel Riquelme’s Creole family and arranged for Bernardo’s formal education including schooling in England, where his studies sowed the seeds of the red-headed Irish-Chilean’s republicanism.

After years of war that finally ended in liberation in 1817, Bernardo O’Higgins became dictator or “supreme director” of Chile, intending to raise cultural standards and improve education for all citizens before turning the government over to them. With the help of San Martín and Thomas Cochrane (later 10th Earl of DunDonald), he created the Chilean navy and the accumulation of troop ships.

However, he spent a lot of the state’s money to finance San Martín’s last expedition to liberate Peru, and some say he proved a better general than an administrator. Some O’Higgins appointees proved corrupt, prompting a revolt after which he was asked to resign. However, others say he was ousted after five years because he alienated the ruling elite families with his social and economic reforms. In 1823, he left the country with his mother, his sister and his son, to settle in Lima.

Despite his failure at governing, his leg-

Top: A painting of O’Higgins by José Gilde Castro. Above: (left) a craft market in Puerto Montt; (right) Fishing boats in Chiloe.

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end as liberator is assured if only by the number of attractions bearing his name. In Santiago, besides the street and the statue, a large city park is named for him. The greater region containing Santiago is known as Region Bernardo O’Higgins.

The largest of Chile’s national parks is the sprawling Parque Nacional Bernardo O’Higgins located in the 12th of Chile’s 12 administrative regions, the southernmost region known as the Magellanes which is home to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn.

But surely no one should travel to Chile just to note the oddity of an Irish name or two (Santiago also has Avenida Presidente Kennedy) in a place so heavily influenced by its Spanish conquerors, although a tour of things named for O’Higgins might prove an interesting and comprehensive trip. This unusual country has something for everyone – the rugged adventurer, the naturalist, the laid-back tourist, or the skier.

The first thing you notice about Chile is that the people are helpful, warm, considerate and as friendly as the Irish. If your Spanish is minimal; don’t be afraid to try it out, they’ll be encouraging and help you figure out what you need. But before you depart for Chile, remember to ask for a seat on the left side of the plane heading south, in case you’re flying overnight and can awaken to the sight of dawn breaking over the Andes as you fly by their peaks. It was my introduction to Chile and one I’m not likely to forget.

When the first red rays of sunrise began to stream out behind the snow-topped peaks of the wrinkled, black mountains on my first trip, most of the passengers rushed to the left side to peer out the windows.

When the sun topped the peaks and the spectacular show had subsided to merely awe-inspiring, an Englishman on the flight said, “Well, that’ll make you believe in God if you don’t!”

Arturo Merino Benitez airport near the capital, Santiago, is clean, efficient and glassily modern, affording wide-angle views of the surrounding scenery.

Santiago, an inland city of five million residents, is easy to reach by bus from the airport. The city has great public transportation including a modern underground metro and thousands of yellow taxis.

Visitors will spot predominantly Spanish-influenced architecture along Santiago’s well-laid-out grid, but building styles range from simple houses to modern glass-fronted commercial buildings, and include the French beaux-arts facade of the Biblioteca Nacional on Avenida O’Higgins. The six-million-volume National Library, dating from the early 20th century, hosts one of the biggest book collections in Latin America as well as paintings by beloved Chilean artists.

Tours of the city will show off the Biblioteca, as well as the Club Hipico horse-racing track, government palaces, the Pre-Columbian Art Museum and the city’s historical center, the Plaza de Armas. The neighborhood known as Barrio Bellavista is often called Santiago’s

“Paris Quarter” for its dense collection of restaurants, nightclubs, craft shops and art galleries. Don’t miss the colorful downtown market, Mercado Central.

The Palacio de la Moneda – formerly the mint and now the Presidential residence – is situated on one side of the vast Plaza de la Constitución, alongside some of the city’s glass skyscrapers and historic colonial churches.

In this city built on and ringed by the majestic Andes, travelers may visit the huge Parque Metropolitano, often called Cerro San Cristobal for the highest of the three peaks it contains. A funicular takes visitors to the top of the highest hill, 650 feet above the city and 3,000 feet above sea level, where a 46-foot statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception rises another 75 feet on her pedestal. If Santiago’s well-known smog is at bay, the hilltop offers the best panorama of the city sprawling below, including one from a gondola that runs between two of the highest points.

But that’s not all. The same heavily forested city park offers a zoo, a swimming pool, snack bars, a full restaurant, gift shops, a craft shop and lots of friendly, wandering city dogs. Families picnic there, while mountain bikers, hikers and runners exercise on the many trails. Halfway up San Cristobal is the Enoteca Wine Museum, complete with tastings.

The nearly 200-acre Parque O’Higgins southwest of downtown offers a small lake, tree-lined walking paths, grassy fields, gardens, swimming pools, a skating

Above: The historic district of San St. Lucia, Santiago, including a garden (left), and a castle (right) fortified against attacks.

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rink, tennis courts and several restaurants.

The park is also home to the Plaza de las Artesanias, where as many as 10 dozen artists and artisans both create and sell their art. Three museums are located within its perimeters, dedicated to Chilean insects, animals and the history of the Chilean farmer.

On another and smaller hill, Cerro Santa Lucia on Avenida O’Higgins, sprawls a historic, once-grand yellow castle, gardens and a fountain. At the foot of the hill, once called the “Huelen,” Spain’s Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago in 1541.

Visitors may hike up the wooded paths and the castle steps, and through the gardens. Early residents used the fortified site as a refuge from Mapuche Indian attacks.

Chileans love coffee and there’s plenty of good java to be had in Santiago’s coffee shops and kiosks.

Besides the open markets, shoppers can head for modern indoor shopping malls. A range of restaurants cater to every taste, and expect lots of salmon on most menus.

Or you can head out of town to see some of the other, wildly different aspects of this 3,000-mile-long country.

Puerto Montt is the salmon-farming capital of Chile, and perhaps the world.

Founded in the 19th century by German immigrants, the oceanside city still shows its old German influence in its architecture and restaurants such as the Club Allemande. Murals line the walls along the city’s main road. An oceanfront boulevard with an unfettered view where lovely, reasonably priced small hotels face the sea, proves the old resort’s heritage. On the way out of town, a long marketplace of open stalls features crafts of every kind, including hand-spun yarn and handwoven items.

Within reach, and view, of volcanoes, Puerto Montt is a mere 20-minute ferry ride from Chiloe, Chile’s largest island, known as the “Island of Legends.” The last place reached by Europeans, it’s historically an agricultural island with rich topsoil measured in feet, not inches, where Indian natives may be seen walking barefoot, leading oxen down the road.

Before the Spanish arrived, Chile’s residents were mostly Atacama, Diaguuita and smaller indigenous groups in the northern Atacama Desert regions. The Mapuche or Araucanians

inhabited the central valley region, where most still live. However, most of Chile’s residents are now mestizo, or of mixed European descent, and not just Spanish, often German and Swiss.

Chiloe Island has cities, too, and a growing tourist industry. All the island’s bays contain salmon pens and gaily painted fishing boats which serve the burgeoning salmon industry. See this island before the salmon industry achieves its goal of building the world’s longest bridge to it.

for good luck has become a tradition, and children can often be seen climbing on the statue for this purpose.

In this southernmost region, besides departing for Patagonia or Tierra del Fuego, tourists may visit parks (including Bernardo O’Higgins Park) to glimpse glaciers, many-colored mountains, vast lakes, a penguin colony and more than 25 species of mammals, 200 different indigenous plants and 105 varieties of birds – including the condor.

Remember, the seasons are reversed here, and the country’s majestic beaches (Bahia Inglesa in the north, Pichilemu in the center – Bernardo O’Higgins’ region and a surfer’s paradise – and Pucon in the south, next to the Villarrica volcano) are warm in our winter. During an American summer, heat sufferers can take to the hills for skiing in Chile’s winter. Punta Arenas boasts the southernmost of the country’s ski centers.

The climate here, the southernmost city on earth, is cooler than in the more moderate central and the always-warm northern regions of Chile. During a September visit, skiers were still enjoying spring skiing in Punta Arenas, although the snow was beginning to soften and had disappeared from all but the tops of the hills. It’s windy pretty much all the time there, but the wind blows strongest in summer.

From the northern deserts – one of the world’s driest areas – to the moisture-laden winds of Punta Arenas, Chile has a variety of geography, climate and attractions that are unique in the world. Although there’s no argument that the origin of the country’s name is an Indian word, there is dispute over which word. But whichever, both are epitomized in the southern region: “chilli” meaning where the land runs out, or “tchili” an Indian word for snow. IA

A tour of things named for O’Higgins might prove an interesting and comprehensive trip.

Further south, a two-hour small-plane ride from Puerto Montt – itself two hours south of Santiago by plane– lies Punta Arenas, the city at the end of the earth. A century ago, it was the richest city in Chile. Today it is an international port for scientists and fishermen headed for the Antarctic; the docks at various shipyards – sometimes Chilean Navy yards – may be host to Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Japanese and American vessels at the same time. A post halfway up a hill in Punta Arenas sports arrows pointing to cities all over the world and notes the distances to them. It’s a popular spot for viewing the Straits of Magellan and offers a wideangle glimpse of the various docks and ships in port.

A statue of Bernardo O’Higgins marks the base of a broad avenue whose wide center strip is a multi-level park. This city also boasts reasonably priced, comfortable hotels with great menus. One is in a former Spanish mansion whose former owners had a bloody history of Indian oppression.

Punta Arenas is known as the “Gateway to Patagonia.” In a small downtown park, a statue of Hernando Magellan (the Portuguese navigator who discovered the straits named for him) stands atop a broad pedestal. On a lower level of the pedestal reclines a carved stone statue of an Indian, called simply “Patagonia.” Rubbing his big toe

Right: Statue of Bernado O’Higgins in Punta Arenas.

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Tilting TiltingTowards TowardsIreland Ireland

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d

Photos (from left to right): A piece of furniture waiting to be copied in the Dwyer House; Carpenter Pete Penton; Quiltmaking in the town’s firestation.

Tilting, a village on the island of Fogo and about 300 miles from St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, was recently nominated as an Irish Heritage site. This is largely due to the efforts of a small but determined group of residents who are trying to halt the steady process of decay by restoring old houses and fishing stages before new technologies engulf what’s left of the island’s charm.

PPHOTOS HOTOSAND ANDSTORY STORYBY BYPPHILIP HILIPFFISK ISK..

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ilting has a population of around 300 people, and nearly all the families are direct descendants of the original Irish settlers. To this day they speak with a strange but strong Irish accent. Between 1750 and 1840, sailors who were recruited by English schooners in the Waterford area jumped ship and began their own smaller operation from small boats called “cod traps” or “skiffs.”

The village is still divided geographically according to where the first families settled so that the houses in the middle all bear the name Foley, to the east Greene, and out onto an area known as “The Rock,” the McGrath family dominate. Each family would have had a corresponding boat shed called a “stage” by the water’s edge. It is these restored buildings, painted a deep umber, that give the bay so much charm, at any time of the year.

There are no official guesthouses and no cafés or restaurants, so any visit depends on the hospitality of the islanders themselves. After contacting the Mayor, I was put in touch with Jim McGrath, who arranged my accommodation in the village with a couple, Betty and Pat McGrath, who had a spare bedroom.

When I arrived at the McGrath house – a small wooden assembly with ceilings so low I couldn’t stand up straight on the first floor – warm food was on the table, and over the next few days I was fed copious amounts of food and delicious cups of tea

by Betty.

The first morning, I woke to an impressive sunrise across the bay and rushed out to try and capture it on film. Strangers are uncommon in the village, and Ron Foley came out to ask what I was doing. We stood, in sub-zero temperatures, as I explained not only my reasons for the trip to record the restoration efforts, but also where my family name originated, how many siblings I have, and all the other details of my identity that usually go unmentioned in the city.

