Irish America October / November 2007

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S TA R S O F T H E S O U T H : A C e l e b r a t i o n o f S o u t h e r n I r i s h R o o t s

October / November 2007

Can. $4.95 U.S. $3.95

Rockaway's Big Heart A Neighborhood Hard Hit by 9/11 Reaches Out to Wounded U.S. Soldiers

Padraig’s Day How Ireland’s Top Golfer Won the British Open and American Hearts DISPLAY UNTIL NOV. 31, 2007

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Stephen Rea on Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse

Irish America’s First Family The Carrolls of Maryland Came Before the Kennedys of Boston

A Sacred Journey Retracing an Old Spanish Pilgrimage Route Aboard The Jeanie Johnston

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October / November 2007

Vol. 22 No. 5

FEATURES 38 Padraig’s Day Padraig Harrington, winner of the British Open Championship on July 22 in a heart-stopping playoff, talks to Cathal Dervan about his historic achievement.

33 Journey to a Sacred Place Modern-day pilgrims are recreating the land and sea journey from the Dingle Peninsula to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Story by Sharon Ní Chonchúir.

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52 Stars of the South In our second annual feature, we take a look at the Irish of the South who stand out in their respective fields and make Irish-Americans across the nation proud.

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64 A Rockaway Welcome for Wounded Soldiers Rockaway, New York, is an Irish-American stronghold that opens its doors and its hearts to soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Story by Tara Stackpole.

70 Stephen Rea

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Mary Pat Kelly talks to Stephen Rea about his long career and his role in Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse, currently running at the Abbey Theatre.

76 The First Family of Irish America The Carrolls of Maryland, the first Irish family in America to hold power and influence, are profiled by Tom Deignan.

80 The Billionaire Who Wasn’t An excerpt from Conor O’Clery’s book on Chuck Feeney, the billionaire who made and gave away a fortune.

90 We’ll Not See his Like Again Beloved musician Tommy Makem, one of Ireland’s greatest ambassadors passed away on August 1. Irish America pays tribute to his enduring legacy.

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DEPARTMENTS 6 8 10 12 16 84

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Contributors First Word Reader’s Forum News From Ireland Hibernia Books

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Music Crossword Sláinte Ireland Today Photo Album Last Word

Special Supplement Explore Northern Ireland as it today and learn about its enduring ties to the American South.

By Turlough McConnell

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A bow to contemporary taste.

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A great star makes some unexpected moves

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Vol.22 No.5 • October / November 2007

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: http://www.irishamerica.com

Mortas Cine Pride In Our Heritage

CONTRIBUTORS Cathal Dervan, who contributed the cover story on Padraig Harrington, is a columnist with the Irish Voice newspaper and chief sports writer with the Irish Daily Star Sunday in Dublin. Married to Liz, he lives in Dunsany, County Meath, with their three children Cillian, Lia and Ciaran and a pet poodle named Petal. He has collaborated on books with Paul McGrath, Michelle Smith, Mick McCarthy, Jason McAteer and Phil Babb, and also presents the Sunday afternoon sports show on his local LMFM radio station.

Founding Publisher: Niall O’Dowd Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief: Patricia Harty Vice President of Marketing: Turlough McConnell Art Director: Marian Fairweather

As well as reviewing books and reporting on all things Irish in Hollywood, Tom Deignan’s history column has struck a chord with readers. In this issue he looks at the first family of Irish America, the Carrolls of

Assistant Editor: Declan O’Kelly Copy Editor: John Anderson Advertising & Events Coordinator: Kathleen Overbeck Financial Controller: Kevin M. Mangan Editorial Writers: Bridget English, Kate Hartnett, Joanna Kelly

Irish America Magazine ISSN 0884-4240) © by Irish America Inc. Published bi-monthly. Mailing address: P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 080995277. 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) 725-2993, 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.

6 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Maryland. A columnist with the Irish Voice, where he was an editor from 19992004, he is the author of Irish American: Coming to America, and alongside Peter Quinn and Terry Golway is among those contributing to a book called Irish America Chronicle, due out in 2008. He is married with three children.

Sharon Ní Chonchúir is a regular contributor to Irish America. In this issue she follows the voyage of modern-day pilgrims from the Dingle Peninsula to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Sharon is a journalist who lives and works in West Kerry, Ireland, and much of her writing is concerned with the changing face of modern Irish culture.

Mary Pat Kelly, a long-time contributor to Irish America magazine, interviews actor Stephen Rea in this issue. She wrote and directed the feature film Proud with Ossie Davis and Rea, which played in theaters last spring and is now available on DVD. Her novel, Galway Bay, is an epic story based on the life of her great-greatgrandmother Honora Kelly, a fisherman’s daughter born on the shores of Galway Bay, and will be published by Grand Central Publishing (Hachette USA) in February 2009.

Tara Stackpole, in her first feature for Irish America, reports on her community’s commitment to helping wounded soldiers returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tara, who has five children ages 12-24, lost her husband, FDNY Captain Timmy Stackpole, on 9/11.

Originally from Flatbush, she moved to the Bell Harbor/Rockaway area with her family when she was a teen, then moved back there when her husband died. Her grandparents (on both sides) are from County Mayo.

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NEWS FROM IRELAND • BY FRANK SHOULDICE

Pilgrims make their way up Croagh Patrick.

Aer Lingus Shannon Move

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Shannon-Heathrow route last year, an estimated 50,000 were tourists.

Minister for Transport Eamon Ó Cuiv said, “We are not going to interfere with the decision of Aer Lingus, but on the other hand, we have to try now to deal with a difficult position at Shannon and look at other ways of resolving the problem.”

The controversy highlights difficulties faced by Aer Lingus operating as a commercial venture. The Irish government owns over 25 percent of shares in the company, employees own a further 12.5 percent but another 25 percent is in the hands of Ryanair, a low-cost airline which competes with Aer Lingus on many routes in Europe. Ryanair currently operates flights from Shannon to other London airports at Gatwick, Stansted and Luton.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary called on the government to force a U-turn on the decision, but Aer Lingus CEO Mannion insisted there was no going back. Although it was a very “difficult and sensitive [decision to take] as chief executive officer, I take responsibility for the executive decision,” he said.

Photocall Ireland

rish airline Aer Lingus met with strong public opposition when it announced plans to switch its daily Heathrow service from Shannon to Belfast airport.

Chief executive Dermot Mannion said the switch is part of the airline’s future expansion, but the decision was roundly condemned by business and tourism interests in the mid-west, who predicted a severe economic fallout for the region.

The Belfast move, in keeping with political developments between north and south since the Good Friday Agreement, claims to make business sense for the airline as Belfast offers a lower cost base than Shannon or Dublin. However, Aer Lingus pilots and crews threatened a two-day strike over fears that staff appointments at Aldergrove airport will be made at local pay rates. The strike was averted by last-minute talks, but the longer-term details of the Belfast move are yet to be agreed between employer and unions.

Heathrow traffic accounts for about 10 percent of passenger volume at Shannon. Of some 350,000 passengers who used the

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NEWS FROM IRELAND

Huge Turnout at Croagh Patrick

Photocall Ireland

An estimated 25,000 pilgrims climbed Croagh Patrick on the last Sunday in July for the annual ascent of the holy mountain peak in County Mayo. Despite heavy rain prior to the climb, the pilgrimage took place in sunny conditions, with some hardier souls making the 760-meter hike in bare feet.

Mass was celebrated at the mountain top.

Archbishop of Tuam Dr. Michael Neary told pilgrims, “This is one of those pilgrimages which takes the ever-demanding rush out of life. The world in which we live has set an impossible pace. We are rushed from infancy to adolescence and then through those special years to an ill-timed adulthood.

Then, as we grow older, we might be left to one side, as following generations may see us as a burden or a handicap to their progress and ambition.

“Perhaps, today,” he continued, “we might bring home a lesson from this old mountain. We might discover the need to reflect, to slow down the pace of life, to wonder at the beauty of the earth, and to really appreciate the value of our friends.”

Sparks Row

Jury’s Closes Its Doors

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Two of Dublin’s landmark hotels, Jury’s Hotel and the Berkeley Court, closed their doors for the last time.

Developer Sean Dunne paid 380 million euros for the combined site in the affluent Dublin 4 neighborhood with the intention of building apartments and commercial outlets. However, his application for constructing a 32-story apartment block was refused by Dublin City Council, so it is unclear what revised design Dunne will submit.

Both Jury’s and the Berkeley Court were highly regarded as institutions of Dublin’s social life. Former patrons visited the hotels on the day of closure. Mary Thompson from nearby Ringsend recalled her wedding day at Jury’s and numerous family occasions held there. “It’s a beautiful hotel,” she told the Irish Times. “I never thought Dublin would get so rich that we could knock down such beautiful properties.”

Some 600 staff, who were laid off by the closures, received a redundancy package. The Burlington, another well-known Dublin 4 hotel, was also sold off to a property developer last year. It is expected to cease trading at the end of the year.

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Record Lottery Win A Cork family collected a check for 16 million euros when they picked the winning numbers in the Irish national lottery. The payout reached record levels when the lottery went without a winner after eleven consecutive draws. However, Helen and Paul Cunningham from Farranree, Co. Cork chose the winning combination on a four-euro lottery ticket and ended up claiming the windfall prize of 16,185,749 euros.

Paul Cunningham described their good fortune as a dream come true. Following the win he quit his job as pub manager in Blackrock. The couple have five children, but have yet to decide how to spend the money. It is by far the largest prize in the National Lottery’s 20-year history.

Population Boost in Ireland

Dermot Mannion, CEO of Aer Lingus.

A high birth rate and increased life expectancy have contributed to a strong increase in the Irish population, according to the Central Statistics Office. With births exceeding deaths last year by about 37,000, it represents the largest natural increase in the population since 1982.

Irish women have an average of 1.9 children, a figure exceeded in the EU only by France. Births outside marriage account for over one third of all births. Last year there were 21,841 marriages in the Republic of Ireland with 3,466 divorces granted in the state. Suicide (registered at 409 cases) exceeds fatalities caused by traffic accidents (285), while heart disease is the most common cause of natural death.

Immigration figures have also shown a sharp increase.

The immigration population in Ireland rose by 53 percent from 2002-06 so that by last year, foreign-born residents accounted for 14 percent of the total population.

Photocall Ireland

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 13

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NEWS FROM IRELAND

British Army Scales Down NI Operation After 38 years the British Army officially ended its role in Northern Ireland as military back-up for the police service. Operation Banner, as it was called when the British Army first arrived in 1969, was deemed redundant in the light of the IRA ceasefire and effective power-sharing between nationalists and loyalists at Stormont.

Policing will now be carried out by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Only in the event of severe disturbances will the British Army be called in for back-up.

“For many months now we have not relied at all on our military colleagues for support to deliver normal policing,” said PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde. “We don’t need them any more. It suits us, it suits the military – they are very busy in other theatres of war. The world has moved on very quickly in Northern Ireland.”

Soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland may be deployed elsewhere in the world. Under the auspices of the Independent Monitoring Commission, army bases near the border at Crossmaglen and Bessbrook have been closed down, and the remaining force will be stationed in quarters closer to Belfast.

Operation Banner is the longest single operation in the history of the British military.

At the peak of hostilities in 1972, there were over 27,000 British soldiers on service in Northern Ireland. At that stage some 15 battalions were stationed in Belfast alone.

Those numbers have been steadily reduced in recent years. A total of 763 British soldiers were killed through the Troubles. The last casualty was Stephen Restorick who was shot by a sniper in Co. Armagh in 1997.

Keenan Revisits Beirut

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rian Keenan returned to Beirut for the first time since he was released as a political hostage in the city 17 years ago.

Participating in a BBC documentary about his ordeal, the Belfast-born teacher returned to Beirut to revisit his experiences in the city when he was abducted in 1986.

Keenan was held captive until his release in August, 1990, and chronicled the event in his bestselling autobiography An Evil Cradling. His story was also the subject of a Frank McGuinness play, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. (Stephen Rea received a Brian Tony Award nomination for his Keenan role in the 1993 Broadway hit).

“I often refer to my captivity as a holiday,” Keenan joked. “I’m back for another holiday because I thought Lebanon owed me one.”

He insisted he bore no grudge against Lebanon or against his captors.

“I don’t want revenge,” he said. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everybody blind and unable to speak.”

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NEWS IN BRIEF • THE Irish Labour Party is searching for a new leader following the resignation of Pat Rabbitte. Under Rabbitte’s direction, the party aligned with Fine Gael on a coalition ticket for the last election.

Pat Rabbitte Some Labour party members were openly opposed to campaigning alongside Fine Gael. At a press conference in Dublin Rabbitte announced he would stand down after Labour’s disappointing performance at the polls . . .

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DUBLIN author Anne Enright was the only Irish writer to be named on the prestigious Man Booker Prize long list.

Enright’s novel The Gathering, set in Dublin around a family wake, was named an outside bet at 11/1 while Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach was favorite at 3/1. It is Enright’s first time to feature in the Booker nominations . . .

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PFIZER will decide in the fall whether to proceed with a 175 million euro biologics project at its Ringaskiddy plant in Co. Cork. If it goes ahead the new facility would create about 100 jobs. Pfizer Ireland employs some 2,300 people but its announced closing of two of its factories in Cork will trim the workforce by 480 . . .

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IMPROVED road links between Dublin and Belfast took another step with the opening of the motorway section between Dundalk, Co. Louth and Newry, Co. Down.

The 14-kilometer stretch brings the M1 motorway from Dublin to Newry. Similar upgrading is planned for the A1 north of the border . . .

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KILKENNY won over Limerick in this year’s All-Ireland hurling championship final with a score of two goals and 19 points to one goal and 17 points. The football decider at Croke Park on September 16 (after our press date) will see favorites Kerry take on Cork in a novel pairing.

Dublin’s Croke Park.

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• PEOPLE

| HERITAGE | EVENTS | ARTS | HISTORY | ENTERTAINMENT

New York Rose Takes Title in Tralee

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Above: Lisa Murtagh, the new Rose of Tralee, at a park in Tralee town on one of her first photo shoots. Below: Lisa after being named Rose of Tralee.

Murtagh said, speaking to Irish America over the phone from Ireland, two days after her win.

Included in the prizes Murtagh received were a $25,000 travel voucher to use for Rose business, jewelry and cutlery from Newbridge Silverware, and the use of a car while in Ireland.

How often the new Rose, an attorney in Manhattan with the global law firm Clifford Chance, will use the car has yet to be worked out, for she has a tough decision to make. Should she take a career break and travel the world representing the festival, or remain in New York? Either way she plans to put her own stamp on the position.

“The American [Rose of Tralee] centers

Photos: Domnick Walsh

ew York Rose Lisa Murtagh became the 48th Rose of Tralee on August 22 at the Festival Dome in Tralee, County Kerry. The Yonkers native, who beat out 30 contestants from all over the globe, is the first American Rose to take the famous tiara since Roisin Egenton, also representing New York, won in 2000.

There was no rest for the lovely Murtagh, 27, who, after just one hour of sleep on the night of her victory, went straight to work as the 2007 Rose with numerous photo shoots and media interviews the next day. Throw in a visit to an exhibition at the Kerry County Library and an appearance at the Tralee Races, and it was more of a hurricane than a whirlwind 24 hours for the redhead.

One of Murtagh’s first interviews in Ireland was with an RTE radio show called Morning Ireland.

The interviewer, while acknowledging that the festival is unique and unlike any other competition, said that in some ways it could be considered old-fashioned.