T

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The sunrise passed into a beautiful day with an intense white heat bouncing off the snow. I ventured into some fishing stages that looked as if they had been recently renovated. I was met there by Ed Foley. I apologized, assuming I was trespassing, but he just laughed as if he didn’t understand the concept. It became apparent that Ron had visited Ed just after meeting me and passed on my personal history.

Without me asking, he offered me a lift to some of the sites being renovated on the other side of the bay and filled me in on the history along the way. I had only been out in the daylight for an hour and already felt that my presence was more visible than the old lighthouse on the hill.

By day, I took photographs of the small band of people restoring old furniture and making quilts for the three houses completed thus far. In the evening, I received visits from other villagers. Everyone’s enthusiasm for the new venture was offloaded onto me, making me feel at times like an ambassador for the island’s future existence. Without the infrastructure to handle tourism, the heritage team face an uphill struggle to make the venture pay, but I soon realized that this is not the point.

Jim McGrath, a retired teacher who heads the group, is adamant that they did not embark on this to try and attract crowds.

Instead they aim to bring in the more discerning tourist who would welcome a unique site without the “Disneyfication” that accompanies so many other North American places of interest.

It is hoped that the restored houses — with very few changes except electricity — will eventually be used as accommodations for visitors. The thinking behind these house structures is appealing to anyone concerned about ecology and waste. They are built without foundations, and ever since the island was first settled, the structures were moved to new locations rather than destroyed, leaving the land unspoiled and

untouched. Sheds became boat cabins and old houses became hay barns.

Before the onset of industrial fishing, fishermen caught enough only to sell and for provisions through the winter. The ecological balance and respect is being continued with the heritage group. With the youth leaving the island in droves, many houses and old stages are lying unused. Until recently they were destroyed. Now, some of the houses are being “launched” again for heritage restoration. A house was successfully floated from another community, Joe Batts Arm, around the bay after its owners donated it. All furniture and repairs are made using wood that has been salvaged from other properties already demolished or beyond repair. The recycling continues in earnest.

No one involved is in any doubt that the old way of life has gone. Loss is, of course, a big part of their way of life, but the desire to preserve these things seems indicative of a change in the pervading fatalism of the islanders. There is a growing trend for people to refuse to let go of the past as easily as they used to and instead to try and utilize it as a source of hope for their future livelihoods and identity. For some involved, I think that this work is more than just a mini industry or something to do on weekends, it is also a way of coping with the loss itself. The effect on the visitor is as touching as it is admirable, and very soon the refurbished houses of Tilting will be available to rent as holiday cottages. The informal nature of its inhabitants will make this island a unique experience, a place where it is still possible to approach a local fisherman and ask him to take you out looking for whales, or bring you close to an iceberg in spring. While there, try to spot the island’s herds of caribou and take a coastal walk that will literally put you on the edge of the continent. IA

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Photos (from left to right): The carpentry store; Betty McGrath making quilts; Detail of a lounger in the Reardon House.

Photos (from left to right): Carpenter Paul Tobin from neighboring Joe Batts Arm; Pat McGrath in his father’s old fishing stage.

To Get to Tilting: To get to Fogo you have to hire a car in St. John’s or get a lift in Brian Coffin’s van. I chose the van thinking it would allow me a closer view of the landscape and also get some informal background on the islanders. The ride is eight hours with a ferry journey, and Brian, as everyone will tell you, “loves to talk.” He brought me up to date on Newfoundland’s places of interest, pointing out the site of the 1985 air disaster that killed 256 US servicemen, and a memorial to Canadian Frederick Grant Banting who discovered insulin. Banting was killed in an air crash in 1941.

On a lighter note, we passed the town where Newfoundland’s first Premier, Philip F. Little, walked across the country with “his arse out of the seat of his pants.” A man, I think, after Brian’s heart. As we continued our ride over the Trans Canada Highway, the place names Seldom Come By and Come By Chance were a portent of things to come. I spent the last few hours staring out the window, witnessing kids cutting holes in the ice to fish for smelts, and before long we arrived at Man O’ War Cove and waited for the ferry to Fogo.

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YOUNG YOUNG LONIGAN L James T. Farrell (1904-1979), born in Chicago to a struggling Irish Catholic family, became a celebrated writer by drawing on his own experiences in his well-known Studs Lonigan trilogy. As we celebrate the centenary of Farrell’s birth, PETE HAMILL, himself the son of Irish immigrants, explores the character of Studs and writes about how Farrell influenced his decision to become a writer.

I

first read Young Lonigan in 1951, when I was only a few years older than the main character. I was then a high school dropout, working as an apprentice sheet metal worker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and trying to imagine a way to live my life. Sometimes I thought about becoming a cop. Or a comic book artist.

Or some sort of writer. It depended on the day, or the weather, or the counsel of older men. Then I found this novel in a used Signet paperback, for which I paid five cents. It had a decisive impact on my raw, uncertain adolescent consciousness.

The impact was based on obvious affinities. After all, I was the oldest son of Irish immigrants, and lived in a tenement, and had gone to Catholic schools, and knew a lot of tough guys in my neighborhood.

This fellow from Chicago, James T. Farrell, told me by example that if I were to become a writer I could draw upon the life I knew in Brooklyn. I didn’t need to create colonies on Mars, or ride through an imaginary American West, or follow the lives of bullfighters in Spain. The stuff of fiction was right up the block. I knew at least four guys who could have been Studs Lonigan, and one of them was me. In a mysterious, indirect way, Farrell had given me my own world. I began to look at my neighbors and relatives, the men in bars and those who worked beside me, as parts of a long story. I bought a notebook and wrote down what they said or how they dressed and what they did. That notebook was lost many years ago. But for more than five decades, I’ve been drawing on those notes.

Reading Young Lonigan again, after living a life has been an experience full of surprises. The most powerful surprise was

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the novel’s pervasive innocence.

In memory the saga of Studs Lonigan was a dark narrative, a classic tale of decline and fall, played against a spiky urban landscape of tenements and empty lots. The tenements are there, of course, and the lots, and a social narrowness that could be considered bleak. But this first volume in James T. Farrell’s great trilogy today seems almost sunny. Nobody uses “bad” language, except the ugly language of bigotry. Nobody shoots anyone.

Nobody lives in grinding poverty. The kids work hard at becoming men, but what they’ll settle for is a double chocolate soda.

This impression of innocence is almost surely driven by the great changes in American cities since the novel was published in 1932. That year the Great Depression was ravaging the nation, and the cities were heavy with despair, breadlines, ruined hopes, destroyed certainties.

None of that is in Young Lonigan, which is set in Chicago in a year when the United States was edging closer to entering the Great War in Europe. Studs has just graduated from grammar school and as a member of the Irish-American lower middle class he has options in life that are not available to the poor. He can go on to high school, which his dull but hardworking father wants him to do. He can become a priest, which is the burning desire of his mother. He can go to work. His inability to make any choice is the heart of the novel.

If Studs Lonigan is not living in Depression-era America, he is even farther away from the American city we’ve all come to know. There is plenty of drinking in his slice of Chicago, but it is not the city where heroin and crack cocaine have

erased so many hopes. He doesn’t live in the city of AIDS. He doesn’t live in the city of a million small daily brutalities and some very large ones; the city of smashed families, of single mothers, of uncertain parentage; the city of welfare and stasis; the city where television plays incessantly, that ultimate mood-altering drug, mindless creator of passivity and the need for conflict; the city of hip-hop, where there’s a numbing rhythm but no melody, where women are reduced to bitches and hos, where violence is the core of the lyrics, and where there’s almost no presence of love. Studs Lonigan did not live in the modern American city.

Instead, he drifts through the empty streets of a city that now evokes a certain nostalgia. In some ways, it resembles the Brooklyn of my own childhood and youth.

There are hard guys around; there are demands made upon boys to be “tough”; there is a conflict between the precepts of Church or family and simple boyish lust.

Some of the Chicago language is also the language of my lost Brooklyn. We, too, called softball “indoor,” Italian-Americans were called “guineas,” and we used phrases such as “like a bat out of hell.”

But Studs is an immobilized teenager.

His mind is filled with notions about a personal image, but not of a self. He wants others to think he is tough, a natural desire for a kid who weighs one hundred ten pounds. He poses in front of the bathroom mirror, turning his face into tough-guy masks. He wins some street fights, and achieves something of a reputation, but even this small neighborhood identity doesn’t make him happy.

He “likes” a girl named Lucy Scanlan, but he cannot act on his desires. There is a

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LONIGAN James T. Farrell at work. famous scene in the novel where he and Lucy sit on a tree branch in a park and he kisses her. The scene is as sweet and tender as anything in the work of William Saroyan. But Studs cannot follow up. He cannot speak. He cannot express what he feels because he fears that if he did, he would seem soft – to his friend, to himself, to Lucy. He says nothing. And in the summer that follows the moment in the tree, he finds himself in an emotional dead zone of his own making.

This is in contrast to the way Stephen Dedalus roams Dublin in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, one of the two writers Farrell most admired (the other was Marcel Proust). In several insightful essays on Joyce, Farrell goes to the heart of the matter in Ireland, the long national history of defeat and martyrdom and the heartbreaking choice of exile. He reminds us that young Dedalus is intelligent, ambitious to the point of arrogance, consumed by the need to escape the dead zone of Irish life. He has a goal: to escape in order to fully live as an artist.

Studs Lonigan has no such goal, which in his world would have been hootingly dismissed as pretentious. He has no goal at all. That is why, for the contemporary reader, Studs is such an exasperating figure. Instead of planning a return to school, he chooses to be stupid. Instead of getting a job, he chooses to drift through the summer days, cadging money from his mother. He is self-absorbed, and self-conscious, but no true self. Nothing drives him forward. No ambition. No dream of escape from the platitudes of lower middle-class life. He has no interior narrative in which he plays the principle part. A vague, inarticulate melancholy rises from him like fog.

In the novel, Farrell offers no explanation for why Studs is Studs. He simply shows his life in impeccably recorded (or remembered) detail. Unlike Joyce’s young man, the character of Studs is not autobiographical (it was based on a fellow Farrell knew named William Cunningham). But

the world of Studs Lonigan was indeed the product of Farrell’s own biography.

He was born February 27, 1904, in southwest Chicago.

His father was a teamster, his mother a former domestic. James Thomas Farrell would be the second of their seven surviving children, but at two, he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents, both immigrants from Ireland. They were illiterate, power of its myths. He also had a certain but their children contributed enough contempt (mixed with sympathy) for the money for them to live in comfort. If there power of the Catholic Church. But he recwas true poverty in their world, it was ognized that hundreds of years of British spiritual and emotional. Their influence oppression, and too many defeats, had creon the boy was apparently quite strong. ated a general Irish attitude of passivity, And they gave him a childhood. Farrell fatalism, and acceptance of the Christian started going to White Sox games when dogma that no man or woman could be he was six, got to see some games in the truly happy until after death, when they 1913 World Series, and would be a base- would join the company of the Lord in ball fan all of his life. The character in heaven. His Irish heroes were James this novel who most resembles Farrell is Connolly and Jim Larkin, men of the left, Danny O’Neill, who wears glasses, believers in the possibility of happiness remains in school, learns how to play and justice here on Earth. But the combibaseball; Farrell would later write five nation of Irish parochialism and Irish novels about him. Farrell finished high defeatism, along with the bitterness that school (where he played baseball, football and “I knew at least four guys who could have basketball), and after the usual assortment of odd been Studs Lonigan, and one of them jobs, he started writing was me.” stories. In 1925, he enrolled in the University of Chicago and came with the Irish nationalist Civil War, began his lifework. Clearly, Farrell was made any such goal seem impossible. more Stephen Dedalus than Studs Farrell believed (correctly) that William Lonigan. The young Chicago writer want- Butler Yeats was the greatest poet of his ed to escape into freedom. Studs Lonigan time, and surely would have agreed with only wants to go swimming. his line “Too long a sacrifice makes a In this novel, and in later fictions, Farrell stone of the heart.” would push deeply into the character of Farrell also knew that Irish-Americans Irish-Americans, identifying what they were living in a different narrative, shared with the Irish in Ireland and what although it was one stained by the Irish made them different. On his own journeys past. In America, the Irish immigrants to Ireland, and in his deep reading into met, lived with, and sometimes married Irish history and literature, Farrell saw the people who were not like them. That paralyzing power of history. As a Marxist cracked the wall of Irish parochialism. The and a pragmatist, he rejected most ver- nineteenth-century ghettos were based on sions of Celtic Ireland and the enduring class, not race, and so the Irish in New AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 77

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York’s notorious Five Points lived in the same streets as African-Americans (and later in the century, Chinese immigrants).

For complicated reasons (best described in Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book How the Irish Became White) many working-class American Irish became the enemies of blacks. Farrell would deal later with the appalling violence of their enmity, but he foreshadows it in Young Lonigan.

Here, too, he depicts the casual antiSemitism of the world in which Studs lives. Late in the novel, the boys take part in a “gang shag” with a willing young woman. The only kid she rejects is a Jew named Davey Cohen, whose fury at her, and at the Irish, is hard and visceral,

Irish, there was what I once called the “Green Ceiling.” If the teenage son of a mechanic said he wanted to be a writer, an actor, a painter, the parents would say, “Who do you think you are?” If a young woman declared such an ambition, she was dismissed with scolding laughter, as if committing the sin of pride. Farrell would have known every one of them.

Not all Irish-American parents were like that, of course. And those who established the Green Ceiling usually had decent motives. They had come through the Depression and the war, and they didn’t want their children to be hurt. If their kids wanted what they could not get, they could be injured for life. Many of those parents knew that, for too long a “You might want to shake young Studs time, the deck was stacked. They had Lonigan, and tell him to get off his ass learned this lesson the hard way. and do something.”

That all changed very although contained in an interior mono- quickly after World War Two, which alas, logue. But another scene is one of the most was too late for the generation of Studs brutal in the novel. Studs and his boys are Lonigan. The agent of change was the GI walking aimlessly through the day when Bill of Rights. For the first time the chilthey spot two young Jews. One of Studs’ dren of all blue-collar Americans had the friends starts the familiar rigmarole about chance to go to university. They had “Christ killers” and they set out to beat up risked everything for their country, and the Jews. Both Jewish kids fight back. now the country was giving them someStuds takes no part, except to give one of thing back. If they had visions of another the Jews a kick in the butt, which leaves kind of life, and they had served in the the boy vulnerable to a sneak punch. One armed forces, all they had to do was work. boy escapes the Irish gang. The other is In neighborhoods like mine, and neighbeaten into a moaning heap in an alley. borhoods filled with the children of people One of Studs’ friends, Weary, says, as they like Studs, the world was turned upside walk away, “Now it will be a perfect day, down. It took a while, but it changed if we can only catch a couple of shines.” everything. The sons and daughters of facStuds, being Studs, is silent. tory workers, taxi drivers, and longshoreWhen I was young, in the 1940’s, there men could study Spinoza and Yeats and, were still kids like those portrayed by yes, James T. Farrell.

Farrell with such admirable rigor and lack For the GI Bill broke something open in of sentimentality. Out of boredom, or mal- America, the iron barriers of class that ice, they would go off to Brooklyn’s Farrell had tried to fight as a Communist, Prospect Park “to beat up Jews.” At the a Trotskyist, and finally a social democrat. time, all of us had already seen the news- As a writer of fiction, he had the great reels from Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, good sense to avoid imposing abstractions and we thought these guys (a few years on his own fictions, but to insist that the older than my friends) were sick. But I breath of life was the most important comalso had friends who were like Studs ponent of a true novel.

Lonigan. They lived in a kind of paraly- You might want to shake sis. They had no concept of the future. young Studs Lonigan, and Many of them believed that the deck was tell him to get off his ass stacked against them, that if they were and do something; but Irish or Italian, there was no point in hav- there is no denying that as ing too large an ambition. Take the cops’ a character he is a living test, they were told. Become a fireman. human being, even if we Try for a clerk’s job in an insurance com- readers know him better pany. Get real. Their parents reinforced than he knows himself. this self-imposed limitation. Among the We’ll never know what 78 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

Studs might have become if there had been a GI Bill in his time, some hope of a future where the stacked deck had been tossed forever into the air, to be scattered on the wind.

If he were alive today, Farrell surely would be appalled at much of the nonsense about literary theory now being retailed in American universities. Today, as was true in the 1930’s, the notion that theory must direct literature can only lead to bad literature. But he would have understood that every Irish-American novel could be discussed with profit in postcolonial studies.

The story of the Irish in America is still being unraveled, but as with the story of every other ethnic group, it’s invariably connected to the past. As Malachy McCourt once said, “I come from a long line of dead people.” With his consciousness of those who came before him, and his fidelity to the truth as he saw it, James T. Farrell led the way for all of us who have tried to tell parts of that larger story.

Like Studs, Farrell wasn’t from Ireland, but he was of Ireland.

His work remains alive, a century after he was born. I like to think that some young kid, who isn’t even remotely Irish, will pick up this book and discover himself, his friends, and America, too. IA The above is Pete Hamill’s introduction to Young Lonigan, the first volume of the Studs Lonigan trilogy. It is reprinted with permission from Penguin Group. The full trilogy, edited

by Hamill, is available from Library of America.

Writer Pete Hamill and the latest release of Young Lonigan.

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“I didn’t like America, I loved it.”

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>

o s t o N

THE GREAT ESCAPE Ten years after robbers emptied an armored security van of $7.4 million at gunpoint, a former IRA member has admitted in a memoir that he masterminded the heist.

Photo: David Mccormick

By Frank Shouldice Sam Millar rues the fact that he is unlikely to set foot in New York ever again. He spent 16 years in the city, saw his four children born there, set up a successful comic book business in Queens and blew it all by leading a two-man raid on the Brinks facility in upstate Rochester. The 1993 robbery bagged about $7 million – $5 million of which was never recovered – but in one of the highest profile cases of the decade, Millar was belatedly nabbed by the FBI and sentenced to five years in jail.

In keeping with the rubrics of his extraordinary life, he had served 16 months of incarceration when outgoing President Bill Clinton signed an extradition order allowing Millar to complete his sentence at Magilligan Prison, Co. Derry. It was one of Clinton’s last acts as U.S. President and it secured a commitment from the Belfast man that he would never return to the U.S. And so another remarkable chapter closed, redirecting Sam Millar onwards, destination, as ever, unknown.

“I think about New York every day,” he says without hesitation. “I miss it so much. I know I brought it on myself and it was my own fault but sometimes it feels like a bigger prison sentence not being able to go back. I regret doing what I did against the Americans because they were so good to me.

“I didn’t like America, I loved it. My kids are all American. It was the first country I tasted freedom, but there was a recklessness in me at the time. If I had got away with it and Brinks came up again, I would have done it again.”

Carrying off a $7-million heist in what was considered an impregnable fortress might be enough action for most lifetimes. However, at 49 years of age, Millar time already divides into three sections, each of which teems with moments of sacrifice, drama and joy. These thoughts occur to me as I wait to meet him for the first time in the New Lodge Road, a nationalist enclave spliced between loyalist Tiger Bay and the Shankill Road in North Belfast. Each high-rise block in the New Lodge bears a mural in memory of an IRA hunger striker who died in 1981.

This is where it all began. Or where it begins to make sense.

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computer. Writing has become Sam Millar’s elixir, and his memoir On The Brinks topped the best-seller list in Northern Ireland.

As he relates in the book, his family background is working class of mixed religion. Politics aside, he was raised by his father after his mother absconded. It was a traumatic time. “There was such a stigma about your mother leaving home that we’d just say she was sick upstairs,” he recalls wryly. “We kept that going for years. The Guinness Book of Records: Sickest Woman in the World.”

His childhood sweetheart Bernadette – “I fell in love with her the first minute we met” – lived close by in loyalist Tiger Bay. Living on either side of the sectarian divide presented its own danger, but events detonated elsewhere. By chance he was in Derry on January 30, 1972, and witnessed Bloody Sunday (see notes), a key episode in a catalogue of experiences that drove him into armed republicanism.

“You’d have to have lived in Belfast in 1969-70 to understand what it’s like to be oppressed,” he begins. “I wasn’t brought up to be a slave. There was no sectarianism in my family -– I have cousins in Tiger Bay. Some are UVF, some are not UVF, just like here where there’s IRA and not IRA. All working class. A lot of it is survivalism.

“I have no regret for it. If I hadn’t taken that route, someone else would have had to do it. I couldn’t accept being treated as a second-class citizen, and I wouldn’t want it to happen to Protestants either. Nobody deserves to be treated like that.”

The blanket protest lasted nearly eight years. On his release in 1983 it was time to get away, to America, where the second installment of Sam Millar’s remarkable

Photo: David Mccormick

I see a bespectacled figure approach in the distance. Wearing a denim jacket, he’s fairly stocky, his brown-gray hair tight on the sides and combed back on top. He raises his hand in recognition and we meet halfway, our first contact made beneath a giant mural of Bobby Sands while a British Army helicopter whirrs overhead.

Millar was on the blanket protest in Long Kesh when coded tapping on prison water pipes told him Sands was dead. And the grim messages kept coming to his cell until a deal was finally reached to bring the IRA hunger strike to an end. It was 23 years ago, but even in times of relative calm, past and present juggle for attention.

Millar’s neighborhood, for instance, previously served as a barracks for British Army personnel. His own house was used as a residence by a British Army colonel.

“Ironic, aye?” he shrugs, swinging open the front gate.

His introduction to Long Kesh began years earlier when he was 16. Millar was the first to be tried by a non-jury Diplock court, and he was sentenced to three years for membership in the IRA. The day he was released from prison he reported back for active duty. Within 11 months he was back in the Kesh on a 10-year sentence for carrying explosives. Along with other republican prisoners, he took on the prison authorities, demanding political status and rebelling against mistreatment. Millar was one of the first men on the blanket (see notes) and, characteristically, also the last.

“It may have been 20 years ago but it was only yesterday,” he feels. “Being a blanket man is an experience you never forget.”

We’re in his kitchen and Sam – named after his grandfather, an Orangeman – is making coffee. A sheaf of handwritten notes rests on the table beside a laptop

life began. To sympathizers, he was a veteran of the nationalist struggle, a man who could not be broken by the British penal system. With their help, he got a job in the underground casinos of New York, working his way up from croupier to manager.

He married Bernadette and they built a comfortable home. Living in Queens, they raised three daughters and suffered the heartbreak of losing a fourth, Roxanne, to medical complications. Deeply loved, she has not been forgotten.

“I had a reputation,” Millar realizes, putting down to “myth” the regard with which he was held in some American-Irish circles. A tough guy. Not someone to mess around with. An ex-cop friend (Tom O’Connor) worked at the Brinks Security in Rochester. One day O’Connor showed him around the facility and Millar absorbed it all. “It was an opportunity so ridiculous I couldn’t let it go,” he recalls.

“I was making nice money in the casinos, but it was there laughing at me. I took it as a challenge.”

Finally, the Belfast man teamed up with an American-Italian in 1993 and they robbed the Rochester facility at gunpoint.

Though no shots were fired, the possibility of a shootout still needles him. “It has been on my head,” he admits. “I can only say thank God it didn’t happen. Nobody got hurt and nobody got caught. It was a perfect crime.” He pauses. “But it wasn’t.”