Murtagh was quick to put him straight.

“It is a celebration of modern Irish women. It’s obvious that after watching the show that you have 30 other amazing impressive women who are proud to be called Irish or say they are of Irish heritage, so I don’t think there is anything old-fashioned about that,” was Murtagh’s reply.

Murtagh arrived in Tralee with a goal, winning was only a bonus. “Regardless of whether I won or not, I wanted to rejuvenate interest in the Festival in New York. The city has such a strong history and a strong Irish connection, and I think that the festival is very important to young women of Irish descent,”

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Photos: Courtesy The Galway Arts Festival

are suffering a lot, and that is my primary focus. So maybe staying in New York is what I can do best for the Rose of Tralee,” she offers.

“They [the committee] are very flexible, and realize the demands on modern women.

They know I have a serious job back in New York. They basically said it is up to me. I can stay in New York and do what I can to raise the profile of the festival there, or I can move to Ireland. It is really a matter of sitting down and making the decision once I get back to New York.”

Whether she decides to move to Ireland or stay in the U.S., Murtagh, who said she planned to be in New York at least until Christmas, is wise enough to recognize that the future of the festival depends upon the participation of the younger generation and she plans to promote the festival to young Irish-Americans.

“We need an infusion of young blood. There is interest here but it is waning. Obviously, the young Irish aren’t coming to the United States in the same droves that they used to, and that has an effect. But once I explain what the festival is to Irish-Americans, many who have parents, grandparents and sometimes great-grandparents who are Irish, they have been extremely interested, and this is the audience I want to target.”

Before the contest, Ted Keane, spokesman for the festival, described the qualities they were looking for in the Rose of Tralee. “We’re looking for a girl who is personable, has selfconfidence, and has the ability to go anywhere in the world and represent Irish women,” he said.

Ted Keane can rest easy for another year, as the judges did their job well. Murtagh’s win, and her promise to raise the profile of the festival and bolster pride in being Irish, will bode well for both the festival and Irish America.

Patrick – By Declan O'Kelly McCabe

Arts flourish at Galway Festival ourists and art aficionados crowded the streets of Galway City for the 30th

T annual Galway Arts Festival during the last two weeks of July.

Despite the rainiest summer Ireland has seen in years, the street performers were out in full force. Colorfully dressed mimes posed as statues, the tunes of local musicians echoed through the streets, and theatrical groups such as The Gombeens Theater troupe gave free performances of satirical comedies.

Festival highlights included an art exhibit by Sean Lynch, whose work explores a wide range of forgotten historical subjects, and an exhibit of women war photographers. Traditional music sessions at the Róisín Dubh pub hosted bands such as Moonshine, Brian McGrath and local hero John Faulkner.

Evening concerts featured a mix of American, English, Cuban, Canadian, Scottish and Irish bands.

Among some of the most popular shows were Alabama 5, The Divine Comedy and Laura Veirs.

As if all this weren’t enough to keep a person busy, the festival offered many world-class theater Street Theater: Top: Giant prehistoric creatures in Sau’ras by Dutch Company. Above: The Bulls by and literary readings.

The performance of Brian Friel’s Australian improv act Chrome.

Philadelphia Here I Come was profoundly moving: the story of a young man in the 1950s excited at the prospect of leaving Ireland for America, yet struggling with past regrets and fears at giving up all he has ever known and loved to venture into the unknown.

The New York-based The Team gave a refreshingly unique performance of Particularly in the Heartland, a new play that invited audience members to participate in the show while challenging them to question what it means to be American in a changing world.

Among the most popular theater shows were Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater’s performance of Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, and the debut of Patrick McCabe’s brilliantly disturbing new play The Revenant.

McCabe was on hand at the Radisson Hotel to give a chilling reading from his new novel Winterwood. In what was probably the best opening in the festival’s history, McCabe began in characteristic offbeat style by playing 1960s rock music for several minutes without a word of explanation and then launching into a reading of selections from his earlier book Gems of the Emerald Isle. He finished up with excerpts from Winterwood and, to judge by his reading, the novel is no less haunting or intense IA than McCabe’s critically acclaimed novel The Butcher Boy. – By Bridget English OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 17

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Irish Eye on Hollywood

By Tom Deignan

Harry Potter’s screen pal Evanna Lynch isn’t the only Irish girl taking Hollywood by storm. In October, Saoirse Ronan will begin shooting the highly anticipated movie The Lovely Bones, which (like the Potter series) is also based on a mega-best-selling book.

Ronan will star alongside Rachel Weisz and Ryan Gosling in director Peter Jackson’s screen version of Alice Sebold’s novel. Jackson, of course, is the visionary behind the Lord of the Rings films. Ronan has what you could Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron in a scene from call the grisly starring role in The Lovely Head in the Clouds. The Dubliner will direct Theron, Bones. She plays Susie Salmon, the Woody Harrelson and Michelle Rodriguez in the young girl who is murdered early in the upcoming film Battle in Seattle. story yet continues to view the lives of her friends and family.

Reservation Road hits theaters In December, Ronan also has a role in Atonement, based on starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Terry George.

Ian McEwan’s best-seller, and starring Keira Knightley and Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly and James McAvoy. Atonement opened the Venice Film Festival on Mira Sorvino. The film revolves August 29. (More on that later.) Ronan has been a very busy around two families brought together by tragedy. girl. She will also appear alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones in the George is always juggling numerous projects. The latest upcoming Death Defying Acts and is shooting City of Ember rumors suggest the Hotel Rwanda director might soon be with Bill Murray in Belfast. working with Tom Cruise. George is talking to Columbia Pictures reps about bringing the Kurt Wimmer book Edwin A. Salt to the big screen. Published reports have suggested Columbia is wooing Cruise to play the lead, a CIA agent who may be a Russian spy.

Terry George earned screenwriting Oscar nods for Hotel Rwanda and the Irish film In the Name of the Father. He has also reportedly been working with Irish-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power (who immigrated to the U.S. as a child) on a screenplay involving the United Nations and efforts Stuart Townsend’s career in Hollywood has been an to stop genocide abroad. uneven one thus far. True, he had a charismatic turn in the Irish indy flick About Adam and he did manage to woo October is also the month for the latest theatrical release Charlize Theron. Otherwise, the Dubliner has yet to land the from another Belfast director: Kenneth Branagh. The acclaimed thespian’s latest directorial effort is Sleuth, starring type of roles that have turned Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy Jude Law and Michael Caine. The film (which was screened into stars. So Townsend is going to try things from the other during the Venice Film Festival) revolves around a mystery side of the camera. He will be directing Theron, Woody writer, a struggling actor and a woman for whose affections Harrelson and Michelle Rodriguez in Battle in Seattle. The they’re both competing. Branagh’s latest Shakespeare adaptafilm is set in 1999 amid the tumultuous protests that took place tion, As You Like It, starring Kevin Kline, was shown on HBO during the meeting of the World Trade Organization. Look for in August.

Townsend’s directorial debut to be released sometime next The magical story of John Carney’s musical romance year.

Once continues. The little movie starring Glen Hansard of The If Townsend wants a mentor when it comes to building a Frames has now earned over five million dollars in the U.S., an career behind the camera, he needs to look no further than astonishing sum for an independent Dublin film with no stars.

Belfast native Terry George, a force in TV and movies for two decades now. In October, George’s latest directorial effort The movie could be the biggest sleeper hit of 2007, spreading

Speaking of Evanna Lynch, the 15-year-old County Louth native recently confirmed that she will reprise her role as Luna Lovegood in the next Harry Potter movie.

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slowly but surely to art houses all over the U.S. thanks to great reviews and strong word of mouth. Now, Carney has signed on to direct a much larger Hollywood project called Town House, which begins shooting in January. Town House also has a musical angle. This dark comedy looks at the death of a rockand-roll star whose son has made a career of selling memorabilia. When the supply dries up, the son is forced to make some difficult choices regarding his family, his father’s legacy and the future.

On the DVD front

, if you missed John Dahl’s latest noir comedy You Kill Me, starring Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni, it’s worth a spot on your Netflicks queue.

Kingsley plays a Polish-American alcoholic/gangster in bluecollar Buffalo whose main nemesis is a competing Irish-

American hood. Dahl is perhaps best known for directing The Last Seduction and Rounders. The You Kill Me screenplay was co-authored by Irish-American Stephen McFeely, best known for co-authoring the Chronicles of Narnia movies, including Prince Caspian, due out next year.

For years now, rumors have swirled that Johnny Depp was planning to bring J.P. Donleavy’s famous book The Ginger Man to the big screen. At the age of 82, the writer himself is not sure the project is ever going to happen. Donleavy was recently quoted as saying: “I would dearly love to see his version of The Ginger Man before I am no longer here. But when I saw Mr. Depp in New York recently I made the mistake of telling him the plot of my next book, which is called The Dog on the 17th Floor. He loved it and I’m afraid he might make a movie out of it before The Ginger Man. If so, it will – alas – IA be my own fault.”

On to TV news: Irish-Americans will be well represented when the Emmy Awards are handed out September 16 (alas, after we go to press.) First up, Irish America cover girl Kathy Griffin has been nominated for her reality show My Life on the D-List.

For those who didn’t catch the season finale, Kathy was shown attending Irish America’s Top 100 gala last March. She then went to Ireland and visited Drogheda where her mother’s family hails from – and whose mayor is Micheal O’Dowd (yes, our publisher’s brother). The flame-haired funny girl got very serious when she spread her recently deceased father’s ashes near Bray Head.

Meanwhile, Aidan Quinn is among the Irish talent nominated for HBO’s acclaimed mini-series Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which gained 17 Emmy nods. Wounded Knee, which also stars Anna Paquin and Adam Beach, can be purchased on DVD starting September 11.

Also in the running, Showtime’s The Tudors (filmed at Ardmore Studios in Wicklow) received numerous nominations for its Irish production team, including Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series and Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series. The Tudors stars Cork native Jonathan RhysMeyers.

In other TV news, Tony Award winner Brían F. O’Byrne (following a supporting role in the Catherine Zeta-Jones summer romance No Reservations) continues his climb towards stardom. He has been added to the cast of Showtime’s Irish Rhode Island drama Brotherhood, which begins its second season in October. O’Byrne will play Colin Carr, a cousin of the Caffee brothers around whom the series revolves. One Caffee is a respected politician, the other a shady character with criminal connections. O’Byrne comes to “The Hill” (as the Providence Irish enclave is known) from Ireland and becomes involved in the Caffee family business. Fionnula Flanagan will also return for her second season as the Caffee family matriarch. Speaking of gangsters, look for Dominic Keating to play a super-powered Irish mobster (that’s how it’s been described) beginning in September on the acclaimed NBC series Heroes.

Finally, Dubliner Jason O’Mara has been tapped to play the lead in the planned U.S. version of the British TV smash Life on Mars. O’Mara (whose TV credits include The Agency, In Justice and CSI: Miami) will portray a modernday detective who goes back to the 1970s and confronts a serial killer whose actions may have affected the present day. Prodigious TV producer David E. Kelley, who cast O’Mara, was quoted as saying: “This is a complicated character with many colors. After an exhaustive search, we’re thrilled to have cast Jason O’Mara. He is a tremendous talent.”

Brían F. O’Byrne has joined the cast of Showtime’s Brotherhood. He will play Colin Carr, a Caffee family cousin from Belfast.

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Cape Breton Awash in Celtic Colours

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Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture & Heritage

t was over a decade ago that an imaginative union of tourism and cultural heritage formed to create the Celtic Colours International Festival in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. With the 11th annual festival taking place Oct. 6-13, 2007, and growing every year, the nine-day festival, awash in autumn colors, with gorgeous sea and landscape settings, has become one of the world’s most renowned gatherings.

Last year 14,000 people — more than half from off-island — traveled from 21 countries to hear an amazing mix of Celtic entertainment and attend some of the hundreds of events and workshops in fiddle, pipes, dancing and crafts.

Star-studded concerts took place every day and evening and were spread over 50 communities on Nova Scotia’s northernmost region, an area known for preserving the Scottish, Irish, Acadian (French) and Native America heritage as part of its everyday existence.

Visitors can pick and choose the performers that appeal to them, and enjoy driving uncrowded roads and breath-taking scenery enroute to community halls like the Glencoe Mills Dance Hall or the Judique Musical Centre. You will also see more fiddlers playing at more events than you have ever seen before.

Opening this year’s Celtic Colours Festival are the grand old men of Irish traditional music, The Chieftains, who last came to the festival in the opening year of 1997 when they were exploring Cape Breton

Cape Breton fiddler Buddy McMaster is pictured above and right, with his niece Natalie.

music. The Chieftains will perform with a slew of talent in a show entitled the “Cape Breton Connection” at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Center. Irish acts like the Karan Casey Band and Michael Black will join the group along with Dougie McLean, Shoogenifty, and the best of Cape Breton’s musicians, including the legendary Buddy McMaster. J.P. Cormier, the Barra MacNeils, Ashley MacIssac and Mary Jane Lamond, will also be on hand.

The Barra MacNeils, one of those quintessentially multi-talented Cape Breton families who have made a huge splash in Canada and the U.S., will close out the festival on October 13 with a concert celebrating their 20 years in the music business. The special tribute will take place at the Sydney Marine Terminal, in the port city furthest north.

In addition to all the concerts, late night revelers with stamina can rub shoulders with the talent at the nightly Festival Club held in St. Ann’s at the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts, where even more music is laid on until the early hours.

– By Paul Keating The website www.celtic-colours.com offers further details on the myriad events and concerts as well as travel information. Or you can call: 902.562.6700.

20 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Banjo Burke Festival

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ast Durham will again be a hotbed for traditional music and dance as the leaves begin to turn in the Catskill Mountains region of New York State.

The inaugural Joe “Banjo” Burke Festival, October 5-8, will be unfurled to celebrate the life of the legendary Kilkenny banjoist and singer, and to draw attention to the need for further research into Parkinson’s Disease which claimed his life.

Sessions will be held the weekend long at many of the same Catskill resorts that Joe Banjo’s booming voice once merrily filled.

There will also be workshops in traditional music, song and dance.

A mighty concert slated for Saturday evening, October 7 will feature the Kane Sisters, Brian Conway and Felix Dolan, Grainne Hambly, Aine Meenaghan, John Nolan, John Hogan Trio, Pat Kane and West O’Clare Band, and a cracking good band from Boston assembled for the occasion starring, Seamus Connolly, Larry and Mike Reynolds, Kathleen Conneelly and Jimmy Noonan.

On Monday afternoon, a Columbus Day afternoon concert will showcase many of the above plus Gabriel Donohue and Terry Kane, who will also assist promising Gaelgoiri with workshops in Irish over the weekend.

Ceili dance lessons will be given early on Saturday by dance teacher and musician Pat Kane, brother of the festival’s director, Bridget Burke, who is Banjo’s widow, while more experienced set dancers will have a Ceili interlude on Saturday night.

There will be hurling workshops on the Quill Centre pitch as well and a long puck competition, to celebrate Joe’s love of hurling, as well as a golf outing.

IA – By Paul Keating.

For more info. call: 607-225-9928 Website: www.joebanjoburke.org

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50 Celebration

Wall Street Irish America’s annual Wall Street 50 Dinner took place on July 19, at the New York Yacht Club. Charles Carey, Vice-Chairman CME Group, delivered the keynote address, Dennis Purcell, Senior Managing Director of of Aisling Capital, received the Irish Spirit Award, and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley was the guest of honor. The evening was co-hosted by Financial Dynamics (FD).