After they split the take, Millar’s main problem was where to hide his money.

Under extreme pressure, he approached an Irish priest, Fr. Pat Moloney, who had access to an empty apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They stashed the money there, where it lay, temporarily unusable, the smell of mint notes giving Millar migraine headaches.

The operation came undone when the FBI got an anonymous tip-off. Agents tailed Millar, Fr. Moloney and O’Connor, duly arresting all three as well as Charles McCormack, the innocent owner of the apartment. The case went to court.

O’Connor and McCormack were freed without charge. Millar and Fr. Moloney got off lightly because of a technicality and were sentenced to 60 months. After Clinton’s intervention, Millar was returned to Northern Ireland. He was released from Magilligan Prison in 1997 and has been writing steadily ever since.

Third time around, a new chapter calling.

Millar is invariably asked about the $5 million still unaccounted for. (The main chunk had been stashed in a safe house Millar in Ireland.

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Photo: James Higgins

connected to Millar’s crime partner and that went missing. The owner of the safe house said it was robbed. In all, only about $2 million was recovered). “Everybody asks that,” he laughs. “I’d be out brushing the leaves away and a neighbor would say, ‘I hope you’re not burying anything there’ – Belfast wit, you know? The thing is, if I had the money I wouldn’t be here in the New Lodge. Some people say it was poetic justice that I didn’t get to keep it, that it wasn’t mine in the first place. I have to laugh at that – I mean, I’ve gone through too much to be offended.

“Certainly I have my regrets. I wrote the book so Tom [O’Connor] and Charles McCormack would be exonerated. For Tom especially, I can’t say I’m sorry enough. I know I shouldn’t have done what I did – if you think about things that were going to happen, you’d never do them. If I knew the FBI would come and stick a gun in front of my nine-year-old daughter telling her to show them where her daddy hid his money, I’d never have done it. They [Millar’s family] didn’t know anything about the bloody money!”

Having literally watched millions of

dollars pass through his hands, the curiosity is that he feels happier now. During prison in the U.S., he had time on his hands and found a way to use it by putting pen to paper. A sheaf of handwritten pages on the kitchen table sits like a reminder of the state penitentiary in New York. If writing gave him escape then, it gives him release now.

“Writing the book has given me the greatest satisfaction of my life. It’s been my savior,” he feels, adding that his next two novels are not biographical. “I think I’ve chased enough ghosts. Realistically, if I had never done the Brinks I would never have had the opportunity to become a writer. It’s a terrible thing to say but it’s true.

“I’ve had my gut-full of politics. My daughter goes to an integrated school and we don’t discuss politics in this house. I’m apolitical. I’ve had my fill of it. My wife, three kids, my writing, I’ve got everything and I’m not going to destroy that. I’m not apologizing – I’m more than proud of what I did, but I ask myself, you know, was it worth it?

“There’s nothing romantic about sitting

with a bomb under your feet, wondering if it’s going to go off. Of course you should be thinking you’re taking this into a premises and someone else is going to be sitting near it and get hurt. But you’d be thinking in a selfish way. Just thinking of yourself.”

Although frustrated at how slowly political progress is being made, he is enjoying the fringe benefits of his own reform, such as the Belfast launch of On The Brinks at a city center bookstore. The republican author’s cousins came in from loyalist Tiger Bay for the book signing to make it a family occasion on neutral ground. “I think they were just proud that one of the Millar family had got this book out. Some came and others didn’t want to come, but the place was packed. Half of the people were IRA men and the other half were UVF or UDA men and they were all sitting there having a cup of tea.

That wouldn’t have happened twenty years ago,” he smiles. “For once we were all in one place.” IA On The Brinks is published by Wynkin deWorde, www.deWorde.com

Above: Fr. Moloney (left) in front of graffiti by supporters in his Lower East Side neighborhood; Millar’s new book (right).

Notes

Bloody Sunday: On January 30, 1972, soldiers from the British Army’s 1st Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators in the Bogside, Derry, killing 13 and wounding a number of others. One wounded man later died from illness attributed to that shooting.

On The Blanket: In 1976 in protest of the ending of special category status and being required to wear prison uniforms, republican prisoners went “on the blanket” (naked except for a blanket).

Then in March 1978, fed up with being harassed by prison officers when they went to the bathroom, the prisoners began the no-wash

protest and began to daub their excreta on the walls of their cells.

The no-wash protest soon became known as the dirty protest. By then nearly 300 republican prisoners were on the blanket. When this proved ineffectual, they decided to escalate the protest, and in October 1980 they announced that seven men would begin a hunger strike to death until their demands were met. Believing a compromise was on the table, they called off the strike after 53 days, with several prisoners near death. The second hunger strike began in March 1981 with Bobby Sands refusing food. By the time that hunger strike ended in October, ten men, including Sands, were dead.

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a n i ’ n w i s o Rainb F g Roseg : Carol Photos

The Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of Finian’s Rainbow brightens New York’s theatrical scene.

A

Top: Today’s production has Kevin Kern as Woody and Kerry O’Malley as Sharon. Middle: The original Woody and Sharon, Max Von Essen and Melissa Errico. Bottom: Kerry O’Malley and Jonathon Freeman as Finian.

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musical comedy that involves an Irishman and his daughter arriving in the mythical Southern state of Missitucky, followed in hot pursuit by a leprechaun whose crock of gold the father has “borrowed,” not to mention black sharecroppers and a racist senator and his henchman. Confusing?

You bet. Yet Finian’s Rainbow was one of Broadway’s most popular musicals when it opened in 1947. And this spring, the Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan has had a hit with its staging of a concert version of the show.

The musical has not been revived much. The 1968 movie version seemed outdated – the racial politics of the story heavy-handed – so the appreciation with which the Rep’s production has been received, by audiences and critics alike, has come as something of a surprise for artistic director Charlotte Moore.

“It was a logical choice for us because of its Irishness,” said Moore, who together with Ciaran O’Reilly founded the Irish Rep some 16 years ago. “We knew it would be good because of the spectacular musical numbers, but we didn’t know it would be this successful.” The play’s original seven-week run was extended to a three-month tenure that is currently scheduled to end July 11th.

Many know and love the songs of Finian’s Rainbow, including “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”, “Old Devil Moon”, “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love” and “Look to the Rainbow.” But the story will be less familiar, not least because of its many subplots.

Finian McLonergan and his daughter, Sharon, arrive in Missitucky. Finian has stolen a crock of gold from a leprechaun and intends to bury it in the magic soil

around Fort Knox, thinking that it will grow and make him rich. (After all, didn’t the Americans who found gold in California in the 1840’s bury it in Fort Knox?) The plot of land where they bury the gold turns out to be worked by black sharecroppers, who are under threat of eviction for back taxes by the racist Senator Billboard Rawlins. Woody, the tobacco farmer, who owns the land, falls in love with Sharon. But then Og the leprechaun arrives in Missitucky to get back his stolen gold. He first falls for Sharon and then Susan, Woody’s mute sister, who expresses herself through dance.

Amid all this, the sharecroppers fight for their land, and the senator learns a lesson about fairness and equality.

Despite the Irish characters, with their brogues and ballads, and the leprechaun, the play’s roots are not at all Irish. Burton Lane, who wrote songs for Hold On to Your Hats, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and many musical movies, provided the music. And E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, who wrote the lyrics for Finian’s Rainbow, and co-wrote the book with Fred Saidy, is credited with being the real force behind the play’s anti-racist and, indeed, socialist theme. Born in 1896, Harburg grew up the son of Russian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side of New York, attending public schools and scraping up money to attend vaudeville shows and concerts. While many of his classmates were also children of Jewish immigrants (Ira Gershwin was one), there were pockets of Italians and Irish in his neighborhood too.

By the time he wrote Finian’s Rainbow, Harburg was an established Broadway and Hollywood lyricist. He provided the words for “Brother, Can You Spare a

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Dime?”, “April in Paris”, and “Over the Rainbow”, from The Wizard of Oz. He was reading James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold when he started Finian’s and decided to use an Irish theme and songs.

Harburg told a Northwood Institute audience years later that Stephens’s book was “a beautiful book with all the lovely Irish names and leprechauns. I love Irish literature – James Stephens, Sean O’Casey. I felt easy working with Irish ideas.”

The character of Senator Billboard Rawlins is an amalgam of Senator Theodore Bilbo and Congressman John Rankin, both of Mississippi. Bilbo advocated deporting blacks to Africa, railed against interracial marriage, and in 1938 even publicly praised Hitler. (In 1947, the year Finian’s Rainbow debuted, he was forced to leave the Senate after taking bribes from military contractors and died later that year.) Rankin, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, was accused of being an anti-Semite.

Harburg, whose parents had left Russia to work in sweatshops and live in crowded tenements, was especially sensitive to poverty and discrimination. He said, “Why should there be a thing like racism?

It’s so idiotic. How could we reduce all this thing to absurdity?” Combining humor and music with an anti-racist message, Finian’s Rainbow turned out to be his answer. At a crucial point in the plot, Finian’s daughter, Sharon, angry with Senator Rawlins, exclaims, “I wish you were black, so you would know what it would feel like to be in their skin.” And, since she is unwittingly standing above the buried crock of gold, Sharon gets her wish, and the Rawlins becomes black. (In the Irish Rep production, Rawlins simply puts on a dark brown mask that covers half his face.)

Senator Rawlins’ transformation has always caused problems, and even proved troublesome for Harburg. Originally he wanted to include scenes where Rawlins was turned away from restaurants or buses, and even envisioned a lynching

By E lizabeth Toomey

Photos: Carol Rosegg

R edux w

scene. However, Burton Lane and others convinced him to remove these scenes because their harshness just didn’t fit into the lightness of a musical comedy. The same issues have prevented many producers from taking on Finian’s Rainbow. It Top: Joacquin Stevens, Eric Jackson and Terri White. Middle: Malcolm Gets as Og and Kimberly Dawn Neumann as Susan.

Bottom: Artistic Director Charlotte Moore with Producing Director Ciaran O’Reilly, founders of the Irish Repertory Theatre.

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This is done very effectively by simply was groundbreaking and controversial in Moore says.

In Moore’s production, the score of cutting out many confusing details and 1947. Its debut marked the first time blacks and whites danced together on a Finian’s remains intact, while the book pages of dialogue and replacing them Broadway stage. Although its first run at has been abridged through the use of a with a narrator, played expertly by David the 46th Street Theater was a smash hit (it narrator who addresses the audience with Staller, who moves the audience quickly ran for 725 days), no Broadway produc- details of plot throughout the show. To fit up to speed as scenes change. Omitting tion of the show has been staged since. A the physical environs of the Irish Rep some of the distractions and politics of movie version starring Fred Astaire, Theatre, cast members sit around the edge the play really allows the songs to shine.

Petula Clark, and Tommy Steele was of the stage when they are not speaking, In particular, Malcolm Gets, who recentdirected by Francis Ford Coppola in 1968. and two pianos stand back to back in the ly appeared in Broadway’s Amour, perIt won two Oscar nominations but center. There are no real sets, and the forms Og’s “When I’m Not Near the Girl actors wear the same costumes over sev- I Love” with gusto. Kerry O’Malley as received mixed reviews.

When Charlotte Moore sat down to eral days of the play’s action. Yet this Sharon (played by Melissa Errico during adapt the script for the Irish Rep, she was does not take anything away from the the first part of the run) sings “How Are faced with all of these quandaries. But audience’s reception of the play.

Things in Glocca Morra?” memorably, when asked if she tried to almost bringing to mind skirt the racism angle, she Senator: I don’t know where you immigrants Judy Garland singing laughs, “We didn’t skirt the Harburg’s “Over the issue, we hit it head-on! We get all those foreign ideas!