Photos by Nuala Purcell

Niall O’Dowd and Declan Kelly present Governor Martin O’Malley with a beautiful Waterford Crystal vase.

Kieran McLoughlin, President of The American Ireland Fund and New York Consul General of Ireland Niall Burgess.

Two of the Chicago contingent: Peter Carey and Mike Forde with Patricia Harty.

22 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

The Wall Street 50 honorees pose for a group photo at the New York Yacht Club with Governor O’Malley, second row, center, Irish America Editor-in-Chief Patricia Harty, front row, left, Publisher Niall O’Dowd, and co-host Declan Kelly, President & CEO FD-US.

Above: John O’Donoghue checks out the magazine.

Left: Kiera Scullion, Lisa Murray, and Roisin Quinn of Invest Northern Ireland with Aidan McGilly of Morgan Stanley.

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At the Chicago table: Joe Nieforo and Pat Duff have lots to smile about.

Governor Martin O’Malley addresses the audience.

Turlough McConnell, Irish America’s Vice President of Marketing with Elizabeth Hunter and honoree Jack O’Callahan, star of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team.

Thomas Ryan, Managing Director and Regional Head of the Americas for ING Capital, one of several Irish-born honorees.

Mary Ann and Patrick Purcell, parents of Irish Spirit Award recipient, Dennis Purcell, and Dennis’s wife, Leslie.

Charles Carey (left) and Terrence Duffy (right) the two Irish-Americans who masterminded the historic Chicago Board of Trade and Mercantile Exchange merger to create the new CME Group, with Dennis Purcell and Governor Martin O’Malley.

Honoree Michael Doorley (right) of Prudential Financial presented his Waterford Crystal trophy to his mentor Jack Irwin (formerly of Merrill Lynch). Also pictured are Jack’s wife, Mariann, and Niall O’Dowd.

Tony Condon, Director of Development at University College Dublin’s Smurfit Business School, honoree Una Neary, Managing Director (Auditing Dept.) J.P. Morgan Chase, Una’s father Jimmy, and honoree Kathleen Murphy , CEO ING US Wealth Management.

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Family Secrets Little Jimmy’s half-Irish defense.

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n the 1990 movie Goodfellas, Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, explained he could never become a “made” member of the mob because he was only half Italian – his father was Irish.

In the U.S. Government’s major case against the Chicago Mafia in July, a lawyer for Jimmy Marcello, the reputed head of the Chicago mob, tried to use that lore to Marcello’s advantage.

Well-known Irish-American criminal defense attorney Tom Breen harshly cross-examined the government’s star witness Nick Calabrese, who wore a wire in prison to help nail his brother Frank Calabrese, the lead defendant in the “Family Secrets” case against a dozen alleged mobsters for their roles in 18 unsolved killings dating back to 1970.

Breen asked Calabrese if he had ever met Marcello’s “lovely mother Mrs. [Irene] Flynn?”

Calabrese appeared surprised.

“And Mrs. Flynn is as Irish as Paddy’s pig, isn’t she?” Breen asked.

“I didn’t know he was half Irish,” Calabrese said. “Then Jimmy Marcello lied. [Marcello’s sponsor] Sam Carlisi lied, they lied to the boss.”

Breen responded with, “Yeah somebody’s lying” and a crack about how the ceremony at which Marcello was supposedly “made” must have featured corned beef instead of pasta.

In closing argument, Marcello’s other attorney Marc Martin put a shamrock on the overhead and said of Marcello’s mother, “Her mother was Katherine Lavin and we know she’s Irish because she was one of fourteen children.”

Prosecutors said that contrary to Goodfellas, the mob has accepted notfully-Italian members to become “made” members in the past.

Most defendants have pleaded guilty, leaving five on trial for allegedly partici24 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

close relationships with elected officials over the years, and this trial provided some embarrassing moments for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Nick Calabrese testified that longtime Daley friend Fred Barbara participated in mob torchings of Chicago area restaurants in the 1980s. Daley refused to answer questions about his relationship with Barbara, who has made millions of dollars in city waste-hauling IA contracts.

– By Abdon M. Pallasch

pating in such well-known killings as the murders of the Spilotro brothers.

Contrary to the movie Casino, the brothers were not killed in an Indiana cornfield – just buried there. They were killed in a suburban Chicago basement where they had been lured to a ceremony to make them “made” members of the mob, Nick Calabrese testified.

Calabrese said he held Michael Spilotro’s legs while another man strangled him. Anthony Spilotro – the mob’s man in Las Vegas – saw his brother being killed and did not put up a fight, saying only, “Can I say a prayer?” Calabrese testified.

Among the five defendants are Anthony Doyle, who changed his name from Anthony Passafiume when he joined the police force to – according to prosecutors – help destroy evidence against mobsters.

Chicago mobsters have cultivated Photos: clockwise: Jimmy Marcello’s mugshot. Attorney Tom Breen. Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.

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A Legend Who Loved Ireland

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26 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Photo: Courtesy The National University of Ireland

n his 2002 memoir Merv: Irishman; few of those around him, Making the Good Life Last, show much less his fans, thought of him as the business legend Merv Griffin entrepreneur he was.” recalled the moment when it Griffin once said: “I was buying seemed he’d finally made it in things and nobody knew. I never told the entertainment world. People anybody, because I noticed that when started looking at him differently, in you walk down the street and everybody good ways and bad.

His father’s reaction, however, was what fascinated Griffin. “You did good, buddy, keep it up,” Griffin recalled his dad saying.

“In the manner of a typical Irish Catholic father of his generation, my dad was gruff but proud,” Griffin wrote.

To say that Griffin did well in his life is an incredible understatement. He was a musician, talk show host, prodigious TV producer, hotel mogul and even became a successful owner in the world of horse racing. Among his horses was one named Cee’s Irish, trained

by Doug O’Neil. Merv Griffin died in August of prostate cancer in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.

Griffin is perhaps best known for his TV talk show from the 1960s and 1970s which touched on all topics of the day. Griffin also developed two of the most famous game shows of all time: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Ever the shrewd businessman, he sold the game shows along with his production company to Coca-Cola in 1986 for $250 million. Griffin, however, retained the rights to both May, 2005: Merv Griffin (pictured with Dr. Iognáid shows’ theme songs, which he Ó Muircheartaigh) when he received an honorary wrote himself. He was paid in degree from the National University of Ireland. royalties every time each show aired, which amounted to millions of knows you’re rich, they don’t talk to dollars over the years. Griffin was you.” recently said to have a net worth of Born July 6, 1925, in San Mateo, around $1.6 billion.

California, Griffin was playing piano by As The New York Times noted after his age 4, and in his teens found a musical death: “With his easy smile and low-key outlet at his parish church, where he manner, he seemed the eternally jovial joined the choir. He was said to have

performed the music for an entire Mass, and would also earn money singing for weddings and funerals.

By the 1950s he had made a name for himself as a singer on radio and with the Freddy Martin Orchestra. But it was on his TV show – which laid the groundwork for future stars such as Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey – that Griffin reached the masses.

He later worked behind the scenes, using his personal obsession with word puzzles to develop the game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. He also became a successful real estate and hotel developer.

Following Griffin’s death, David Bender, who co-wrote Griffin’s memoir, wrote that Griffin “was a man who had a profound and significant impact on our country and our culture in ways that are still being felt today.”

How? First and foremost, Griffin is credited with giving first breaks to Woody Allen, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, John Denver, Diane Keaton, Whitney Houston and Jerry Seinfeld.

“It was Merv, not Johnny Carson, who first put every one of them on the air,” Bender said. He added: “In 1965, when virtually no public opposition to the war in Vietnam was being seen on American television, Merv interviewed 93-year-old British Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell who stunned him by declaring that America needed to ‘give up the habit of invading peaceful countries and torturing them.’”

Griffin blended serious issues with entertainment. “As he did throughout his life,” Bender said, “Merv used his Irish humor like a surgeon’s scalpel, deftly and with a minimum of blood.”

Griffin is survived by his son Tony IA and two grandchildren.

– By Tom Deignan

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A Genius and a Gent

Walsh once said: “I went into coaching with the resolve that my coaching career wouldn’t be a disappointment to me. So I hen Bill Walsh took over the Walsh was run, run defense, establish the worked doubly hard at it.” head coaching job of the San run. Run on first down, run on second In a sign of things to come, Walsh Francisco 49ers in the late down, and if that doesn’t work, pass on turned things around drastically when he 1970s, the team was among the worst in third down. Bill Walsh passed on first got his first head coaching job at the National Football League. In just a down, passed on second down and used California’s Washington Union High few years, Walsh transformed them into that to set up the run,” famous coach and School. The team had a record of 1 win the dominant franchise of the 1980s and broadcaster John Madden said. “People and 26 losses before Walsh took over and early 1990s. No wonder Walsh – who use the word genius and we usually scoff turned the program around. died at the age of 75 in late July – came at that. In his case, I don’t think you can He became an assistant coach with the to be called “the genius.” scoff at it.”

NFL’s Oakland Raiders in the mid-1960s, The Irish-American coach, whose It would have been difficult to predict and moved on to Cincinnati where he snow-white hair made him an worked until 1975, before instantly recognizable figure on returning to California for good. the sidelines, won three Super He left the NFL for two Bowls during the 1980s with the years to lead the Stanford 49ers, before retiring. The team University football team, went on to win two more Super before being hired by the Bowls using many of the same 49ers. In 1979 he made sure tactics and players Walsh had the team drafted Joe Montana established. out of Notre Dame, and the Legendary quarterback Joe foundation for a dynasty was Montana, who guided the 49ers established. Walsh remained during Walsh’s tenure, was humble, despite all of his sucquoted as saying: “This is just a cess, and was unorthodox in his tremendous loss for all of us … calm demeanor and approach to because of what he meant to the the game.

49ers. For me personally, out“I know there were coaches side of my dad he was probably who were certainly more intelthe most influential person in Coach Bill Walsh celebrating the 49ers Super Bowl win in 1985. ligent than I was,” Walsh was my life. I am going to miss him.” quoted as saying late last year.

Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia success for William Ernest Walsh, who “There were firebrand coaches who fired in 2004 and died at his home in was born November 30, 1931 in Los up their teams and all that kind of thing.

Woodside, California. He had been Angeles at the height of the Great But we basically understated everything working as a coach and athletic director Depression. Walsh’s father could earn publicly. We never talked about, ‘We’re at Stanford University. only menial wages as a day laborer, forcgoing to the Super Bowl,’ or ‘We’re the Walsh’s major innovation was on the ing his family to move around best; come and get us,’ all that kind of offensive side of football, where his style California. Walsh attended Hayward thing. We just quietly went about our came to be called “the West Coast High School, where he played football as business.” offense.” It focused heavily on using the well as track and field. He then played Walsh is survived by his wife, Geri, a quarterback to pass the ball, rather than two seasons at San Mateo Junior College son Craig and a daughter Elizabeth. rely strictly on running the football. before transferring to San Jose State, Another son, Steve, an ABC News “Bill’s legacy is going to be that he where he remained on the coaching staff reporter, died of leukemia in 2002 at the – By Tom Deignan changed offense. Offense before Bill upon graduation. age of 46.

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Photo: AP

Path to Your Door “Path to Your Door,” an exhibition of vibrant new canvases by Irish artist Rebecca Carroll, was on view at Magnan Projects, 317 Tenth Avenue, New York, in August. The exhibition had previously been shown in Washington and California.

Carroll, who lives and works in County Kerry, is represented in many public and private collections in Europe, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Thailand, and the United States, and has been recently commissioned to create a series of pieces for the University of Limerick.

Pictured right is Carroll’s painting Embryonic Concepts 30”x30,” oil.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE: www.rebeccacarroll.com

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Brendan Opens in Boston

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rendan, a new work by Irish-born playwright Ronan Noone, is being premiered by Boston University’s renowned Huntington Theatre this fall.

The play explores the humorous and touching experiences of a recent Irish immigrant as he battles homesickness while looking for love and meaning in his adopted country. It runs from October 12-November 11 at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End. Noone was born in Newry, County Down in 1970. He moved to the US in 1994 and settled on Martha’s Vineyard, where he painted houses and began to write.

He submitted his first play, The Lepers of Ronan Noone Baile Baiste, to Boston University’s MFA program, where it caught the attention of Nobel Laureate playwright Derek Walcott, who invited him join the writing program. Lepers won the National Playwriting Award, and was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

His second play, The Blowin, was produced by Gabriel Byrne at the Irish Arts Center in New York in 2005 and also won the coveted Elliot Norton Award in Boston.

Another of Noone’s one-man plays, The Atheist, was premiered by Huntington Theatre this past September, staring Campbell Scott and directed by Justin Waldman.

During the run of Brendan, the Huntington Theatre has slated two events to complement the play.

On Saturday, October 27, Brendan Cronin, Irish-born master chef and culinary arts professor at Endicott College, presents a cooking course at the Boston Center for Adult Education entitled Comfort Food and Plays of Ireland. The lecture and cooking demonstration is followed by the afternoon matinee.

On Sunday, November 4, Harvard scholar Joyce Flynn, an authority on Irish-American theatre, delivers a lecture at Huntington’s Humanities Forum that examines Brendan in the context of drama by the Irish Diaspora. The lecture follows the afternoon matinee.

– By Michael P. Quinlin For more details, visit www.irishmassachusetts.com/ events-Oct07.htm or www.huntingtontheatre.org.

Shanley’s Doubt Heads to London

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John Patrick Shanley received a Pulitzer Prize for his play Doubt which will premiere in London in November.

28 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

ohn Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt will have its British premiere at London’s Tricycle Theatre during the company’s autumn/winter season. Tricycle artistic director Nicholas Kent will direct the production, which will play from November 22 through January 12.

Set against the backdrop of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, the show is the story of a strong-minded woman faced with a difficult decision. Should she voice concerns about one of her male colleagues…even if she’s not entirely certain of the truth?

Doubt opened on Broadway on March 9, 2005, and ran through July 2, 2006, with Tony-winning performances by Cherry Jones and Adriane Lenox, and a Tony-nominated performance by Brían F. O’Byrne. The show also won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. In addition, Doug Hughes won a Tony for directing the play. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman will headline the upcoming film adaptation of the play written and directed by Shanley who won an Academy Award for Moonstruck in 1987.

Casting for the London production has yet to be announced.

Closer to home, in New York City, the highly-regarded Michael Chekhov Theatre will be staging several of Shanley’s plays in November, 2007.

For more information log on to www.chekhovtheatre.com IA

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Galway Sculpture to Grace Chicago Park archeological finding of a young girl’s body preserved in a peat bog in Ireland.

Grainne’s left hand is raised in the gesture of blessing. The base of the sculpture is derived from the famous Turoe Stone, a Celtic pagan monument from County Galway, dating from the time of Christ.

The artist, Maurice Harron, was born in 1946, and grew up in Derry. He studied at the Ulster College of Art and Design in Belfast, and has created works in Northern Ireland and in Donegal. One of his most acclaimed commissions is Hands Across the Divide, which stands on Craigavan Bridge, Derry. It shows two lifesize figures, each standing on a stone plinth, who face towards each other with right hands outstretched. The sculpture, a symbol of the peace process, was unveiled on July, 11, 1991.

“Chicago has a deep history of internationally-renowned public sculptures and this sculpture joins the works of the Picasso in Daley Plaza, and Taft’s Fountain of Time in Washington Park,” said Mayor Daley.

Galway and Chicago have developed a

Antonio Dickey, City of Chicago

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ayor Richard Daley, the Galway Committee of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program (CSCIP) and the Chicago Park District hosted a dedication ceremony for the Grainne sculpture at Heritage Green Park on Tuesday, August 21.

Tom Costello, Mayor of Galway City, presented the sculpture to the City of Chicago alongside Maurice Harron, the artist. Over 150 guests attended the ceremony and reception hosted by Old St. Patrick’s Church.

“This gift represents the thousands who emigrated here from Ireland and demonstrates the long history of friendship, goodwill and exchange shared between Chicago and our Sister City of Galway,” said Mayor Daley.

The Galway Committee of CSCIP plans to reciprocate the gift with a sculpture, which will stand in Eyre Square in Galway..

Grainne means “Grace” in Irish, and the sculpture symbolizes Gaelic society before it dramatically changed in the 1600’s. The artist was inspired by an

Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mayor Tom Costello of Galway, Ireland, and the sculptor Maurice Harron attend a dedication of the Grainne sculpture at the Heritage Green Park, corner of Adams & Des Plaines, on August 21.

longstanding sister city relationship based on a shared vision of promoting arts, culture, business and education.

The Galway Committee of CSCIP has played host to several high-level delegation visits; organized numerous cultural, educational and social service exchanges, and worked with their counterparts in Galway to help strengthen the connection between these two unique cities.

Governor Perdue Has Historic Meeting in Northern Ireland

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announcement last March that the Georgia Institute of Technology, eorgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue became the first senior will establish a research enterprise in Athlone, County Galway. Over political official from the United States to meet jointly with the next five years, the Irish operation plans to build up a portfolio of Northern Ireland’s First Minister Ian Paisley, and Deputy research programs and collaborations with industry valued in excess First Minister Martin McGuinness. The historic meeting took place of $24 million, and at full operation, it will employ 50 highly qualiin Belfast on June 19. fied researchers.

Governor Perdue was joined by Lt. Governor Casey Cagle for the lreland’s president, Mary McAleese, who was in Atlanta in April to meeting at Stormont Castle which discussed how political stability in visit the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University, noted the region will yield fertile ground for bilateral trade and investment. the well-established ties Georgia has to Ireland, North and South. At a “In this extraordinary meeting, I sensed a spirit of hope and reconRotary Club luncheon address she drew attention to the fact that ciliation,” Governor Perdue said. “It is clear that these two courageous Atlanta-based companies United Parcel Service, Equifax Corp., and leaders desire to move Northern Ireland forward and make it a better Coca-Cola all have “European-focused place to live and work for generations to operations” in Ireland. She also underscored come.” the well-established personal ties: While in Belfast, the Georgia delegation “As I’m sure you all know, Coca-Cola’s also met with officials from Invest Northern CEO Neville Isdell and Irial Finan, one of Ireland, the country’s economic development the company’s executive vice presidents, arm, and attended a luncheon hosted by the were both born on the island of Ireland, and University of Ulster. The delegation also Don Keough, the legendary former president toured the Titanic Quarter, an area of ongoing of the company, recently reconnected with economic renaissance in downtown Belfast. his ancestral roots and became an Irish citiThe visit concluded with a large reception at zen, so you’ll excuse me for expressing a Stormont hosted by William Hay, Speaker of Entering Stormont Castle, Georgia’s Lieutenant particular sense of pride in their achievethe Northern Ireland Assembly.

Governor Casey Cagle, Jim Gaffney, whose compaments,” she interjected.

The Georgia governor’s visit followed the ny The Gaffey Group, was part of delegation, IA Governor Sonny Perdue and his wife, Janice.

30 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

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JOURNEY

By Sharon Ní Chonchúir.

to a Sacred Place

A pilgrimage over land and sea renews ancient traditions between the Dingle Peninsula and Santiago de Compostela.

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ing heat until they reach their ultimate objective – the sacred site of Santiago de Compostela.

This may sound like a medieval tale of Christian crusaders, and in many ways it is.

The city of Santiago has been a major destination for wayfaring pilgrims for more than 1,000 years and thousands of people from countries all over Europe have undertaken the journey. However, this is a modern-day story of curious adventurers who were keen to recreate a particular aspect of this historical pilgrimage.

A group of people from the West Kerry town of Dingle set sail for Santiago on May 1, and in so doing, they re-established an ancient tradition.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 33

Photo: Brendan Dineen

he air is thick with emotion as the tall ship pulls away from the shore. Tearful pilgrims wave farewells to loved ones on dry land who respond with shouted words of encouragement and wishes of good fortune.

All are apprehensive. Aboard ship, they are facing an uncertain voyage. Leaving Ireland behind, they must venture into the Celtic Sea and out into the Atlantic. They must then cross the Bay of Biscay, renowned for its ferocious storms.

With God’s help, the pilgrims hope to land safely in the Spanish port of La Coruna, from where they will walk 70 miles, across mountainous terrain and through unrelent-

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Opening page: The Jeanie Johnson leaves Dingle on its voyage to Santiago de

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Compostela

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Many hundreds of years ago, a series of well-worn paths (known as Camino de Santiago) were established throughout Europe – land routes through France, Germany, Belgium and Italy and sea routes from Britain and Ireland. All led to the sacred site of Santiago de Compostela.

Dingle, a small coastal town, became one of the major Irish embarkation points. Centuries passed and thousands of pilgrims left the town bound for Santiago. The town established strong cultural, religious and trading links with Spain. Spanish tradesmen settled in Dingle and influenced place names, building design and much more.

However, even the most deep-set customs wane and eventually the Irish tradition of pilgrimage to Santiago went into decline; fewer boats left Dingle for the sacrosanct site. Fewer Spanish arrived too.

Any notable examples of Spanish style architecture were sacrificed for development purposes, and the links connecting the cultures dissolved.

Until, five hundred years later, in 2006, when three men, Kevin Flannery, Mick Dooley and Colm Bambury, decided to revive the age-old tradition.

They had many reasons for doing so. “Colm had walked one of the land routes to Santiago several years previously and I had visited the city before, so we were familiar with its long history and eager to find out more,” says Kevin.

The deeper they delved into this history and the

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Photo: Brendan Dineen

RIGHT: Captain Michael Coleman presents a commemorative plaque to His Excellency Jose de Carvajal Salido, the Spanish Ambassador to Ireland.

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possibility of a modern-day pilgrimage, the more plausible and attractive a prospect it seemed.

“We’re all interested in nautical matters, so the idea of a boat journey appealed,” says Kevin. “The connections between Dingle and Spain are so strong that they ought to be explored and celebrated. There were so many things that just seemed to fit that we simply had no choice but to rekindle the pilgrimage.”

Mick Dooley has a slightly different explanation.

“It offered the prospect of adventure,” he says.

“This sort of trip is always a unique experience.

Then there’s the sense of pilgrimage and the idea of

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BELOW: The pilgrims who made the trip, including the oganizers: Kevin Flannery, 4th from right, back row; Mick Dooley, back row, end; and Colm Bambury, front row, 2nd from right.

BOTTOM: The Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.

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connecting with the past and recreating something that hadn’t taken place for hundreds of years.

Before we knew it, the idea had taken on a dynamic of its own.”

Camino Chorca Dhuibhne was born. (Corca Dhuibhne is the Irish language name for the Dingle Peninsula).

The group’s first step was to charter a boat.

“We wanted our pilgrimage to be as close as possible to the pilgrimages of all those years ago,” says Kevin. “We wanted to feel and experience it as previous pilgrims did.”

This ruled out modern-day vessels. After some deliberations, they chose the Jeanie Johnston – a 19th-century replica sailing ship that was built in the neighboring town of Tralee.

The Jeanie (as she is affectionately known) is a graceful triple-masted vessel that was completed in 2002. Since then, she has led an exciting life,

Photo: Sharon Ní Chonchúir

plying the Atlantic Ocean and the seas around Ireland as a sail training vessel, a famine history museum and an entertainment venue.

“She was ideal for us,” says Kevin. “She has her own crew but we could also help out on the voyage and get an idea of what life was really like for the pilgrims of old.”

Having chartered the ship, our three pilgrims started to publicize their project. They were inundated with responses. “We had 29 berths and they sold out in four days,” says Mick. “We had interest from all over Ireland.”

The departure date was set and the pilgrims set about researching the history of the pilgrimage and the many links connecting the Galician region of Spain with the southwest coast of Ireland.

The pilgrimage itself is in honor of Saint James, one of the 12 Apostles. He died in A.D. 44 and was taken to Santiago for burial.

In A.D. 814, Ramiro I decreed that all Spaniards should make the trip to Santiago. And in A.D. 951, Bishop Raymond of Le Puy in France made the earliest documented European pilgrimage – marking the birth of a new Catholic tradition.

In the 12th century, the shrine and the cathedral to Saint James were built. Both served as impressive and rewarding sights for pilgrims at the end of their arduous trek.

The Catholic Church also did its best to promote Santiago as a pilgrimage destination. It offered a weighty indulgence of 5,000 years (remission of the temporal punishment due to sin) in return for completing the journey to this holy location. Medieval Catholics worried about the fate of their souls would certainly have viewed this as a worthwhile investment.

By the 15th century, Irish pilgrims would commonly complete the journey, many of them leaving from Dingle. Others would leave from Saint James’ Gate in Dublin, now the site of the world-famous Guinness Brewery.

“When we found that out, we decided we would have to mark the link by bringing plenty of Guinness on board – to share with our Spanish hosts of course,” says Mick, laughing.

Spanish-Irish Connections

Photo: Fiona Morgan

They also discovered many other historical connections between Dingle and Spain. “We already knew about the trading,” says Mick. “There was big business in wine and Madeira in those days and a lot of it arrived into Dingle. But there were other things we didn’t know, such as the town’s importance in Spanish political circles.”

Dingle was often the first port of call for agents and emissaries of the Spanish monarchy. In 1529, when Emperor Charles V sent his ambassador to Ireland, he advised him to arrive in Dingle. Again in 1534, his envoy was sent to Dingle.

Spanish officials also recognized Dingle’s status as an embarkation point for the pilgrimage to the OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 35

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Ireland. The best place for business.

And, according to the Economist, the best place in the world to live.

The Irish mind. Creative. Imaginative. And flexible. Agile, with a unique capacity to initiate, and innovate, without being directed. The Irish like thinking on their feet. Adapting and improving. Generating new knowledge and new ideas.

Naturally, this innate flexibility pervades the ecosystem. Nowhere else will you find such close and frequently informal links between enterprise, education and research facilities, and a pro-business government. Connected by a dynamic information infrastructure. It’s this unique set of competitive advantages that has made Ireland one of the most attractive locations for overseas investment. As a result the most successful economy in Europe is, it seems, also the best place in the world to live.

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life index report* – “When one understands the interplay of modernity and tradition in determining life satisfaction, it is then easy to see why Ireland ranks a convincing first in the quality-of-life league table.” To learn more, contact the Irish Government’s inward investment agency, IDA Ireland, 345 Park Avenue, New York on 212 750 4300, email idaireland@ida.ie or log on to www.idaireland.com *Source: The World in 2005, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality of life index, Economist.com

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adraig’s Day PADRAIG HARRINGTON BECAME THE FIRST EUROPEAN TO WIN THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP SINCE 1999 AND THE FIRST IRISHMAN TO WIN THE CLARET JUG IN 60 YEARS.

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38 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Photos: Phil Noble/Reuters /Landov

f you drive across the mountain road that borders south Dublin, chances are you will see Padraig Harrington at work in the garden that serves as his office. Out the back of a modest but large dwelling he has installed a kidney-shaped green built to U.S. PGA specifications, two artificial putting greens, six small target greens, three bunkers filled with different sorts of sand, and teeing areas where he can hit a golf Story by Cathal Dervan ball with everything from a three-iron to a sand wedge in the direction of Wicklow. The harder he practices the luckier he gets, as Gary Player used to say.

Happily married to Caroline and with a brother or sister on the way for young son Paddy, Harrington is the finest Irish golfer of his generation, the first Irish winner of the British Open in 60 years, and the man who brought a country to a standstill to watch his play-off victory over Spanish sensation Sergio Garcia at Carnoustie, Scotland in July.

Yet he still works hard at his game because he believes he has to.

“Talent will only get you so far – the successful ones are the ones who work harder,” he says.

Harrington was born in Dublin in August 1971, and born to golf.

By the age of four, Padraig was playing golf and chasing rabbits in Stackstown, the course his father and fellow members of the Garda Siochana (the Irish police force), built on the side of the mountains that straddle Dublin’s border with Wicklow.

David Moir/Reuters /Landov

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Photos left: 2007 British Open Champion Padraig Harrington embraces his son Paddy after becoming the first Irishman since 1947 to take the title.

Above: Harrington, Irish flag in hand, begins to realize the magnitude of his achievement.

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WHAT THEY SAID

Golf was big in the Rathfarnham home he shared with brothers Tadhg, Fergal, Colm and Fintan, as were football and hurling. His father Paddy, a Cork man, played Gaelic football in the 1957 and 1958 All-Ireland football finals.

“Whenever I go to Cork I am still regarded as Paddy’s son, not as a sportsman in my own right,” he laughs.

Padraig, too, played football and hurling, but when he was picked for the Irish Boys Golf Team when he was 15, he gave up football and life as a goalkeeper.

He had much success as an amateur golfer. Victories in the 1995 Irish Amateur Open and the Irish Close Championship, and three Walker Cup appearances against the United States saw him ranked number one in Ireland.

But instead of turning pro, Padraig went to college to study accountancy. His intention was to work as a golf club manager, or maybe on the player management side of things.

“I never thought of myself as a pro at that time because I didn’t think I was good enough,” he says simply. “I wanted to be in the golf industry, but I never thought I would be an actual player. It was only at 21 years of age that I decided to turn pro, purely because the guys I was able to beat as an amateur were turning pro, not because I thought I was good enough.

“The idea was to have a couple of years on the tour if I could. But I started out so well – it was fairy tale stuff. They gave me a check for playing golf the first week I was on tour. I remember calling home and telling my folks, ‘This is great.’ Then, in 1996, I won the Spanish Open after just ten weeks on tour, so I just kept going.”

A year later, however, the 1997 U.S. Open Championship at the Congressional Country Club, in Bethesda, Maryland, pulled him up short.

“It was just too difficult for me,” he recalls. “I couldn’t get around a golf course like that. I shot 76, 77 and came home thinking, well, I’m a good golfer, but that’s really not enough unless I do something about it.

“It was then that I started working with Bob Torrance [the legendary Scottish coach, father of former Ryder Cup captain Sam Torrance], and since then I’ve

I’m tough inside. There is no way I would be playing this game if I wasn’t, but you don’t need to be arrogant to be good. worked tirelessly to improve my game so that I could compete on U.S. style golf courses.”

The hard work paid off. By the end of 2006, Harrington was Europe’s number one and a four-time Ryder Cup hero for Team Europe.

As well as that heart-stopping play-off win over Sergio Garcia in the British Open at Carnoustie – after twice going into water on the 18th hole in regulation play – Harrington also became the first

Irishman in 25 years to win the Irish Open championship with another play-off victory, this time over Welshman Bradley Dredge, at Adare Manor, County Limerick, back in May. When I talked to Harrington, now just past his 36th birthday, he was still on a high from winning the British Open.

“There are times when I look around the house to see where the Claret Jug is at. It might be on the mantlepiece or on the breakfast table, but it’s there and it’s mine.