Rainbow.” She later joins wanted to make the point Sharon: From a wee book called the United Max Von Essen’s Woody without bludgeoning peofor a touching rendition of ple. A lot has happened in States Constitution. Haven’t you ever read it? “Old Devil Moon.” this country since 1947.”

Jonathan Freeman (who Moore says she made a Senator: I haven’t got time to read it! I’m too plays Finian with a conpoint to keep in very close vincing Irish accent) and busy defendin’ it! contact with the black other members of the cast actors in the production to – From Finian’s Rainbow bring optimism and nostalmake sure they did not feel gia to “Look to the In fact, the smallness of the theater Rainbow.” And in two numbers, exploited or uncomfortable.

“I took their suggestions because their adds to the intimacy between the audi- “Necessity” and “The Begat,” which shine grandparents have been there, their parents ence and the cast, and there is a palpable and provide notes of gospel and blues, have been there, and they have been there bonhomie among the cast. Even as they Terri White is particularly outstanding. exit the stage and applaud the pianists, themselves,” she explains.

“The music is uniformly good,” says However, throughout rehearsals and the they remain engaged and in character.

Moore. “It’s very rare to have so many “In a difficult and complicated book, good songs in one musical. It’s a treat to run of the play, Moore did not have to make any changes to her adaptation, and we concentrated on the optimism,” hear them in context and in progression.” “there was not an uncomfortable Moore explains. “I thought, how can I lift Fittingly, Moore has been taking advanmoment.” Similarly, John Sloman, who it and keep it in the balloon of a musical tage of this rare treat; she has missed only plays the controversial Senator Rawlins, and love story, because there’s a great one performance since the run began. delved into his role with relish. “He was love story too? The secret of success was “It’s been such a pleasure. I love watchgame for it,” making it workable and livable.” ing this show,” she says. IA

Finian’s Rainbow on Fi lm The 1968 film adaptation of Finian’s Rainbow was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Fred Astaire, Petula Clark, and Tommy Steele. Although it won two Oscar nominations, it received mixed reviews. As the New York Times points out, however, “Finian's Rainbow is a lot sprightlier than some of the lumbering big-budget musicals of the late 1960s; and besides, nothing with Fred Astaire in it is completely without merit.”

Top: The original poster from the 1968 film production.

Right: Petula Clark as Sharon McLonergan and Fred Astaire as the title character.

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SLÁINTE RECIPES • By Edythe Preet

Chef Doherty’s Unconventional Fare An Irish-American chef will be responsible for feeding some 30,000 Democrats

I

t’s a big year for Boston. For the first time in U.S. history, the city will be hosting a presidential convention. From July 26-29 at Boston’s state-of-theart FleetCenter sports stadium, the Democratic National Convention will welcome some 5,000 delegates from 56 state and territorial delegations, a host of foreign dignitaries and honored guests, and 15,000 members of the domestic and foreign press.

One wonders why it took so long to happen. After all, Boston is no shirker when it comes to American history. From the American Revolution to the abolition movement to the New Frontier, the city is renowned as a Cradle of Democracy.

Think of the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre of the first patriots who died for the cause of what became the American Revolution, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Ride of Paul Revere, and the first telling victory in the Revolutionary War – the British Evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776. On that seminal day, General George Washington chose a password that no British military strategist would ever surmise. It was “Saint Patrick.” And it was no accident that Washington did so. The majority of his troops were Irish immigrants.

Boston was then, and is to this day, the most Irish city in the United States. Approximately 23 percent of the people who live in Massachusetts – more than twice the national figure – can claim Irish heritage. Many are descended from the 100,000 Irish immigrants who flocked to Boston during the mid-19th century Famine years when the potato crops across the length and breadth of Ireland were infected with blight and rotted Chef Doherty in front of FleetCenter’s Legends Restaurant. (Right) At the Culinary Institute with other chefs. on the vine. New York City may boast a greater number of What, you may wonder, does this have to do with the Irish residents, but head-for-head Boston wins hands-down 2004 Democratic National Convention? How about this: a in the population percentage demographics.

Boston born and bred Irish-American chef named Kevin

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Doherty will be feeding over 30,000 DNC attendees. And the menu is not going to be the same old clichéd ‘meat and potatoes’ fare – not with Doherty at the helm.

With roots that spring from County Donegal, one look is all it takes to deduce Doherty’s heritage. Stocky, with thick black hair and piercing blue eyes, he’s the epitome of Black Irish. His every stride implies purpose. He speaks with such rapier wit as would make even the most skilled shanachie smile. And when engaged in the tasks of his trade, his laserkeen concentration, deft skills, creativity, and superior artistry make every dish he prepares not only nutritious and palate pleasing, but visually stunning as well.

I recently had occasion to witness Doherty in action.

Delaware North Companies, owner and operator of Boston’s FleetCenter, and hospitality service agent for a myriad of national and state parks and other major sports stadiums across the nation, holds an annual Chefs’ Summit at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, California which all of the corporation’s executive chefs attend for a week-long intensive series of workshops, seminars, and culinary competitions. This year’s corporate directive centered on adding organic, sustainable, high-protein, low-carb menu items to every operation in the system. In addition to their white kitchen garb and the tall toques that signify their rank, all the chefs had with them the tools of their trade: a set of razor-sharp knives.

Doherty’s traveling kit was a bit more inclusive. He had brought along one of those hefty red-and-black steel mechanic tool chests that unfold accordion-like. On opening, it disclosed what seemed to be every gadget and gewgaw ever devised for cooking. When I commented on the completeness of his arsenal, he ruefully drawled in a broad Bostonian accent, “Oh, this is only half of my kit. I had to leave in Boston the three-foot rolling compartment where I stow the big stuff – you know, butane torches for caramelizing crème brulee and the like. It far exceeded the airline baggage limitation.”

Doherty, already at the peak of his craft’s executive climb, is only 35 years old. “I started early,” he says matter-of-factly. “My grandfather had a bakery, and while other guys were playing stick ball, I was proofing yeast and kneading dough.” He adds with a grin and a glint in his eye, “I make a mean soda bread.”

A graduate of Johnson & Wales University, Doherty holds a degree in occupational sciences. “Running a restaurant is one of the toughest businesses you can imagine,” he states. “So many things can go wrong. If a manufacturer or retailer is overstocked, they can have a sale, but if I order too much celery, it’s going to end up in the dumpster.”

A certified executive chef with the American Culinary Federation and a certified food safety professional with the National Environmental Health Association, Doherty has worked in the culinary industry for 25 years. During this time, he has served everyone from multitudes of Boston sports fans and dozens of internationally famous entertain-

ers to royalty and heads of state, including the king and queen of Spain and the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson. As executive chef at Boston’s FleetCenter, a Delaware North Companies-owned facility, Doherty has managed every aspect of FleetCenter foodservice since 2001, including all of the venue’s fine dining options offered through its luxury suites, inseat dining, and restaurants Banners, Legends, and The Premium Club.

“FleetCenter is a place like no other,” he preens. “One day the crowd is here to see the Bruins or Celtics play, another time Bono and U2 are performing, and then the circus comes to town.

It can get very surreal, especially when I’m dashing from the delivery dock to the kitchen and dodging a herd of elephants.”

So, what does this culinary master think about feeding the Democratic Convention and the possible next President of the United States? “This is the most prestigious event the FleetCenter has ever hosted. The delegates will be here with a very serious purpose, but they want to enjoy themselves as well.

I’ll be feeding the press too, and we all know what critics they can be,” he adds, with a touch of his trademark wit.

Turning instantly serious, he continues: “Everything about this event is on a gargantuan scale. For six weeks before the convention, FleetCenter will be shut down while the construction crews tear out seating and replace it with media centers. That doesn’t mean I get a vacation, mind you. I’ll be deep in preparation to feed more than 30,000 people for five days straight at ten different locations with seven different 35-item menus. And there’s an extra little twist: the provisions will not come directly to me – everything will be screened first by the Secret Service. During the convention, security will be tighter than an oyster shell. It’s going to be a real challenge, but the FleetCenter team will handle it flawlessly, I can assure you of that.”

When the Democratic presidential nomination is announced there’ll be fireworks, tons of confetti dumped on the crowd, thousands of balloons released into the air, and the Democratic nominees will lead their army of supporters and volunteers to a hoped-for victory in November. One thing’s certain: they’ll be marching on well-fed stomachs thanks to Chef Doherty. With a bit of Bostonian Irish luck, it might even mark the beginning of a political revolution.

Sláinte! IA See over for Chef Doherty’s recipes.

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Two of Chef Kevin Doherty’s recipes that will be served at the Democratic Convention

Grilled Wild Salmon, Lobster Champ and Grapes Ingredients: 5 pieces (6 ounces) wild salmon (no bones or skin) 1 1.25 pound live Maine lobster 1 bunch green onions (scallions) 5 large Yukon gold potatoes Olive oil, Spanish extra virgin 1/4 pound unsalted butter 1 pint light cream 1 large bunch red flame seedless grapes Kosher salt Pepper mill or coarse ground black pepper

Equipment List: Medium pot to cook lobster and potatoes separately Cutting board Chef’s knife Potato peeler Small pot to heat cream and melt butter Small bowl to toss the grapes in Large sauté pan Cookie sheet or baking pan Potato masher or dinner fork

Directions for preparation Fill medium pot 3/4 full of water and bring to boil. Add the lob-

Chocolate Gateau with Griottine and Orange Chantilly cream Ingredients: 8 ounces chocolate chips (semi-sweet) 9 ounces unsalted butter (8 ounces for the dish and 1 ounce for ramekins) 5 whole eggs 5 egg yolks 6 tablespoon granulated sugar 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour (for dusting) 1 pint (16 oz) griottine (brandied cherries) 1 pint heavy whipping cream 1 whole orange

Equipment list: Small stainless steel bowl (2) Wire wisk 6 large ramekins (about 4 inches in diameter) Rubber spatula Zester or small grater Baking pan for water bath Tooth pick for testing doneness.

Small pot for double boiler

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ster and cook until done – 10-12 minutes. Remove from water, cool in cold water, and remove meat from the shell. Discard shell.

(Chop the lobster meat and reserve for later).

Peel the potatoes and cut into 6 equal pieces, place in a pot of boiling water and cook until fork tender, about 15 minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking melt 1/4 pound of butter and 1/2 pint of light cream in a pot and bring to boil. Remove and reserve for the potatoes. Next chop the green onions (scallions) into small 1/2 inch pieces including the top green part. When the potatoes are cooked, remove from water and place in a mixing or mashing bowl, add the lobster, scallions, and milk and butter mixture, as well as salt and pepper. Mash until smooth and hold hot for the salmon later.

Remove the grapes from the bunch and place into a small bowl, add a little olive oil and salt and pepper, toss lightly, place on baking pan, roast 20 minutes. Be certain to save all liquid as well as the grapes; this is the garnish and the sauce.

Place a small amount of oil in the sauté pan, over medium heat, let pan get hot, season salmon both sides with salt and pepper, when pan is good and hot, place salmon skin side up into the pan. Cook 5 minutes each side. Remove from pan, place on baking sheet and finish in the oven at 325ºF for 8-10 minutes.

Final plate presentation: Place a good scoop of the champ (mashed potatoes with lobster and green onion mix) in the center of the plate (heaping). Place the sautéed salmon filet on top of the champ. Spoon about 10-12 grapes and the juice over and around the salmon filet. Place a small piece of butter on the top of the fish to begin to melt as you serve this dish. Sprinkle a few chopped green onions as a garnish.

Serves 5 people dinner. Total prep and cook time 40 minutes.