“I’ve got the Open trophy. It will change my life, but will it change my personality? I hope not.

“There is ego involved with golf but the way I was brought up I would never want to show that,” says Harrington.

“I am tough inside, there is no way I would be playing this game if I wasn’t, but you don’t need to be arrogant to be good at the game.

What you do need is a certain selfconfidence,” he adds.

To the uninitiated, Harrington’s emergence as the top golfer in Europe looks natural, but those who know him best know how hard he has worked on his game since the 1997 experience at the U.S. Open convinced him he needed to totally rebuild his swing.

“I’ve worked to improve my game so that I could compete on U.S. style golf courses, but winning the British Open [Carnoustie is a links course] was definitely down to my instincts for playing links golf as an amateur growing up,” he says.

As hard as he had worked on his game, Harrington still had to find the confidence to win.

“It’s been a long road. I don’t know if

PADRAIG’S BROTHER TADGH HARRINGTON “We have fun with him when he does something wrong. We tell him, ‘It’s a good job you can hit a 3-iron across water.’ He’s just another Joe to us. If a camera crew followed him for a week, they’d be bored out of their minds. And they wouldn’t believe how long he can stand on a bloody range hitting balls. But that’s him. He’s always been that way. When Padraig was an amateur he wasn’t the best at anything. But he never cried and moaned. He has always reacted well to adversity, always looked for ways to improve.”

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Padraig, Paddy and Caroline Harrington pose for a family photo with the famous Claret Jug. Though undoubtedly one for the mantelpiece, Harrington hopes to add more Major-winning family shots over the next few years of his career.

I ever believed I was going to do it, but I tried, especially that week at Carnoustie, to convince myself. Carnoustie was hard work. I didn’t feel as good about my game as I did about the U.S. Open last year, where I felt I had a genuine chance of winning and I was feeling comfortable about it, but I stuck to my guns and just kept playing golf.

“I’m not a glamorous player but I work hard, and sometimes that’s what it takes,” he adds. “I take a lot of comfort from Michael Jordan’s basketball career, because he was a late bloomer. I have done much better than I ever imagined, and there is no point in stopping now. I have to keep doing what I’ve been doing and fine tune the rest.”

F

amily is everything to Padraig Harrington. Son Paddy is nearly four years of age. A brother or sister will arrive in November, an early

Christmas present for the affable Dubliner and his wife Caroline, the girl by his side since he summoned up the courage to ask her out to a Patrick Swayze movie, six months after he first set eyes on her, when her father brought her to watch a junior game at Stackstown.

“When you shoot a bad score, the only people who care are your wife, your family and your dog,” he says. “If I have a bad day, I can get it off my chest quickly by talking to Caroline. Then we move on.

We don’t sit around moping. We go out and that time is hers and ours. But the talking is important. She is a good psychologist. The best for me, anyway. Golf is a terrible game that way. It builds up inside you, and it is best to get it out. She is there for me when things go wrong – and when I need a kick up the backside.”

Young Paddy was on the practice green as Padraig waited for the play-off that would change his life. Every time his dad hit a putt, Paddy kicked the ball away

WHAT THEY SAID CLOSE FRIEND TIGER WOODS “He is very strong mentally. You only have to look at the things he’s had to do to get better and how hard he has worked changing the swing with Bob Torrance, his coach. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. It was just a matter of time before he won.”

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Darren Reynolds, Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke celebrate Europe's Ryder Cup win at the K Club, County Kildare in September 2006.

any golf, but I was emotional afterwards when I thought of what that win would have meant to him,” Harrington reveals.

“That was why, when I did the interview afterwards, I could hardly speak. I had convinced myself I would win but I hadn’t prepared myself for the emotional part of winning. It was such a high, and I was thinking of my dad. It would have been very, very special for him, but I would have been a quivering wreck for the last couple of holes if I had started thinking of what my winning would have meant to him.”

Photocall

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WHAT THEY SAID

with a grin on his face as wide as the Firth of Forth, which runs alongside this famous course.

“I knew then that Padraig would win,” his sports psychologist Bob Rotella revealed afterwards. “To look at him with his son at his feet, preparing for the biggest play-off of his life, I just knew this was a man ready to win.”

Son and father were united again when Harrington dispatched the putt that dispatched Garcia on that 18th green less than an hour later. “Daddy, can I put ladybirds in it?” asked the bairn, as the Claret Jug found Irish hands for the first time since Fred Daly triumphed at Royal Liverpool back in 1947.

“I’ve had to rescue a few ladybirds on their way into the trophy back home in Dublin,” reveals Harrington. “When we’re out in the back garden of our house we often collect ladybirds and stick them

in a jar, so the natural thing for Paddy is to want to house them in the Claret Jug,” he laughs, adding, “but if they went in there they’d be intoxicated with all the alcohol that’s passed through it in the last month. Everyone has wanted to drink from the Open trophy! I think it’s better for the ladybirds if we don’t put them in there.”

His own father, Paddy, was close to Harrington’s heart on that day in Carnoustie as well. The newly crowned British Open champion shed a couple of tears as he paid tribute to his dad, who lost his battle with cancer two years ago.

“When you are on the course, you have to become detached from your emotions, or you won’t focus and you won’t compete. You have to be careful or you can get sidetracked. My father was very important to my career. If I had started to think of him then I wouldn’t have played

arrington doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke.

The night he won the Open, he partied until four in the morning at a small house near the course that he shared with wife Caroline and son Paddy, his caddy, Ronan Flood and his wife, who just happens to be Caroline’s sister.

They were up till four, whooping and hollering with the best of them, but barely a drop of the creatur touched Harrington’s lips. “The first thing that was sipped out of the jug was Johnny Smith’s Smooth Bitter [beer] and that was because of a promise to somebody at the start of the week who was drinking the same. I said, ‘Well I’ll have one of those if I win the Open.’ So that’s how that got in there.

And then it was champagne. After that there was a mixture of stuff put in there.

At this stage if you smelt the inside of that Claret Jug you wouldn’t want to drink out of it,” he confirms.

Bed at four and up at six. “I couldn’t sleep,” Harrington says. “At six that morning I was awake, bright as a button, and looking at the Claret Jug at the bottom of the bed. I woke Caroline, pointed at the trophy and said, ‘I just won the Open Championship.’ She said, ‘that’s

HARRINGTON’S COACH BOB TORRANCE “The first time I set eyes on Padraig’s swing, it was obvious we had some work to do. He had no leverage. He hit the ball no distance. He was a poor striker. The flight on his shots had no penetration. His shoulder plane was too flat. And his right elbow was behind him, not in front of him, on the backswing.

Now Padraig has done a great job with all aspects of his swing. He is a great pupil.

He is prepared to get worse in order to get better. Not many are. He will work on something until he gets it. There are no shortcuts in this game.”

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WHAT THEY SAID very good, well done,’ and then she told me to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.”

A private jet flew Harrington home to the Weston Aerodrome just outside Lucan in West Dublin. He popped in to a party thrown in his honor by close friend Dermot Desmond, and then went back to his Stackstown roots for the mother of all celebrations at the golf club his late father helped to build. “The reaction at home was, and is, incredible,” he admits.

“The two things that struck me were the amount of people who watched the Open who had never watched golf before, and the amount of men who told me that they cried when I won.

“It’s been phenomenal. There is no other nation like Ireland to get behind their sports people, and there’s no question that the support has helped me along the way,” he adds. “And the bookmakers paid out over $10 million. What more can you ask for?”

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WHAT THEY SAID

way from the golf course, Padraig Harrington is a man of simple tastes. His den at home includes an authentic 50s jukebox, a pool table and enough arcade games to keep a grown child happy. A night out with Caroline generally includes a movie and popcorn. “I’m not one for the arthouse movies. I’m into what I call a good popcorn movie, where you can sit back in the seat and just immerse yourself in the movie with a big bucket of popcorn by your side,” he laughs.

Dinner tables are invariably livelier when Harrington is around. “I’ve always been one for a good argument,” he admits. “It’s probably my favorite pastime. I love to try to change someone’s mind. It’s not that I think I’m always right. If you tell me the sky is royal blue, I’ll say, ‘No, it’s azure blue.’ I’d argue that with you for ten minutes. Then the next guy will come along and tell me the sky is azure blue, I’ll say, ‘No. It’s royal

blue.’ My opinions change to suit the occasion. I can always see the other side of the argument. So I’ll argue the other way to make everyone else do the same.

“I’ve never traveled with the pack. I never wanted to. I didn’t smoke or drink at school. Peer pressure never made me do something I didn’t want to do. I got on with everyone at school from the hard lads to the nerds, but I was never going to be in either camp. I always wanted to be different.”

FELLOW RYDER CUP HERO PAUL McGINLEY “As kids we lived within a mile of each other. My first memory of him is on the Gaelic football field. He was the goalkeeper. He must have been about 11 years old.

Look at his fingers now.

They’re all bent out of shape, like mine. You’re always breaking fingers playing that game.”

W

ith career winnings topping $25 million, Harrington already has more money than he ever dreamed of, so winning his first major isn’t going to change him.

“More money isn’t going to make me happy,” declared Harrington. “We make so much money as professional golfers these days, that it is not an issue for me at all. There is a temptation to cash in, but it would be fair to say that I want to win more majors, more than money. I just want to play golf and I don’t want to jeopardize that.”

The one luxury Harrington will now consider is a private jet – but only to make his life easier. “There’s nothing else that I want in my life, materially. I don’t need anything else. I have a tenyear-old car. I bought a new one last year, put 2,000 miles on it and got rid of it.

Even the 10-year-old car only has 22,000 miles on it!”

So what does the future hold for Padraig Harrington? “You won’t catch me playing on the Seniors Tour at 50. I’ll be burnt out by then,” he laughs. “If I wasn’t a golfer I’d love to have been a coach. I could see myself in 20 years coaching Paddy’s Gaelic football team rather than playing on the Seniors Tour.

Even when I’m watching the Dubs in Croker [Dublin plays in Croke Park] I’m not watching like a fan. I’m trying to fig-

ure out what’s going on behind the scenes, what they do for training, and what’s in their head. When I met up with my cousin Joey, who’s a professional American footballer [Joey Harrington is the starting quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons], we always get to talking about training. I’m more interested in that than anything else. I love the idea of telling someone something they don’t know and showing them how to do it right.”

As we go to press, Harrington is immersed in the Fed Ex Cup campaign in the U.S. He will be home in time for the birth of his second child in November, home to enjoy his greatest Christmas yet.

“I will be in a good mood for the next year or 10 years or even forever with this,” he admits, but he is still getting used to being the Open champion. “In those reflective moments when I’m alone, I sit back and think ‘I can’t believe I’ve done it.’”

He did. And he has the Claret Jug to IA prove it, ladybirds and all.

HARRINGTON’S SPORTS PSYCHOLOGIST DR BOB ROTELLA “To watch him hit two balls into the water at 18 on the Sunday, stay cool and then get that ball up and down was awesome. On the putting green as we were waiting for the play-off, I told him ‘if there’s anything you have ever wanted to know about yourself, you just found out with that up and down. You’ve got what it takes.”

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A Celebration of the Irish in the Southern United States Special thanks to our Stars of The South Co-Host: Tourism Ireland Sponsors: Northern Ireland Bureau Invest Northern Ireland

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A Celebration of the Irish in the Southern United States

In this special feature we pay tribute to the Irish contribution to the Southern United States. The honorees profiled here have inspired us with their work and dedication, and will be feted at our second annual Stars of the South dinner in Atlanta on October 27, 2007.

{Alison Brown} Alison Brown has taken an unlikely path in establishing herself as an internationally recognized banjoist. The former investment banker (she has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and an MBA from UCLA) toured with Alison Krauss and Union Station and Michelle Shocked before forming her own group, The Alison Brown Quartet. She has recorded eight critically acclaimed solo albums including the Grammy-winning Fair Weather (2000 Best Country Instrumental Performance). Alison has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered and in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Alison, together with her husband Garry West, cofounded the internationally recognized independent label Compass Records in 1995 to create an artist-friendly home for roots music and musicians. In a recent feature story, Billboard magazine called Compass “one of the greatest independent labels to emerge in the last decade.”

In 2006, Compass Records Group acquired the 30-yearold Green Linnet label, becoming the largest label for Irish and Celtic music in the U.S. Alison’s Irish roots extend back to her paternal greatgrandfather, Robert Brown, who emigrated from Ulster with his parents in 1880. Rumor has it that the family originated in County Roscommon but little more than that is known, except that her great-grandfather is said to have enjoyed his beer warm. Alison currently resides in Nashville with her husband Garry and their two children Hannah (5) and Brendan (6 months).

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{Timothy J. Cambias} One of the South’s most successful businessmen, Timothy J. Cambias is a majority shareholder in Massey-Fair, an industrial food brokerage business with offices in Dallas, Nashville, Charlotte, Ocala and St. Louis, and MacSource, a distributor of raw material food ingredients to food manufacturers throughout the Southeast. He is also the founder and past president of National Industrial Marketing Specialists.

Tim was born in New Orleans. He attended Jesuit High School and graduated with honors from the University at Lafayette Louisiana in 1965. He was a member of the Blue Key National Honor Fraternity, president of the Inter-fraternity Council, president Phi Kappa Theta, and listed in Who’s Who in American Universities, College of Commerce Honor Society. After college, Tim began his business career in 1965 working for the American Can Company, before joining Massey- Fair in 1972.

An avid golfer, Tim is a member of the Ansley Golf Club where he has served as president. His community involvement includes serving as past parish council president of Christ the King. He is Secretary, Sergeant at Arms, and current board member of the Atlanta Rotary Club, and is involved with St. Joseph’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Mercy Foundation, and The Marist School.

Tim and his wife, Mary Jane Moore, have been married since 1967. They have three children, Kelly, Timothy and Katie, and three grandchildren, Sarah, Patrick and Charles.

{Irial Finan} An Irish-born executive who has achieved extraordinary success with the most American of companies, Irial Finan is Executive Vice President, The CocaCola Company, and President of Bottling Investments and Supply Chain. Based in Atlanta, Irial is responsible for managing the five-billion-dollar internal bottling business, stewarding the company’s equity investments and leading the supply chain.

Irial joined Coca-Cola in 1981 and has a myriad of national and international experience. From 2001 to 2003, he served as CEO of Coca-Cola HBC, during which time he managed the merger of Coca-Cola Beverages and Hellenic Bottling, and led the combined company’s operations in 26 countries.

From 1995 to 1999, he was managing director of Molino Beverages, with responsibility for expanding markets,

56 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

including Ireland, Romania, Moldova, Russia and Nigeria. Prior to that role, Irial worked in several markets across Europe and served as managing director of Coca-Cola Bottlers Ulster, Ltd., based in Belfast. He was finance director, Coca-Cola Bottlers Ireland, Ltd., and based in Dublin from 1984 to 1990.

Irial, who serves on the board of directors of Coca-Cola and other companies, is a non-executive director of Alltracel Pharmaceuticals and chairman of their Audit Committee. He also serves on the Galway University Foundation board, and is a non-executive director for Co-operation Ireland.

Irial holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from National University of Ireland in Galway and is an Associate (later Fellow) of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants. He is a native of County Roscommon.

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{Sister Jane Gerety} {J. Rhodes

}

Haverty, MD

As the founding dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University, J. Rhodes Haverty, MD, launched the first university-based program in physical therapy and medical technology in Atlanta, including degree programs in nursing, nutrition, mental health, and respiratory therapy.