Preparation method: Take the 8 oz. butter (2 sticks) and cut into small pieces; place in stainless steel bowl, add the chocolate and place over double boiler; allow butter and chocolate to melt slowly, stirring occasionally. Take the remaining 1 oz. of butter and use it to grease the inside of the ramekin; add some flour to completely coat the butter (all sides and bottom).

Place the 5 whole eggs and the 5 egg yolks in the other stainless steel bowl; add the sugar and whisk until pale in color and fluffy (this will take 7-8 minutes).

Fold the egg/sugar mixture into the melted chocolate (stir them together gently) until completely mixed.

Put about 10 griottines into each ramekin; divide the mix evenly into the six ramekins and place them in the baking pan; add water to the baking pan around the ramekins being sure not to overfill.

Place the baking pan (water bath with the ramekins) in a preheated oven and cook at 350º F for 8-12 minutes depending on how runny you like the center. You can check the doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center and if it comes out wet, it is going to be runny.

Place the cream in a cold stainless steel bowl and whip with wire whisk; zest or grate the orange peel; add to the cream and continue to whip until soft peaks form.

Serving: Gateau may be served hot inside its ramekin. Serve topped with whipped cream.

Recipe serves 6 people. Total prep and cook time 20 minutes.

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Solo Tenor Following on the coattails of the great John McCormack, Ronan Tynan seems destined to be the most popular Irish tenor ever.

By Patricia Harty.

“L

et’s listen to Ronan Tynan.” The CNN commentators on President Ronald Reagan’s funeral broadcast are silent as the Irish tenor’s voice rises effortlessly in Schubert’s “Ave Maria” filling the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Tynan’s face is the picture of composure as he sings the first of two pieces with the U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra – later in the service he would sing “Amazing Grace.”

It was a fitting tribute to a popular U.S. President, and another huge stepping stone in a career that has been on the verge of super-stardom since Tynan began his musical journey just a few years ago. Along the way he has been embraced by all manner of people – from Nancy Reagan (he sang at her birthday party three years ago and she personally requested that he perform at her husband’s funer-

al) – to the widows of New York firefighters (he sang at many of their husbands’ memorials). He also sang at Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s wedding to Judith Nathan in May 2003.

Tynan, who made New York City his home in 2000, has become a Yankees favorite, singing his rousing version of “America the Beautiful” at all their home games. In June 2004, he sang the song that sets the tone of one the foremost horse races of the year, “New York, New York,” at the Belmont Classic. Equally popular in his native Ireland, Tynan sang the athletes’ song “May We Never Have to Say Goodbye” at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Ireland in June 2003. But his performance at President Reagan’s funeral, watched by an estimated 35 million people, was his biggest audience to date.

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Photo: Peter Foley

Photo: Reuters/Peter Morgan/Landov

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Photos: Tynan performing at the “Prayer for America” service at Yankee Stadium in New York on September 23, 2001 (left) and with firefighters from a Hempstead ladder company in Long Island, New York.

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t is always amazing to realize that Tynan is a double amputee. A towering 6’ 5”, he dashes around New York City with such agility that you would never know he is supported by prostheses. He also keeps a horse farm in Ireland and is a skilled rider. In fact, his disability is not worth mentioning unless there’s some correlation between his life’s story – eloquently told in his best-selling biography Halfway Home – and his ability to connect to people who have suffered tragedy.

Anne Downing is a case in point. Tynan sang at her firefighter husband’s funeral, and again at the funeral of her young son, Michael, whom she lost to cancer. Hearing Tynan sing “In the Arms of an Angel,” at Michael’s mass, “was the first time I felt hope,” Anne told Irish America.

Recently featured in a Showtime presentation on Northern Ireland teenagers who lost parents to the “troubles,” his obvious camaraderie with the group comes through on the screen. Tynan’s own ability to “keep on keeping on” comes from the loving environment in which he was raised.

His parents supported him with love and never allowed him to let his disability stand in his way. He went to an all-boys boarding school where his tenacity won him respect. One of the more poignant scenes in his biography relates how he was picked to play in a game of hurling by a lad who knew Tynan might not be the best player but

that “he’d play his heart out.”

By playing his heart out Tynan won several gold medals in the Paralympic Games, went to medical school and became a doctor specializing in disabilities. It wasn’t until he was 30 that, encouraged by his father, he began to study voice.

He won the John McCormack Cup for Tenor Voice less than one year after beginning classes.

The following year he was awarded the prestigious International Operatic Singing competition in Maumarde, France. His debut album My Life Belongs to You turned platinum just a couple of weeks after its release. In 1998, Tynan

will be on July 17.

I talk to Tynan on Monday, June 14th and find him in the middle of preparations for President Reagan’s funeral.

“I’m getting sorted out here. Going through orchestral pieces to get it all arranged,” he explains, but he makes time to talk. And so with interruptions from various people, including Major Rogers of the Marine Chamber Orchestra, we finally have our chat.

Patricia Harty: What a huge honor, Ronan.

Ronan Tynan: It’s an amazing honor.

My heart goes out to the Reagan family and to Mrs. Reagan, because I really do understand the hardship and the sadness that she has gone through with that ravaging disease Alzheimer’s. I feel personally that now President Reagan has gone on to a better place.

How did this performance come about?

Jerry Perrenchio of Univision was putting together a surprise birthday party for Nancy Reagan three years ago and he thought I would do a great job.

So I said fine and when I met her [Nancy Reagan] she was absolutely adorable to me. We got on very well. I told her that my own mom has Alzheimer’s and she said, “so you understand,” and I said, “I do indeed.” And the next I hear from her is that she wanted me to sing at the funeral.

It seems that is the way your life is going — from one success to another.

Do you get scared?

Oh God. I get scared, I really get scared.

My biggest philosophy in life is to give generously and to always be willing to give back, and, you know, it has always worked for me.

92 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

joined the Irish Tenors, Anthony Kearns and Finbar Wright, and the trio soon became legendary. They played to soldout audiences around the world, especially in America, where they were greeted enthusiastically at every turn. Tynan, in particular, became a favorite on PBS specials, his relaxed and affable manner making him a huge hit with the fans.

The six albums he did with the Irish Tenors, including Heritage, Ellis Island, Christmas and Live from Belfast, sold millions, but Tynan, already carving a path for himself, decided to go it alone this year. His last concert with the Tenors

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To what do you attribute your success?

Somebody up there is looking after me.

That’s all I can say. I’ve done so well in this country and people have been so great to me. My biggest philosophy in life is to give generously and to always be willing to give back, and, you know, it has always worked for me.

Would you say that some of the giving you did after September 11th is coming back to you?

That was a very tragic time.

It was very difficult, and everybody wanted to try and take the burden of pain away from people.

Why do you think people relate to you?

Honest to God, I have no idea.

Maybe it’s because if they know a little bit about your life story, then they can relate.

Maybe they’ve seen a little bit of my life story and I’m approachable. I suppose I’m somewhat relatively normal. Jeez, I don’t want people to believe that [laughs].

What gave you the confidence to overcome your disability?

There is no doubt in my mind that my parents made the most amazing contribution to me. You have to credit them for everything. My parents gave me everything.

Tell me about leaving the Tenors.

I’d been enjoying it [being with the Tenors] tremendously. I just thought that I would like to take a break and do different things. And also I felt that with so many other things going on in my life, I didn’t want to hold up the lads.

Do you think that the fact that you live in America and they live in Ireland is a factor?

There’s no question but it’s a factor. I’ll tell you one thing, there is nothing like this country. There’s nothing like the people.

They rejoice in people’s achievements.

They encourage people to go way beyond what they could ever dream of doing. And they are fantastically appreciative of anything you do for them. The country is a gift. This is the United States, and it’s united because of its people.

From the way you sing “New York, New York,” it’s obvious that the City has a special spot in your heart.

There’s no place like it. I love it. If there’s a place you want to live in the States just to get a real sample of eclectic

tastes, you have it all at your doorstep in New York.

Do you have some of that Irish fear of success?

You have to be aware that by taking on big things, you’re leaving yourself wide open for the whole world to see. Not just that you’re willing to put your whole heart

kids who have lost their parents – some of whom have been killed in front of them – you realize how much more devastating it is. And how much of an effect it has on a young impressionable little girl or boy.

And you think, my God, the senseless action of killing people. I walked Belfast and walked into the Shankill and the mile as they call it. And looked at all the memorials. And these kids have come up with their own way of expressing themselves [through art]. It was amazing the way they articulated their feelings. It would absolutely stun you into silence. It really opened my eyes, and showed me how much you can learn from children.

They are fantastic and, of course, unbelievably mature, but they still have a wonderful sense of humor and amazing camaraderie. And you know it was the simplest things they were looking for, like a signed poster of Westlife or an autograph of Bono.

When did you first start singing professionally?

It was in 1993 and that was in my fifth year of medical school. My father and myself kind of planned my singing career – we did a launch [laughs]. We said, “The world needs to hear this.” I wish they could have heard both of us. My dad died in 1998. He missed all of it, but he didn’t really because I know well that’s he’s tuned in.

Do you miss being a doctor?

Good question. I was out with my friend Keith Synott, last night. Keith is an orthopedic [surgeon]. He’s doing a fellowship at the Hospital of Special Surgery and he’s got a consultancy post in the Mather hospital in Dublin. Keith and I were best friends through college. But, do I miss it?

I would lie if I said I didn’t. I do. I think the daft thing is I more than likely would have had a consultancy in rehabilitation myself at this stage but, you know, that wasn’t meant to be my life.

Are you working on an album?

I’m working on two new albums actually. Hopefully they’ll come out next year.

Will they be different from before?

Oh definitely. I’ll never go away from my Irish roots. I’m always very proud to be Irish. But I’ll tell you one thing, I would be equally as proud to be an American. It’s a great country; I love it. It’s been a country that has given me everything. IA

I’ll never go away from my Irish roots. I’m always very proud to be Irish. But I’ll tell you one thing, I would be equally as proud to be an American. and soul right into it but that you’re showing them that you’re capable of doing it, and you’re going to do it. But the fear you have inside is that when you put yourself up for it, you know yourself you have to deliver it. That gets the adrenaline running as well as the excitement of performance; it also gives you that little bit of fear.

What’s your way to relax before a performance?

I pray. Because at the end of the day I think that’s the only thing that will get me through it. I’ve always said that when push comes to shove, I’m not too shy about asking God for help.

You were recently featured in a TV documentary on Northern Ireland. Can you talk a little bit about the kids you met there?

Every so often there are parts of your life when you realize that you are so lucky.

That you think you’ve had a little bit of trial and challenge, but when you meet

AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 93

IA94_95 6/21/04 4:53 PM Page 1

BOOK REVIEWS • By Tom Deignan

A Sampling of the Latest Irish Books RECOMMENDED

Before Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi in 1955 for being black, and before Leo Frank was lynched in Atlanta in 1913 for being Jewish, two Irish Catholic immigrants in Boston, in 1805, were victims of an angry city.

Dominic Daley and James Halligan were traveling from Boston to New York City.

Around this time, a man named Marcus Lyon was robbed and murdered along the path traveled by Daley and Halligan.

The two Irishmen denied any wrongdoing, but were swiftly arrested anyway and accused of murder. They spent five months in jail and were not allowed to see a lawyer until days before their murder trial began.

This miscarriage of justice is the subject of a riveting new novel called The Garden of Martyrs by Michael C. White.

White teaches at Fairfield University and is the author of three novels, including A Brother’s Blood, another historical novel revolving around murder which was named a New York Times “notable book” when it was released in 1997.

In The Garden of Martyrs, the trial of Daley and Halligan is depicted as a grave miscarriage of justice (it lasted only one day) which grew out of grave hatred of Irish immigrants in this Yankee stronghold.

The men were sentenced to be hanged. The presiding judge wanted “their bodies dissected and anatomized.”

White (who lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two chil-

NON FICTION

A new Oxford Companion to Irish History is out, this time in a revised, handy

paperback edition.

Originally written by a team of 87 specialists with 1,800 entries on Irish history from ancient times to the 21st century, this book would have seemed difficult to improve upon.

But as editor S.J. Connolly – an author and professor of Irish History at Queens University, Belfast – explains in a preface “the appearance of a second edition provides the opportunity for a variety of additions and improvements.”

Mainly, the new edition offers expanded articles and entries on the visual arts, as well as what Connolly calls “Irish prehistory.”

This new edition also allows those who missed the first release of this valuable resource to pick it up this time around.

As with the first edition, well-known people and 94 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

dren) sets the stage brilliantly, capturing the anti-Irish prejudices of the era, but not in the heavy-handed way of some historical novels.

Equally important is the anti-Catholic nature of New England at this time. White uses the character of a tortured priest to explore this dimension of the story.

Father Chervus was one of only two Roman Catholic priests in all of New England at the time, according to White. He had already faced persecution, having escaped the Terror of the French Revolution. Chervus sets out to comfort the wrongly accused and ultimately doomed Irishmen.

Through this device we get to know more about the immigrants at the center of this American tragedy.

Daley was a family man while Halligan was a more colorful, eccentric fellow. Despite their differences, however, they face their deaths bravely.

All three of White’s characters actually lived this nightmare.

In fact, it was not until 1984 that the men were exonerated, by then Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. March 18 of that year was even proclaimed Dominic Daley and James Halligan Memorial Day. Michael White deserves credit for revisiting an episode in Irish American history which is disturbing and revealing, and one which might even seem relevant today, as issues of religion and immigration continue to dominate America’s political culture. ($24.95 / 359 pages / St. Martin’s)

events are re-examined in light of challenging new research.

Meanwhile, women’s history, public health and other topics often ignored in past histories are explored. Useful maps and a subject index are also included.

All in all The Oxford Companion to Irish History is a good (and reasonably priced) addition to any Irish book lover’s reference shelf. ($24.95 / 650 pages / Oxford) Not many people can say they have been praised by both the staid Dan Rather and the raunchy Howard Stern.

But Westchester radio titan William O’Shaugnessy has made such diverse friends over his 40-plus year in the radio business.

Most recently, as president of Whitney Radio and editorial director of WVOX and WRTN in Westchester, New York, O’Shaughnessy has managed to rub elbows with the elite of East Coast politics, publishing and society, all the while appearing on the New York Post’s famous “Page 6.”

All of O’Shaughnessy’s influential friends and sharp opinions are on display in his fat new book More Riffs, Rants and Raves, a collection of editorials, interviews, speeches, remembrances and more.

To leaf through More Riffs, Rants and Raves is to stroll through New York and America through the last 40 years.

There are references to Toots Shor and the 21 Club and great old Irish machine politicians of the past.

There are profiles of and elegies to memorable figures from

IA94_95 6/21/04 4:53 PM Page 2

New York’s past, from Hugh Doyle to Francis Cardinal Spellman. There are also great interviews with Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Mary Higgins Clark and many more.

O’Shaughnessy has come a long way from Elmira, New York, where he was born, and many of his uncles did hard railroad work in central New York state.

O’Shaughnessy is a member of a dying breed, an articulate liberal Republican, and an Irish American one at that. ($35/ 781 pages / Fordham University Press Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s is an era that many novelists have looked to. Damian McNicholl’s A Son Called Gabriel is the latest such book. It is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale, another element which seems all too familiar.

Nevertheless, McNicholl’s book is ultimately more heartfelt and funny than it is redundant.

McNicholl’s title refers to Gabriel Harkin, the oldest of four children in a workingclass Catholic family. Of course, it is a volatile time in which Gabriel is growing up.

He and his family know there are strict rules which must be followed when it comes to religion and politics.

Gabriel ultimately grasps he’s different from the other kids around him (in many way, we learn). Yet he opts for silence and repression to cope.

Little by little, however, Gabriel (along with the readers) learn that Gabriel may not be so different from those around him after all. Which does not mean it will be easy for McNicholl’s characters to change their environment or face the future.

McNicholl was born in Northern Ireland and attended college in Wales. He came to the U.S. in 1992 where he worked in New York City as an attorney. He now lives in Pennsylvania, and is working on his second novel.

McNicholl’s publishers are (of course) comparing A Son Called Gabriel to Angela’s Ashes, which is not necessary.

This novel, though a bit melodramatic at times, stands well enough on its own. ($22.95/ 352 pages/ CDS Books) Harry Fielding is back in the latest of Philip Davidson’s novels revolving around the crooked spy desperate to straighten himself out.

The Long Suit is set in motion on a Long Island golf course, where there are three golf balls and a bullet-ridden corpse.

FICTION

Davidson (born in 1957 in Dublin) puts the call out once again for Harry Fielding, as well as a new partner. Both are quickly playing the games preferred by the British secret service.

As he did in the first two Fielding novels (The Crooked Man and McKenzie’s Friend) Davidson sets a tone of dry wit amidst the twists, turns and surprises. This time around, it is Fielding’s tempestuous partner who may be causing him more trouble than any of his enemies, leaving Fielding to wonder if he has been set up, and if his life is actually in jeopardy. The Long Suit is that rare thing: a smart page-turner. ($14 / 278 pages / Penguin) One does not approach a book written by a fellow named Joseph Califano expecting to hear much about the Irish-American experience.

But as it turns out, Califano – who would go on to become a major power broker and policy expert in Washington – has a grandfather who was the child of Famine immigrants, a fact he recalls with great detail in his new memoir Inside: A Public and Private Life.

Califano’s book charts his path from the gritty streets of 1940s Brooklyn to a the power corridors of Washington.

“Grandfather Thomas Peter Gill was born in Brooklyn in 1845,” Califano writes, “one of seven children for Irish immigrants John Gill, a dry-goods merchant from Ballinalee in Longford, and Mary Fahey, who had emigrated from Eyrecourt in Galway.”

Califano’s portrait of growing up in melting pot Brooklyn – he had Italian and English, as well as Irish roots – is sharp and poignant.

His mother’s stories about the vaunted “Gill women” are recalled with particular emotion.

Califano’s parents instilled in young Joe a strong work ethic and devotion to the Church which took him from a Jesuit education to Harvard Law School.

He eventually served in the Pentagon, and under Lyndon Johnson, later serving in the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter.

But the best passages in Inside are devoted to his exploration of what it means to be Catholic in America (Califano was sexually abused by a priest while on a retreat in 1948), as well as the current work he does for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which he founded. ( $30 / 539 pages / Public Affairs)

MEMOIR

The title of Cadogan Guides latest book Flying Visits to Ireland is not very helpful. (How else would most Americans get to Ireland?) But this guide is most handy once your plane has landed, particularly if you’re visiting Ireland for the first time, or if you are interested in seeing some places in the country other than Dublin.

There are all sorts of tips and maps about how to get around the country, where to stay, what to see, why you should want to see it and what it costs. ($17.95 / 251 pages / Globe Pequot Press). IA

TRAVEL

AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 95

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AMERICAN IN IRELAND • By Will Cook

The Postman Only Brings Once

Illustration by Caty Bartholmew

I

n this modern age there isn’t a lot of practical difference between traveling to a foreign country and moving to live in one.

Both acts entail a degree of psychic upheaval, which is, after all, the point. They both require a certain level of packing, and in either case you have to make some arrangements for the mail.

The main difference as I see it is that if you want to write about your experiences, the travel writer has it easy. It’s hard to hit a moving target, and as long as you stay away from criticisms of religion you can pretty much be as honest as you like without fear that someone’s going to put a price on your head. Chances are you’ll be back home before any targets of your wit read what you’ve written anyway. You’ll never see them again – who cares?

It isn’t the same if you want to write about the place you’re actually going to try to live in. No matter how you transpose events or disguise your subjects, people are always going to recognize themselves, and no matter how delicate you try to be, they’re never going to be happy with their portrait.

Take our postman, for example.

People in uniforms make me nervous to begin with, and I have a particular respect for anyone who’s got the power to lose my paycheck or tell the neighbors just how many beer cans I have in my shed. You don’t mess around with people like that.

But our postman is peculiar. The very first day he came here, he pulled into the drive, leapt from his little green van and waved an envelope under my nose.

“If you’d given out your correct address, you’d have had this yesterday,” he cried. Okay, I thought, it’s only an advertisement, but you’re right. I’ll let everyone know our correct address.”

“That’s odd,” Joanne said, looking at the offending envelope, when he’d left.

“That’s the address that the post office told us to use.”

The very next morning he returned with a similar offense. “I told ye, I can’t get my post to ye on time unless . . .”

And it was at that moment that I knew we were doomed. There was no point in defending myself. The seemingly obvious fact that I couldn’t possibly have corrected the letters that were already en route was of no account to him. It was his post, and I was messing with the otherwise flawless performance of his official duties.

In all other respects I’d have to say that the Irish postal service is fairly loose. The cost, for example, of sending an envelope is determined by its size, not weight. You can actually make them carry one that weighs forty pounds for the same price as one that has nothing in it. The Special Delivery service is also, well, not very special. If it makes you feel better, you can send something ‘overnight delivery’ but it will still get where it’s going in the same three days it would take by ordinary mail. The clerk at the post office will actually tell you that. Do they care? Not really.

But I like the way the rural delivery system works, despite its quirks. Unlike the strict system in the States where the federal government actually owns the

mailbox that you bought at Wal-Mart, our official Irish mailbox is a bucket in the shed behind the house.

It’s a personal arrangement that we made with our mailman, and if we’re not home, he simply drops the mail inside, pops the lid back on and puts a rock on top. No rock, no mail.

It’s easy, and though at first it seemed a lax and possibly prosecutable offense to us, it’s worked so far.

Of course, the point is that you’re supposed to be home. The poor guy actually expects, indeed seems eager, to get out of his van in the pouring rain, come to the door and have a little chat every morning. It’s his way of having fun, I suppose, and it serves the greater purpose of tying the community together. For those who live on isolated farms, and especially for the elderly, it’s a safety net to have someone check on you every day.

In case of illness or, the Lord forbid, of death, you’ll get attention right away.

And even on the least worrisome of mornings you can at least catch up on what that new American couple is up to.

Which is why we ask you, please, get our address right, will you? The postman’s really touchy about it. He’s probably the only person in the whole postal service, indeed in the whole of Ireland who gives a damn about anything, but then his last name’s Quirk, which might explain a lot. In any case he’s got our reputation in his hands, and I’ll never be able to write about him. And whatever you do, don’t mention anything about this on a postcard. We’d have to move.

Will Cook is from midcoast Maine. He and his wife, Joanne are currently renovating a police barracks in Tremane, Co. Roscommon, where they live with TC the Cat, Peg the Donkey, Lilly the Filly and 75 sheep, all named Ewe. AUG/SEPT 2004 IRISH AMERICA 97

IA98 6/25/04 2:15 PM Page 98

CrosFocal CROSSWORD • By Darina Molloy ACROSS 2. It’s a long way to there (9) 6. Another name for Ireland (4) 7. Immigrant island (5) 8.This Louisiana-born Tim is a country music star (6) 11.Where there’s one of these, there’s a way (4) 13. Alan Parker’s 1990 film of Roddy Doyle novel The ________(11) 15. Actor Milo (5) 16. This comes in handy in a rowboat (3) 19. ____ Eireann: Irish parliament (4) 20. Gregory Peck’s first name at birth (6) 23. Average length (in weeks) of pregnancy (5) 24. SDLP founder, recently retired (4, 4) 27. Birr is in this county (6) 31. (& 14 down) Michael Flatley’s ex-fiancée (4) 32. New Ross’s famine ship The ______(8) 33. Wood used to make Irish hurley sticks (3) 34. Try something ____, you might like it (4) 36. See 40 across (7) 39. Chicago-based medical drama (1, 1) 40. (& 36 across) New York Knicks head coach (5) 41. The ____: Thomas Kelly book currently in development by ABC (7) 42. (& 35 down) San Francisco mayor (5) 43. This tasty herb is a must for Italian dishes (5) 44. An Irish mommy (5)

DOWN 3. A ______ Girl: newest novel from Thomas Fleming (10) 4. To start over or afresh (4) 5. Denis Leary’s new firefighter TV series (6, 2) 6. Female sheep (3) 8. (& 9 down) New U.S. envoy to Ireland (8) 9. See 8 down (5) 10. Ancient burial ground in Co Meath (9) 12. Irish truck (5) 14. See 31 across (6) 17. Cork’s river (3) 18. This makes cars run in Ireland (6) 21. What fáilte means (7) 22. _____ Children: non-profit organization for children of 9/11 victims (8)

WIN A SUBSCRIPTION TO IRISH AMERICA MAGAZINE!