Under his innovative leadership, the college grew to become one of the largest and most well-respected producers of health care professionals in Georgia.

Dr. Haverty received an AB degree from Princeton University in 1948 and his medical degree in 1953 from the Medical College of Georgia. After completing his residency, he became a highly regarded pediatrician, practicing in Atlanta for 11 years.

Although he retired in 1991, Dr. Haverty is actively engaged in community life, serving on boards and garnering awards for his tireless service. He is past chairman of the Georgia Health Foundation and currently serves on its board. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the American Red Cross and the Board of Advisors of the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Dr. Haverty was cited as Top Volunteer in 1998 by the American Red Cross for his three plus decades of advocacy and community service. In 1998, he received the City of Hope Award for his contributions as a physician and community leader. In honor of his exemplary service to the College of Health and Human Sciences, the college launched an annual lecture series in his name that features speakers of national and international prominence. Georgia State University further recognized Dr. Haverty by bestowing upon him an honorary doctorate of philosophy.

Sister Jane Gerety, RSM, Ph.D., a Sister of Mercy since 1959, serves as the senior vice president for sponsorship and is the corporate compliance officer at Saint Joseph’s Hospital Health System in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sr. Jane joined Saint Joseph’s in 1992 and is responsible for ensuring that the hospital fulfills its mission to the Atlanta community by providing compassionate, clinically excellent health care to all, no matter their ability to pay. Her responsibilities include overseeing corporate compliance, mission effectiveness, and care of the poor.

Under Sr. Jane’s leadership, Saint Joseph’s was one of the first hospitals to establish a Center for Ethics in Health Care. She has also has been instrumental in the successful development of the Saint Joseph’s Research Institute, which is engaged in finding new treatments and moving those treatments through pre-clinical and clinical research in a timely fashion, so that they get to patients faster.

Prior to joining Saint Joseph’s Hospital, Sr. Jane was the Associate Professor of English and Academic Dean at Carlow College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She previously taught high school students English, French and Spanish. Her dedication to education extends beyond teaching; while in Pittsburgh, Sr. Jane established a highly successful baccalaureate program for poor women in the Pittsburgh Hill District.

Sr. Jane earned her B.A. degree in French from Mt. St. Agnes College in Baltimore, a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont; and a master’s and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan.

Sr. Jane has served on numerous notfor-profit boards including a stint as Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island. She has also served as the Chair of several other organizations including, St. John’s Mercy Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri; Mercy Housing Southeast; Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Atlanta; Saint Joseph’s Health System, Saint Joseph’s Mercy Foundation and Saint Joseph’s Research Institute, Atlanta; MedShare International, Atlanta, and Mercy Medical, Daphne, Alabama.

A frequent guest speaker and author on the mission of Catholic health care, governance, compliance, and health-care reform, Sr. Jane also speaks on such topics as poetry and meditation, especially women poets and W.B. Yeats. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on “Poetry and Magic: Yeats’ Poems of Meditation,” and her love of poetry is evident in her prayers and inspirations when she speaks to audiences.

Sr. Jane’s Irish heritage is something that she is very proud to claim. Her mother’s family immigrated to the United States from County Mayo, while her father’s family hailed from County Meath. Sr. Jane also has another connection to Ireland: her order, the Religious Sisters of Mercy, was founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland, in 1831.

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{Joseph “Joe” McCullough}

I

n 1979, Joe McCullough was recruited by a small Irish company as “an Irish-American with an MBA from a good school who wasn’t yearning for the green fields.” He joined a three-man team at Oldcastle in Los Angeles with the objective of building a North American business for its Dublin-based parent company, CRH. During his 27-year career Joe saw Oldcastle grow from a $14 million business to the largest construction products company in North America with sales in

ing in 25 countries with a market capitalization of $25 billion. Oldcastle is now quoted on the Dublin, London and New York stock exchanges.

Joe, the eldest of five children, grew up in the Ardoyne area of pre-Troubles Belfast, Northern Ireland. He moved to London in the 1960s and worked as an industrial engineer with the British National Health Service. There he met his future wife, Mary Alyce, a Marylander who was spending a year in London doing a post-graduate nursing course at a hospital where Joe was the “efficiency

Joe and Mary Alyce in Harbin City, China

excess of $15 billion. Oldcastle now operates at 1,700 locations, and has 50,000 employees in all 50 states and four Canadian provinces. In the same period, CRH became a top five global construction products business operat58 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

expert.” A 1967 vacation visit to Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital yielded a position in that venerable institution and he moved there in 1968.

While working full-time and halfway to a degree in Northeastern University’s

evening program, a chance encounter in a Boston bar encouraged Joe to apply to the Harvard Business School where he was accepted and awarded an MBA in 1972. In the years following, he gained experience in various management positions in Iowa, Chicago, Montreal and Dallas before joining Oldcastle. He also spent two years in Dublin as Development Director for CRH focusing on global strategy, with particular emphasis on China, before returning to the U.S. as CEO of Oldcastle Building Products comprising five product groups and then accounting for roughly half of CRH’s North American business.

He retired from this position in mid 2006 but remains non-executive Chairman and an advisor without portfolio. He is a director of two small privately held companies and on the advisory boards of Glanbia plc and the Chastain Park Conservancy in Atlanta.

On the personal side, Joe and Mary Alyce have been married for 38 years and reside in Atlanta. They enjoy traveling, the occasional game of golf and spending time with children and especially grandchildren. They are members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre and are active parishioners of Holy Spirit Church in Atlanta. They have two grown children, Judith a clinical psychologist who lives with her husband and two young daughters in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and Eamonn, who has his own hardscape contracting business in Asheville, North Carolina.

In summing up his career with Oldcastle, Joe highlights the satisfaction of accomplishment and in working with and building friendships with his Irish, American and European colleagues. He notes that his long association with an Irish company allowed him to maintain his ties to the homeland but also, through “home leave” visits, afforded the opportunity for his American-born family to establish an Irish heritage in their own right.

Though a “Northerner” by birth, Joe is deeply honored to be named a “Star of the South” and looks forward to a great evening at the Awards ceremony.

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{Mary Ann McGrath Swaim}

F

rom Warrenpoint, County Down, Hugh Byrne left for the port of New Orleans in antebellum times, when the “Crescent City” ranked second only to New York as the largest port in all the United States. By the time he arrived, reports confirm that one in every four New Orleanian had been born in Ireland. Making their homes off Tchoupitoulas, along the famous “Sliver on the River,” Hugh and his brothers joined the ranks of many fellow Irishmen in the treacherous life of a riverfront screwman. And they earned the way they made.

Hugh Byrne married Mary Kenny, whose Irish family had emigrated first to southern Kentucky, and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

From Killarney, Co. Kerry, Dennis McGrath left for America in earlier antebellum times, landing in New York and continuing on to Wisconsin in search of land. Making their home in Highland, Dennis and his family became farmers. And they earned the way they made.

Dennis McGrath married Mary Smith, whose family had emigrated from Co. Tipperary.

In yet another antebellum time – just months before Pearl Harbor – Dennis and Mary McGrath’s great-grandson, John, left Wisconsin for the Port of New Orleans, on personal invitation from Uncle Sam. Here, on our famous Canal Street in 1942, quiet Master Sergeant John McGrath met and fell in love with Hugh and Mary Byrne’s beautifully shy granddaughter, Isabella Byrne.

And so to Mary Ann McGrath Swaim, a Southern Irishwoman, who counts herself blessed to have been born in New Orleans because of the courageous wanderlust, and the laboring love, of her tribe. Mary Ann was the first of four children born to John and Isabella

McGrath – Mary Ann, Glen, Marci, and Adrian. As she sees it, her story is not exceptional – nothing to compare with the monumental life achievements of those who came before her, who risked everything to venture across the ocean

and across the land to find a home for themselves in the “Land of Dreams” – and to earn the way they made.

Dance was Mary Ann’s life’s goal, but early injuries forced her to look elsewhere. So, with cum laudes, Woodrow Wilsons, and such behind her, she became a lawyer, married her law professor – the incomparable “Louisiana Swaim” – mothered three exceptionally unique people – Clancy, Shannon, and Bill, and is now grandmother to two darling dolls – Sarah and Claire.

Mary Ann practiced law and returned for her MS in Counseling just before Hurricane Katrina changed everything.

Just after she thought that Katrina had

changed everything, she lost her life’s love – her “Professor Swaim.”

In between – always – Mary Ann searched for stories of her Irish past, only to be reminded by her Nana that “you’re an American” and “there are no castles in Ireland.”

“Nana was right and she wasn’t,” Mary Ann says, “but her message ‘Work, Live, Breathe, Here, Now’ was the same truth that Dennis and Mary McGrath and Hugh and Mary Byrne obviously knew.”

Still, Mary Ann fears she compromised the practice and even home sometimes, to follow a dream – the re-homing of Irish Dance in New Orleans. She became the first Louisianian, and so also the first New Orleanian, licensed by An Coimisiún le Rinci Gaelechá as an Irish dance teacher. In those times, she reveled at marrying Mardi Gras to feiseanna, with beads and medals meshing under strains of Irish tunes and Mardi Gras Indian chants. “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me.” In her time she served as the first president of the Ladies AOH, Margaret Haughey Division, New Orleans; first Dance Chair for the Irish Cultural Society of New Orleans; member of the first Board of The New Orleans Friends of Ireland; the first New Orleanian traveler in search of a New Orleans Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann tour stop; a first officer of Southern Regions IDTANA (Irish Dance Championships); “Godmother” to O’Flaherty’s Irish Channel Pub; and member of boards of many other Irish organizations.

Post Katrina, Mary Ann remains an active member of the Board of The Advocacy Center of Louisiana (http://www.advocacyla.org/), an organization whose mission it is to ensure that children with disabilities are able to live, study and play in loving environments that help them meet their full potential.

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{Gene McHugh} Gene McHugh, VP/General Manager of WAGA/Fox5 Atlanta, one of the nation’s highest-rated FOX Affiliates, was born in Montclair, New Jersey and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.

A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Gene worked in advertising and broadcasting in Missouri, New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta, and has been employed by Fox Television Stations, Inc. since November 1993.

Gene, who served as a lieutenant in the U.S Navy Reserves, is actively involved in community projects. He serves on the Atlanta Ronald McDonald Houses Executive Committee, Board of Directors; and is a board member of the Georgia Association of Broadcasters, USMC-R Toys For Tots Atlanta Campaign, and the Atlanta St. Patrick’s Day Foundation Gene’s Irish roots are in County Roscommon. At the tender age of 17, his grandfather Michael McHugh left the 15-acre family farm located near the River Shannon in Roosky, and sailed on the steamer Teutonic from Queenstown, arriving at Ellis Island, April 15, 1897. After securing employment, he sent for his bride, Catherine Healy, who was born on an adjacent farm. The couple had six children, including Gene’s father,

Paul. Michael became a U.S. citizen on October 13, 1902 and achieved rank of captain on the Montclair police force.

Gene says it was “Irish luck” that he married Deborah Ann Vivod. The couple have three grown children, Erin, Megan and Michael, and two grandchildren, Tommy Wood and Phoebe Eddings.

{Kieran Quinlan} Born in Dublin where he attended the O’Connell Schools in North Richmond Street, Kieran Quinlan is Professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, specializing in modern American and Irish literature with an emphasis on writers from the American South.

He is the author of three books: John Crowe Ransom’s Secular Faith (1989), Walker Percy, The Last Catholic Novelist (1996), and Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South (2005), which won the Landry Award for the best book in Southern studies from LSU Press.

In reviewing Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South, James Flannery, the Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Emory University, wrote “As it unfolds, Quinlan’s story of the strange kinship between Ireland and the American South begins to take on increasing layers of paradox and contradiction combined with heroic strength and moments of moral revelation. . . . As Quinlan observes in the final sentence of his wonderfully wise meditation on the peculiar connectedness of those two remarkably distinctive peoples of the earth: ‘The past does not fade gently into the present, and the future remains largely unknown.’ But, as our great artists have tried to show us, a better future may lie in accepting.”

Dr. Quinlan has also published essays on W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, and Donald Davie in such journals as The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, and World Literature Today. His current interests include a memoir on his time in Ireland, England, and the American South, and a study of Seamus Heaney and religion. He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in 20th-century literature, and also a course on Literature and Religion. He directs the Haddin Humanities Forum and has given numerous talks to a variety of public and academic groups.

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{Richard W. Riley}

T

he Christian Science Monitor said that many Americans regard Dick Riley as “one of the great statesmen of education in this [20th] century.” David Broder, columnist for The Washington Post, called him one of the “most decent and honorable people in public life.” And when Riley was Governor, he was so popular that the people amended the South Carolina Constitution to enable him to run for a second term.

Wherever he goes, Richard Wilson Riley – former U. S. Secretary of Education and former Governor of South Carolina – wins respect for his integrity, principled leadership, commitment to children and passion for education.

After winning national recognition for his successful education improvements in South Carolina during the 1980s, Riley was chosen by President Clinton in December 1992 to serve as the nation’s chief education officer. During the President’s first term, Secretary Riley helped launch historic initiatives to raise academic standards; improve instruction for the poor and disadvantaged; expand grant and loan programs to help more Americans go to college; prepare young people for the world of work; and improve teaching. He also created the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, which today includes more than 8,000 groups.

Riley gets things done by reaching out to all citizens. He prefers partnership to partisanship. Of his quiet, self-effacing style, the National Journal wrote, “He doesn’t grab headlines or clamor for credit . . . But, inevitably, Riley reaches his goal.”

Riley was so successful that, after the 1996 election, President Clinton asked him to continue leading his national crusade for excellence in education.

During the second term, Secretary Riley helped win a historic F.C.C. ruling to give schools and libraries deep discounts for Internet access and telecommunications services (the E-rate) and major improvements in the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act. He gained increased federal support to help children master the basics of reading and math; make schools safer; reduce class size by hiring 100,000 more quality teachers; modernize and build new schools; help students learn to use computers; expand after-school programs; foster college preparation and access for underprivileged students; and promote

lifelong learning. Riley also focused national attention on the need for people of all ages to learn more than one language and for increased international education exchanges in the U.S. and abroad, in order to take advantage of the opportunities presented in the global society of the 21st century.

Since leaving his national post in January 2001, Riley has rejoined the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough with more than 300 attorneys in offices throughout South Carolina and North Carolina, as well as in Atlanta, Boston and Washington, D.C. Dick Riley also has been appointed Distinguished Professor and Trustee at his alma mater, Furman University,

Greenville, South Carolina, and serves as Advisory Board Chair of the Richard W. Riley Institute of Government, Politics and Public Leadership there.

Additionally, Riley serves on the boards of South Carolina’s University Center in Greenville and Winthrop University, where the School of Education is named in his honor, and he has been named Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina. He also speaks, provides leadership and serves in an advisory and collaborative capacity with many other entities to promote education improvement at all levels in the U.S. and abroad.

Dick Riley was born in Greenville County, South Carolina. He graduated cum laude from Furman University in 1954 and then served as an officer aboard a U.S. Navy minesweeper. In 1959, Riley received a law degree from the University of South Carolina.

He served as a South Carolina state representative and state senator from 1963-1977, was elected Governor in 1978 and reelected in 1982. Riley is married to the former Ann Osteen Yarborough, affectionately known to all as Tunky Riley. The couple recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Lake Tahoe with their four children and 13 grandchildren.