Please send your completed crossword puzzle to Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10001, to arrive no later than August 12, 2004. A winner will be drawn from among all correct entries received. In the event that there are no completely correct solutions, prizes will be awarded to the completed puzzle which comes closest in the opinion of our staff. Winner’s name will be published along with solution in our Oct/Nov 2004 issue. Winner of the June/July Crossword: Anne M. Miscoski, Munford, TN. Readers may send in Xerox copies of Cros Focal.

98 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

25. ’Tis’ _______: Maureen O’Hara autobiography (7) 26. I’m a _____ Too: the Jessica Lynch story (7) 28. Galway islands (4) 29. Irish for goodbye (4) 30. This Pat co-anchors Access Hollywood (6) 35. See 42 across (6) 37. Best-selling Irish author Marian ____ (5) 38. Joseph O’Connor’s book _____ of the Sea (4) JUNE/JULY SOLUTION

IA99 6/21/04 4:55 PM Page 99

IRISH ROOTS • By Julia McAvoy Gottlieb

Joyce, Joce, Joass, Jorse & Joyes A lthough the surname Joyce may automatically be associated with author James Joyce, the name has an ancient past, with both Irish and Norman antecedents.

Derived from the Brehon personal name Iodoc, which is a diminutive of iudh meaning lord, the name was adopted by the Normans in the form Josse. While some scholars believe that the name developed from the French Joie, which means joy, a multitude of names developed in Ireland and England from Josse, including Joce, Joass, and Joyce.

Despite its international origins Joyce is regarded as a true Irish name and is more common in Ireland than in any other country.

The first documented Joyce, Thomas de Jorse, a Norman Welshman, married the daughter of the Prince of Thomond in 1283 and settled in Connaught. And today the majority of those bearing the name come from this province. So much so, that the area has become known as Joyce Country.

The Joyce coat of arms displays two eagles in tribute to the special relationship the bird has to the clan. Legend has it that while William Joyce was traveling in Europe during the Crusades he was captured by Saracens. He escaped and was led by an eagle to the location of a buried treasure. After returning home, he used the riches from this treasure to build the walls of Galway City. Later, William Joyce’s granddaughter Margaret Joyce, or Margaret na Drehide (of the bridges), built bridges throughout Connaught, which includes the modern counties of Mayo and Galway. Margaret also encountered an eagle, one which dropped a jewel into her lap.

Known for their tall stature, many of the Joyces became successful merchants and interspersed themselves through the Fourteen Tribes of Galway.

The clan also produced many fine scholars, historians, linguists, and folklorists. Indeed, it is believed that it was a Joyce who designed the Claddagh Ring, one Ireland’s most enduring symbols.

This Joyce is said to Top: Massachusetts State Senator Brian have learned his silJoyce. Above: Irish mystery writer Brenda versmithing trade Joyce. Right: Author James Joyce.

while being held captive in Algeria.

The Joyce clan also produced a most infamous member. During World War II, William Joyce, also known as Lord Haw Haw, was the voice on the radio that embraced fascism. Born in New York City but raised in County Mayo, Ireland; he was eventually captured by the Allies, convicted of treason, and hanged.

Without a doubt the most famous Joyce is author James Joyce (18821941), who was born in Dublin. A poet, novelist, playwright, and author, Joyce is arguably the only 20th century novelist to have published only masterpieces. His notable works include: Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan’s Wake.

June 16 marks the annual celebration of Bloomsday when Ulysses’ Leopold Bloom began his modern-day odyssey through the urban landscape of Dublin in 1904. This past June 16 marked the centennial of Bloomsday, which is celebrated throughout the world.

James’ daughter Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), a dancer who suffered from mental illness, is the subject of a 2003 biography, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, by Carol Loeb Shloss.

Other Joyces in the writing business include contemporary novelist Brenda Joyce who specializes in mystery and romance novels. And British author Graham Joyce, who has no Irish blood.

In entertainment, Alice Joyce (1890-1955) made a great impact in the silent film era. She performed with Clara Bow in the 1926 film Dancing Mothers and appeared in close to 200 films. Unfortunately, her career dwindled with the rise of sound in movies. Michael Joyce (1951) is the founder of Cinema Production Company Services Incorporated, a Los Angelesbased movie visual effects company. He has worked as the Innovative Miniature Supervisor behind movies such as Vertical Limit, Final Destination, What Dreams May Come, Godzilla, Independence Day, Cliff Hanger, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Joyces in the sports world are represented by Matt Joyce, an offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions. And in politics Irish-American State Senator Brian A. Joyce of Massachusetts, is carrying the torch. He said of his Irish immigrant ancestors: “The Joyces have come a long way since leaving Claremorris 100 years ago, and much of our success is due to the values and work ethic brought by my grandfather from Ireland.” IA 99 IRISH AMERICA AUG/SEPT 2004

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THE LAST WORD • By Tom Deignan

The Reagan Democrats

Photo: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

Say what you will about Ronald Reagan, but it can’t be denied that he changed the face not of just American politics, but IrishAmerican politics.

Since the time of the Famine, when shrewd political bosses such as New York’s Boss Tweed saw votes in the desperate millions as they stepped off of coffin ships, Irish-Americans were loyally tied to the Democratic party in the U.S. The list of big city mayors (as well as the lucrative patronage

President Reagan in Ballyporeen during his 1984 visit to Ireland.

jobs they controlled) from the 1880s on reads like an Ancient Order of the Hibernians membership list.

When an Irish Catholic finally ran for president (Al Smith in 1928), it was no surprise he was the product of a Democratic machine.

Some Irish-Americans (including Al Smith) didn’t care for President Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1932. But the vast majority of Irish voters looked to FDR to help the U.S. out of the Depression, and later World War II. And yes, it is also true that some Irish didn’t care for JFK (more Harvard than Irish, some felt). Many more saw in him glamorous proof that the Irish had finally arrived in America.

But things began to change as the 1960s spun out of control.

Stunning numbers of Irish-American voters abandoned the Democratic party in 1968, voting for Richard Nixon, or even George Wallace.

The transformation of the American political scene was not complete, however, until the 1980 election. And Ronald Reagan, as well as Irish-American Catholics, played a huge role in that transformation.

People disagree seriously when it comes to Ronald Reagan, regarding both his personality and policies. Although there are many fair criticisms of Reagan to be made, his electoral victories in 1980 and 1984 were resounding ones.

Among the most important voters were the so-called “Reagan Democrats.” Typically, Reagan Democrats were depicted as midWestern factory workers who were hit hard by the economic downturn in the 1970s.

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But Irish-Americans were key “Reagan Democrats” as well.

Why? In some ways it was a perfect storm of factors that led many Irish-Americans to vote Republican for the first time in their lives in 1980. By this time most Irish voters had left the ethnic enclaves and moved to the suburbs of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and even notoriously liberal Boston.

The Democrats had helped the Irish weather the storm of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and to come into some prosperity by the late 1960s. Yet the well-documented instability of the 1960s and 1970s was shocking to many Irish-Americans. Reagan tapped into that with his call for renewed American optimism and a belief that America could be a proud leader on the world stage once again.

Go ahead. Smirk at such sentiments. It was the mistake Reagan’s critics always made. He simply went ahead and won heavily Irish-American states such as New York in both 1980 and 1984.

It’s not so surprising that Reagan was popular with Irish voters.

If the Irish had become more conservative, it’s because they finally had something to conserve.

Meanwhile, the cornerstone of Reagan’s presidency, in many ways, was a strong stance against communism, an issue which always resonated deeply with Irish Catholic voters. So deeply, in fact, that while this wrinkle is often forgotten, during the election of 1960, many historians believe it was JFK, rather than Nixon, who excessively exploited fear of Communism.

It also could not have hurt that Reagan had an Irish name, even if his roots in Ireland, though strong, are also a bit tangled.

Reagan’s parents were a mixed-religious couple, so one child was baptized into the Church, while Reagan was not, depriving him of one of the most easily identifiable aspects of an Irish-American upbringing. Meanwhile, unlike New York’s Al Smith or Boston’s JFK, Reagan did not hail from a famous Irish stronghold and was associated mostly with the glitz and glamour of sunny California.

Nevertheless, Reagan once and for all severed many of the durable Irish ties to the Democratic Party. Some feel that the Irish abandoned the Democratic Party, but others feel it was the Democrats who abandoned the Irish.

In 1996, journalist and author Samuel G. Freedman discovered that the Irish were such a big part of the Reagan Democrat movement that he based a large chunk of his important book on this fact, and titled it The Inheritance: How Three Families Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond. In the book, Freedman looked at three generations of the Irish-American Carey family, who prayed at the alter of FDR in the 1930s, yet by 1980 believed Ronald Reagan was the right man for the right time.

Among those interviewed by Freedman was Tim Carey.

Appropriately, Carey is a top official with the Battery Parks City Authority in New York and a close ally of New York Governor George Pataki. Among Carey’s most notable accomplishments was helping to plan, build and open the poignant, much-praised Great Hunger memorial in downtown Manhattan, marking the early policial history of Irish-Americans. IA Tom Deignan is a contributing editor to Irish America and The Irish Voice newspaper. His acclaimed book, Coming To America: Irish Americans, was published in 2003 by Barron’s.

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PHOTO ALBUM

Graduation Day

& Class of 1909: St. Mary’s School, Wharton, New Jersey ?

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eated at the right of this photograph is my mother, Elizabeth “Bess” Cashen when she was 13. She was valedictorian of the class of 1909 in St. Mary’s School, Wharton, New Jersey. The other students in the photograph are (clockwise from left) Elizabeth Bobo, Leo Sodon, and Anna Harman. Bess was one of 11 children born to John J. Cashen, an iron miner, and his wife, Sarah Reynolds.

Cashen was born at sea on the ship Albert Gallatin in 1867, while his parents, Thomas Cashen from County Longford, and Elizabeth “Bessie” Glancy from Leitrim, were enroute to America.

Bess had to quit high school after her freshman year to work in a silk mill and help her parent’s growing family. Her fondest work memory was of throwing snowballs at scabs trying to break

a labor strike. In 1916, Bess married Edward Gallagher of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, the son of Patrick Gallagher of Carrick, Donegal, and Anne Sheehy, of Thurles, Tipperary. Patrick had emigrated in 1859, and enlisted in the 53rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry for a year’s service in November 1861. One of his many engagements with the 53rd was the Battle at Antietam.

In November 1862 he signed on for two years with the 1st Regiment, U.S. Cavalry. He rode in Sheridan’s raids and participated in the Battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor.

Bess passed away at 93, leaving six children and numerous grand and great grandchildren. Her grandson, my son Patrick, resides in Wharton and is a Celtic artist. – Paul Gallagher

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