Dick, like so many of the Riley clan, traces his roots to County Cavan. His mother is a Dowling, so he has Irish heritage on both sides and he takes that heritage seriously. He is involved in Cooperation Ireland, which promoted intercommunity partnerships in Northern Ireland, and is on the board of the IrishAmerican Higher Education Research Organization (IA-HERO) founded by George Mason University, Virginia, and the Higher Education Authority, Ireland.

IA-HERO brings together educators on both sides of the Atlantic to discuss important topics and examine challenges to education in both countries.

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{Thomas J. Shannon, Jr.} The California Restaurant Association Educational Foundation recognized Tom Shannon as “Restaurateur of the Year 2002” citing his entrepreneurial spirit for creating award-winning restaurants.

In 1992, Shannon formed the T-Bird Restaurant Group to develop the Outback Steakhouse concept in California. Today the group has 62 Outback Steakhouse restaurants and continues to grow.

Tom, whose Irish grandparents settled in the Boston Harbor area in 1899, was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, and lived in Charlestown until he was ten, when his father, a U.S. Customs officer, was transferred to Miami. He completed high school at Archbishop Curley High School and earned a football/baseball scholarship to the University of Florida, where he graduated with a double degree in Marketing and Management.

Named the Most Valuable Player in the 1962 Gator Bowl, and inducted into both the football and baseball Athletic Hall of

Fame at the University of Florida, Tom continues his involvement with his alma mater. He served as President of the National Letterman’s Association and Vice President of the Board of the University’s Athletic Association, as well as chairing the Advisory Board of the Business School for several years.

He is a founder, member, and president of the Gold Shield Foundation, a not-forprofit organization that provides financial support to the families of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. In addition, he is a past director of Straight, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program for children. He was awarded Straight’s “Gratitude and Love Award” (one of only five honorees whose list included Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana).

Tom also serves on the Outback Steakhouse Foundation executive committee, and as the Outback Pro-Am Tournament Chairman he has helped

{Richard M. Stormont} A recognized leader in the hospitality industry and a corporate Marriott veteran of 22 years service, Dick Stormont has had extensive experience in the development, operation, and financing of all types of hotels, conference centers, and resorts throughout the United States. In 1984, he left Marriott to form The Stormont Companies, Inc. and served as Chairman until March 2000 when the company sold its hotel management division to Crestline Capital Corporation.

Dedicated to community service, Dick Stormont has held a number of significant leadership positions in the hospitality industry, including serving as Chairman of the Tourism Division for the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism; and Chairman of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. As a Director, President, and Founder of the Georgia Hospitality and Travel Association, he was named “Most Valuable Volunteer” (state of Georgia) by the American Hotel and Lodging Association and was presented a plaque by President George Herbert Walker Bush. In the year 2000, he was inducted as a member of the Georgia Hospitality and Travel Association’s Hall of Fame.

62 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

raise over $600,000 annually for children’s charities in the Tampa Bay Area.

For his contributions to the community Tom has received the Distinguished Citizen Award from the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Florida.

In 2004, Tom received the “Spirit of Life Award” presented by the City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research Institute, and in 2006, he joined the roster of distinguished Americans recognized for their significant contributions to their country, when he was presented with the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor award.

A graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, Dick was recognized as the university’s 2006 Southeastern Hotelier of the Year. He was also inducted into the Atlanta Hospitality Hall of Fame, and is currently the president of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and will serve his term through June of 2008 Like many Scots-Irish living in the South, Dick’s roots go way back. His father’s family immigrated from Scotland to Ireland at the end of the 16th century and left Antrim in 1772 for South Carolina. The family moved to Indiana in 1811 and ran an underground railroad, housing runaway slaves on their farm in Princeton, and helping them escape to Canada.

His mother Mildred Milligan’s side of the family immigrated from Londonderry to Adams County, Ohio around 1778. Mildred’s father, James, was born in 1856 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dick is married to Lou, whose Irish grandmother, Laura Patricia O’Connor, was born in County Sligo. Laura married an Englishman, and their son, Lou’s father, was born in England and came to New York City with his father, an international banker.

Dick and Lou Stormont reside in the Buckhead community of Atlanta. They have two sons, John and Rich, a daughter Stacy, and IA three grandchildren.

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Rockaway

Welcome for Wounded Warriors An Irish-American enclave that suffered greatly on 9/11 turns its attention to helping wounded soldiers.

Story by Tara Stackpole

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OPENING PAGES: A New York City Fire Department boat sprays a colorful welcome.

The Wounded Warriors arrive in style aboard a FDNY firetruck.

(Photos: The Wave).

Top left: Firefighter Brian Brady and Corporal Marcus Martinez.

(Photo: Tara Stackpole).

Top, right: The Police Escort.

Right: Flip Mullen whose idea it was to host the soldiers. Left: Smiling Irish faces add a warm American welcome.

(Photos: The Wave).

I

t could be a scene unfolding in any small town in America, grateful people welcoming home war heroes.

Not too common anymore, except in Rockaway Beach, New York, where it has become an annual event.

We are not talking about ordinary soldiers, although ordinary could not describe any soldier during wartime. The soldiers in this parade have sacrificed much and Rockaway has found a way to thank them. The Wounded Warriors weekend has become a moving, emotional event that plays itself out on our peninsula every July for the last three years. Anyone that has been lucky enough to be a part of it would want to tell you what a wonderful thing it is, but the problem is that in describing the weekend, one is often at a loss for words.

This year’s “Wounded Warriors” included 40 Iraq and Afghanistan Soldiers pass by St. Francis de Sales Church where less than a year ago a funeral service war veterans who participated in was held for local boy Marine Michael Glover the Adaptive Water Sports Festival. who was killed in Iraq. (Photo: Tara Stackpole.)

66 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

The entire weekend is designed to help the wounded soldiers participate in water sports that they may not have attempted after their life-altering injuries. The social part of the weekend brings a little simple fun back into their lives.

The weekend starts out on Thursday evening. As the sun begins its descent in the summer sky, neighbors gather along Rockaway Beach Blvd. The sea air mingles on the breeze as sun-kissed children wave small American flags. Parents and grandparents chat easily with friends while the air buzzes with excitement.

Patriotic bunting is draped over porches, and beach chairs that were planted in the sand only hours ago now create an informal viewing stand. Young children proudly hold signs; some are elaborate works of art dotted with red, white and blue glitter that welcome the soldiers to Rockaway. Others form a lump in your throat when you read the simply stated “Thank You.” You have to pause and remind yourself that some of the children that hold them were not even born or

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Left: Jimmy Carlton and his son James (Photo: Tara Stackpole).

Above: Rockaway kids and American flag.

(Photo: The Wave.)

were small babies on that fateful day in September 2001 when life as we knew it changed, and young men and women across the country were filled with a sense of duty. Well, for some, their time has been served and they are home, broken but alive. Most of them have just finished their rehab, others are due for more surgery, and some, and you can tell which ones right away, are on their very first outing from Walter Reed Military Hospital. They are accompanied by wives and children and various family members. They are welcomed home in a way that they have not been before.

The Wounded Warriors roll into town in style, and are welcomed into the arms of people who lost loved ones on 9/11. In a police-escorted motorcade, the soldiers arrive on the top of FDNY fire trucks waving flags and beaming at the warm welcome. If you squint your eyes just right at the sun, you can almost see the spirits of our own 343 [firefighters lost on 9/11] riding right along with them. The first-timers look stunned while the returnees call out to people who are now good friends. The motorcade is often flanked by NYPD helicopters and the FDNY fireboats greet them with a spray of water at every bridge crossing. The motorcade winds through the streets of Breezy Point to cheering crowds and works its way into Rockaway to pass by St. Francis deSales Church.

One can’t help but remember less than a year ago a similar more solemn procession held here for a local fallen Marine, Michael Glover, nephew of the now retired FDNY Chief of the Department Peter Hayden. In a world where too often people like Paris Hilton and

Britney Spears grace the covers of our papers, you can’t help but think about the countless young men and women who have already dealt with more heartache and tragedy that anyone should have to endure in a lifetime.

“What happened to us is sad, but when we come here we feel a connection. You people get it,” says Corporal Marcus Martinez, a big strapping Marine from Lincoln, Nebraska. “Every soldier wants to come here, who wouldn’t? Everyone opens their doors and their homes and their lives to you. I have been here for two years now and I feel like I have family here.” Marcus relates stories of still hospitalized soldiers: “All of the young soldiers want to come here once they hear about how great our weekend is, and they all work harder at their physical therapy so they are in shape to make the trip when the time comes.”

Perhaps it is a fate-filled connection that these men and women, most of them from remote parts of the country, experience here every year. There is a palpable feeling of empathy and understanding.

Rockaway knows too well the feelings of loss and change and has learned the lessons of perseverance and hope since that September morning. The community suffered the loss of many neighbors killed at the World Trade Center, including many firefighters and rescue workers. While still reeling with grief, fate added a cruel twist on November 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into the heart of the town, killing 260 on board and five beloved neighbors on the ground, in the secondlargest air disaster in this country. The

town pulled together, then literally fought the fire and cleaned up the devastation while trying to console the heartbroken families. Perhaps a true testimony to the warmth and compassion is the fact that the families who lost their loved ones and all of their earthly possessions decided to settle down in nearby houses and continue to live here. Through all the loss, it was still home. Rockaway knows what it is like to be brought down to its knees and to rise up again. And to give back.

Three years ago, while trying to find a way to reach out to others, the idea for hosting the Wounded Warriors was born.

It was the brainchild of retired New York City firefighter Flip Mullen, who together with his wife, Rita, and a local grassroots organization called the Graybeards, planned the beginning stages of what was to become a phenomenal event.

“We needed to find a way to do something for these guys. They went over there for all of us, especially for us here in New York. We needed to let them know that they would not be forgotten,” says Mullen. “We are, in a sense, giving them the welcome home that they don’t really get. It’s as simple as that.”

Mullen went on to recruit volunteers from various groups he knew he could tap into. New York City firefighters, many from Ladder 120 and Engine 231, immediately jumped in to help, shuttling soldiers to and from events and the homes they were staying in. The Graybeards, which originally started as an over-40 basketball league, began turning its efforts to helping the community.

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Clockwise this page: Scuba diving lessons. Handmade signs offer a warm welcome. Rockaway locals and Wounded Warriors meet and greet. The memorial at Breezy Point. (Photo by Joe Fox.) Soldiers meet their host families.

(Photos: The Wave.)

knew the neighborhood would turn out to help, so they lent a hand in organizing the weekend. The Adaptive Ski Program and the Disabled Veterans Association also got involved, and together, the collaborators worked through incredible logistics to pull it off.

Housing all the soldiers and their families and therapists, and other various members of the Wounded Warrior organization is no easy task. “We could put these guys up in hotels, but that would defeat the purpose of giving them a warm hometown welcome,” recalls Mullen. “When I originally looked into this I asked them at Walter Reed, ‘What is it these guys need? What can we do for them?’ They told me that they need to socialize, and to know that the world is still going to accept them with missing arms or legs, or whatever.”

Nobody is better at “social” than Rockaway. Ask any Irish-American New Yorker and you can bet that they have a “Rockaway” story in their archives, whether it be traveling by subway to the beach on a Sunday afternoon, or visiting an aunt’s rental house where bungalows were known to magically sleep 14 cousins at once. We all have the fond memories and countless stories of chil68 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

dren sitting in sandy bathing suits in one of the many Irish pubs listening to ceili music and eating chips and drinking Cokes while parents danced and chatted, the Irish brogues and laughter filling up whatever fine establishment they were in. A familiar warm smile appears when one recalls those summers spent here so long ago. It comes from a lifestyle or time lived by the sea, and it comes naturally to the people of Rockaway.

The parade ends at the Belle Harbor Yacht Club where the “Meet and Greet” is held. Dinner is served as the soldiers meet their host families. Personal connections are made when homes and meals are shared, and the weekend will have an impact on the hosts as well as the soldiers. Many of the soldiers from previous years have kept in touch and have even visited on different occasions.

Friday begins early at the Breezy Point Yacht Club, where a wide variety of water sports and instruction is offered.

Food and music and the energy of the soldiers here make it feel like a private beach in the Bahamas. Physical therapists who are part of the Wounded Warriors organization are available at all times to help the soldiers should they need it, and local firefighters are special-

ly trained to help in the water. Even though some soldiers have never been in the ocean, they find themselves, in a very short time, standing on water skis for the first time, with one leg, or one arm. Last year a triple amputee graced the cover of a national magazine when his picture was taken here on water skis bearing a smile from ear to ear. Fishing, sailing and kayaking are available along with scuba diving instruction – activities that any one of these soldiers, lying in their bed at Walter Reed, could not have imagined ever attempting again. “If I can do this, I can do anything” is the popular motto of the weekend.

Sergeant Noah Galloway from Alabaster, Alabama, lost his leg during his second tour in Iraq. “After your Twin Towers fell here in New York City, I was mad as hell. I really didn’t know what you people were feeling, but I had to do something to help and so I enlisted in the Army.” His face is young and handsome, and his enthusiasm for life seeps from his pores. You almost don’t notice that he’s missing an arm and a leg, until he asks you to hold his can of beer so he can shake someone’s hand.

“I came home the first time and everything was fine, but on my second deploy-

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Clockwise this page: All aboard for the boatride. A young couple enjoy their first catch. There’s more than one way to water ski, as this young amputee shows. A group shot with Wounded Warriors, The Graybeards, who helped organize the event, New York City firefighters, and volunteers. Over the weekend, the soldiers will learn adaptive water skiing, scuba diving and other water sports from specially trained members of the New York Fire Department. (Photos: The Wave.)

ment I was hit and that was it.” He recalls his injuries with a bit of a crooked grin, testimony to his positive approach to life.

“You can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, things happen to you in this life.

It’s all how you deal with it.

“Recently a balding man came up to me in a store and said, ‘Wow, I can’t imagine losing my limbs like that,’ to which I replied, ‘Yeah? Well, I can’t imagine losing my hair like you.’ It really is all how you look at it.”

On Friday evening a boat is chartered from Sheepshead Bay for a dinner cruise. With patriotic music playing and fireworks bursting overhead, the soldiers gather on the top deck as the boat cruises by the Lady in the Bay, and the empty space where the towers once stood is just as noticeable today as it was to all of us almost six years ago. An experienced screenwriter could not come up with this kind of stuff.

Saturday evening you will find Beach 134th Street near the ocean filled with family, friends and soldiers for our Special Athletics fundraiser. This annual event raises money for a very special group of athletes that are much loved here in Rockaway, and the soldiers are our honored guests at a traditional sum-

mer event. Children and soldiers and volunteers and Special Athletes all laugh and dance and have fun well into the night. Sunday morning dawns bright and early, a bit brighter perhaps than a few would like – the few that experience the Rockaway nightlife. However early it seems, the Mass at the Breezy Point 9/11 memorial is not to be missed.

The memorial is simple but powerful.

It consists of a replica of the steel cross that was recovered at the World Trade Center site, and of separate glass panels etched with personal poems and the names of all the Breezy Point residents who died on 9/11.

Almost every soldier you talk to will tell you that they signed up to serve because of what happened in New York on 9/11, so it’s appropriate that we gather at a place that commemorates it so beautifully.

The Mass is celebrated by Father Peter Rayder, associate pastor at Holy Name Parish in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Father Peter was raised in a large family here in Rockaway, and was always active in community events. He reminds us that “sure we all feel better when we do something for someone else, but these soldiers are letting us off easy. We can’t do enough for them, after all they have sacrificed for us.

They have gone off to a country where people need compassion and healing, and during that time, have sacrificed much.” He went on to tell the crowd, “We gather this weekend, and we thank them, but it’s not enough. We need to remember them. We need to live our lives and make a difference because of them. We need to pray for them and if we can’t do that, we should go home and take down our flags.”

Noah Galloway, with his Alabama twang, summed it up best when he said, “The doctors and therapists can give us all the physical healing in the world, but when we come here to Rockaway, well I tell you, it’s just therapy for the soul. This is what heals our souls.”

The soldiers thank us; we thank the soldiers, over and over. Sunday evening finds everyone with that slightly drained feeling you get after a good cry, and the goodbyes are never easy. Rockaway finishes another year of trying to give back, just a little, to those that go and do for our country and for freedom and for all the good things we are taught to be grateful for. Wounded Warriors, we remember you and thank you. The healing begins, and that is therapy for all of our IA souls.

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Stephen Rea returns to the Abbey stage in a play written for him by Sam Shepard, which will have its American premiere next June. He talks to Mary Pat Kelly about working with Neil Jordan, Brian Friel, Sam Shepard, and Samuel Beckett.

Stephen

Rea

»»»» Tell me about Field Day. The Field Day Theatre Company was an incredible context for me. It meant I could express myself not just as an actor but as a kind of cultural activist. Before Field Day I had acted at the Abbey and then, in the mid-’70s, I went to London.

I did Playboy of the Western World and The Shaughraun at the National Theatre.

I also did O’Casey’s Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars.

It’s interesting that they happened at a time when the context was very antagonistic to the Irish. And, well, the Irish were very antagonistic to the context.

What was audience reaction?

They were delighted with Playboy.

Probably because they couldn’t see any broader context to it. And they seemed 70 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

quite happy to cheer on the Fenian hero of Boucicault’s Shaughraun. They didn’t seem to relate it to IRA activities that were going on at the time. It was a weird kind of thing. The English have a very funny attitude toward Ireland. There’s a kind of inability to see certain parts of history – it’s as if it never happened – but also the inability to get over it.

So Field Day must have been very different.

Yes. And I needed that. I was a young Irish actor in London playing leading roles on the English stage. I truly loved it and I still, to this day, have a sense of camaraderie with all the actors that I knew at the Royal Court Theatre. It was a bedrock of incredible talent. But at that time in England there began a new

appraisal of theater practice. It wasn’t actor centered anymore. It became about an academic understanding of theater.

This broke a tradition that went back to Shakespeare – Laurence Olivier used to say that he had an unbroken link to Burbage – but now there was a theoretical approach as opposed to having theater in the hands of people with a practical understanding of it.

It was happening in Ireland too. The Abbey company was disbanding. The concept of a production was central, not the performance. So when Brian Friel and I came together in 1980 we wanted to balance the intellectual with the practical.

We had the big intellects on board, Seamus Deane and Seamus Heaney, but Brian and I had practical experience in the theatre. That was very important.

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Here they come – actor Stephen Rea and playwright Sam Shepard, both at the top of their game, both internationally celebrated, both Kicking a Dead Horse.

Rea began his career at the Abbey Theatre, but it ignited in London at the Royal Court and the National Theatre where he acted in the Irish classics as well as the plays of great contemporary dramatists – Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard. In 1980, he founded the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry with playwright Brian Friel to premiere Translations and present the play throughout the North at a time when audiences there had few chances to participate in any theatrical experience, let alone one so relevant. Rea devoted himself to Field Day throughout the ’80s and early ’90s doing little film work. The major exception was Angel (1982), the start of a collaboration with director and writer Neil Jordan.

It would be Jordan’s film The Crying Game (1992), for which Rea received both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor, that brought the actor worldwide attention. Hollywood came calling and Rea has appeared in big movies, most recently V for Vendetta and The Reaping, Stephen Rea as Hobart but he continued to live in Struther in Sam Ireland where he has lent his Shepard’s Kicking a talent and prestige to many Dead Horse. small, independent films (including Proud, the film I directed about the role of African Americans in World War II) as well as creating a great body of work with Jordan such as The Butcher Boy, Michael

Photo: Ros Kavanaghl

Brian Friel is completely in touch with the psyche of the nationalist people.

He writes from that understanding.

Translations received an amazing response first in Derry and then in country towns throughout the Six Counties.

The audiences really knew what it was about. It was about them. It was very exciting. The plays were also an invitation to look beyond experience.

I remember that Gerard McSorley was in the third production, Communication Card. We were in Maghera in County Derry and he was eating his Chinese meal at 6:30. He looked up to me and said, “I don’t know what we’re doing here” and I said, “You’ll see.”

The audience was amazing, and afterwards he said to me, “Now I see.”

Having the audience as a context like

Collins, Interview with a Vampire, and The End of the Affair. He also continued acting and directing on the stage in Ireland and London.

Sam Shepard started his career off-off Broadway with plays that woke up the American theater. Major awards came – a Pulitzer for his 1979 play Buried Child, Obies and Drama Circle awards for Fool for Love (1982) and A Lie of the Mind (1985) and critical and popular acclaim for True West (1984). Shepard, like Rea, made movies, as a screenwriter on Paris, Texas and Robert Altman’s Fool for Love, and as an actor in films such as The Right Stuff, Resurrection, Steel Magnolias and The Pelican Brief. Like Rea, he continued to work in the theater – writing and directing new plays even as his work entered the canon and he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

And now with Kicking a Dead Horse, both men have chosen to return to the essentials of drama – an actor, a stage, a passion. Shepard wrote this scathing, funny, sad look at a middle-aged man of wealth who tries to find solace in his cowboy roots only to . . . But enough. I mustn’t give it away because the play is coming to New York next summer. It engaged Irish audiences in its world premiere on the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre in March and April and returns to the Abbey main stage this September.

Rea welcomed me to his home outside of Dublin where he talked about how the play (which Shepard wrote for Rea), has allowed him to reconnect to the theater.

roars of laughter because the audience knew the Quinns and Devlins were still at it.

You played Hugh O’Neill. that, so much a part of the work you are doing, is unique. It must have been what the Abbey was like in the beginning.

We brought Brian’s Making History to Dungannon. The play is the story of Hugh O’Neill, the Irish chieftain who the English made the Earl of Tyrone.

Dungannon was his seat of power and the audience there laughed at things because they knew them to be true. Four hundred years is not such a long time.

There was a throwaway line about the Quinns and Devlins fighting that got

Yes. It was a difficult role for me.

He was a man poised between two cultures – [a character that was] hard to write and hard to act. Hugh O’Neill was supposed to speak with a very English accent. Today, that means a certain southern English received pronunciation and accent, which is not at all the robust way the English spoke at the time of Elizabeth the First. HibernoEnglish is closer to Shakespeare, which is why I think Irish people can do Shakespeare very well, but in the play I was supposed to have this upper-class accent and I found I had difficulty retain2007 OCTOBER / NOVEMBER IRISH AMERICA 71

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ing my Irishness while playing Hugh. It was of course, emblematic of everything I felt about my career. I didn’t become an English actor because I couldn’t remain myself. It was different in End of the Affair where I played an English civil servant. Part of that character is based in the frozen parts of the language, and I was able to do that. But I couldn’t play Hugh O’Neill with an English accent, I just couldn’t. And it was only a device in the play, because he would have been speaking Gaelic.

Wasn’t it during this period that you did your first movie, Angel, with Neil Jordan where you played a young musician against the background of the Troubles?

Yes. It was a very fortunate accident. I was working full-time with Field Day and was scheduled to appear in Brian Friel’s version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. But the person that we wanted to direct it didn’t want to do it, and so I directed it. Once the play opened I was free, and that was exactly when Neil was starting Angel. It was fortuitous or serendipity or whatever you call it.

Had you known Neil Jordan?

I had known Neil as a writer. He is a great writer. I think part of the reason why people like his movies is because he structures them like great writing.

In The Crying Game the structure mirrors the movement of the characters and the movement of the ideas. Not very many people can do that – you have to be versed in literature. I did another movie with Neil called Company of Wolves in 1985, but I was really just so involved with Field Day that it was 1992 before I did The Crying Game. But since then I’ve made a lot of movies with Neil.

72 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

PHOTOS LEFT TO RIGHT: Neil Jordan and Stephen Rea on the set of The Butcher Boy. As Fr. Costigan in 2007’s The Reaping.

With Irish actor Aidan Quinn.

When The Crying Game was released you were making your Broadway debut in Someone to Watch Over Me. You received Oscar, Golden Globe and Tony nominations for Best Actor in 1992. What was that like?

That was unique. I was unknown in America. Then I had what they call a double-whammy. Suddenly people knew who I was, and I was immensely grateful for that. I’ve always found that American audiences are more sympathetic than English ones. They get it.

When did you discover you were an actor?

You don’t really discover you’re an actor; it’s something you have. It’s the kind of imagination you have. You read literature and you see it dramatized in your head.

I’ve been acting for a long time now and sometimes you don’t feel as close, but I’m beginning to feel close again.

Context is important. My context as an actor was Field Day and Derry. It was where I had my two feet on the ground, knew where I was at, and had my head in the right place. And I felt the same thing in New York.

Why do you think that is?

Van Morrison used to always say that he went to London and nothing really happened, and then he went to America and it all happened. It’s partly about how you are in the culture.

As much as I enjoy my work on the English stage and my sense of companionship with theater people in London, they hold you at arm’s length. You’re the subculture. They don’t mind you being Irish as long as you pretend you’re English and totally compromise your

Irishness. New York was different. It felt like home. And, it still does. And that’s why I’m looking forward to doing this play at the Public Theater next year.

The perfect segue. So let’s talk about Kicking a Dead Horse, the play Sam Shepard wrote for you. How did it come about?

Fiach Mac Conghail, who is the artistic director of the Abbey, is now focusing on the people who do it – the actors. He’s fixed the auditorium, made it wonderfully intimate. I stood on the stage next to him – he was very nervous about it – and he said, “What do you think?”

I said, “You’ve handed the power back to the actor.” Because you can really act on that stage now: It [the new auditorium] was like physical evidence of something that was being attempted.

Fiach wanted to do all of Sam Shepard’s plays. I’d worked with Sam. He directed me in Geography of a Horse Trainer, which had its world premiere in London at the Royal Court, and I was in several of his plays – Action at the Royal Court and Buried Child and Killer’s Head at the Hampstead Theatre. I directed a play of his called Little Ocean, while Sam was still living in London.

Fiach was having meetings with Sam and they talked about me. Sam said, “Why don’t I write a play for Stephen?”

What was it like working on Kicking a Dead Horse?

It was great. I felt connected to theater in a way I hadn’t for some years. The Abbey has been transformed, and I feel that it’s the place to be. It was fantastic to spend four weeks with Sam, he and I alone in a rehearsal room. It was like real work again, you know, real work.

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Was it demanding?

Incredibly. Particularly because we were doing something for the first time. Even the text was developing.

Sam was changing things all the time. I knew all my lines on day one. I had to have the text memorized. I couldn’t be learning it as we were rehearsing. But then, of course, it just kept changing. I really started to learn about it [the play] when we opened. That’s the way it works. Doing it at that heightened level of concentration that the performance gives you is when you really learn it.

Irish audiences aren’t always sure what Kicking a Dead Horse is about, because it’s about America. American audiences will get it intuitively, through osmosis as well as through the intellect. They’ll get that it’s about them and about the failure of mythology to sustain people. In this character, Hobart Struther, Sam found the physical manifestation of a man who’s divesting himself of all of the things that he feels don’t mean anything to him anymore.

The published text of the play is dedicated to you.

It’s a huge privilege and an honor for Sam to have written a play for me or, at least, have asked me to be in the first production. These things are always chemical, you know. We hit it off right from the word go in London. He’s very interested in Beckett and I am too.

I worked with Sam Beckett, and Sam’s overawed by that. Not much gets to him, but it gets to him that I actually worked with Beckett. He can’t believe that he missed the production.

How did that come about?

The Royal Court was going to do a production of Endgame, and had Jack MacGowran been alive, he would have reprised his role as Clov along with Pat Magee, who was the great definitive Hamm, but Jack died when he was making The Exorcist. Jack got me my first role in London. He was kind of a mentor to me. I wrote to him when I first got to London, and he came and met me in this coffee shop on Marylebone High Street.

He was playing Seamus Shields in Shadow of a Gunman at the Mermaid Theatre and he offered me the role of Tommy Owens. I said, “Don’t you want me to audition?” and he said, “You are presented with professional credentials.”

74 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Ros Kavanaghl

»»»»

Stephen Rea in The Abbey Theatre’s production of Kicking a Dead Horse.

Sam Shepard – the three defining playwrights of the mid-twentieth century.

What was Beckett like?

So, in 1976, when they were going to do Endgame at the Royal Court I was called in to meet the great Donald McWhinnie who had actually commissioned plays from Beckett. Donald was a BBC producer and when he read Beckett’s novels he said, “Oh I could get a play from this guy.” He knew Beckett before he was a world figure. So there I was with Pat Magee and McWhinnie who had known Beckett from his earliest times. I was in the room with these guys and I was 28, too young for the role. But Donald didn’t audition me either! He just said, “Well, do you want to take this?” “Yeah.” I said.

“Why did you think of me?” He said, “Well, I just asked the casting people to get me an Irish actor who was funny.”

Later I got a message from Jack’s widow, Gloria, to say Jack would have been proud. I have an enormous connection to Jack. He was the great transforming Irish character actor. They couldn’t see who Jack was at the Abbey. He was just a funny little character man and he went to England and transformed it all.

He went to Paris and studied mime and there he was, the great interpreter of the great dramatist of the 20th century. Jack had it. If you hear him doing Beckett now on recordings, there’s still nothing to touch it. He’s close to the malice and the anger and the frustration that’s at the heart of it all – completely unsentimental.

Did Beckett direct you in Endgame?

Yes. I am fortunate to have been directed

by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and

Charming. Funny. Only interested in the jokes. Not interested in meaning, just jokes, and structure, structure. The famous thing about Beckett is that he loved this phrase of St. Augustine: “Do not despair.

One of the thieves was saved. Do not presume. One of the thieves was damned.”

There’s a reference to the two thieves in Kicking a Dead Horse.

Sam said, “Well, Beckett always loved the two thieves.” The influence of Beckett on Sam is a very harmonious one. It’s not strained or contrived.

To be in this play, Kicking a Dead Horse, is to be alive on a stage in great literature. I’ve spent my life doing that. I can hardly believe it. It’s transformative every time you do it. I’ve been in some of the greatest theater literature that has ever been.

When I did the movie Bloom, based on Ulysses, every day I was entering this work of great literature, truly great literature. And that’s a thrill you don’t get in movies very often. You get it in theater a lot if you are doing Chekhov, Friel, Shepard, or Beckett. And I’ve spent my life doing this work.

What sustains you?

I suppose the thing about acting is that it’s so easy to lose faith with something so intangible. It’s so subject to exploitation. But I always liked what Martin Hayes the fiddler said. He’s very much in touch with the old musicians of Ireland that used to just play in houses. They were geniuses, but they didn’t make records. He says, “You have to be very careful when you accept money for anything, because your work becomes dependent. You’re performing for somebody and not just for yourself.” That’s the tension that exists for actors all the time. So it’s a wonderful return for me, to be working with Sam Shepard. The work is so much bigger than any commercial process. Friel’s work is bigger. Beckett’s work is bigger. That’s what sustains you.

Kicking a Dead Horse is that kind of work. Though I think sometimes people are most impressed by the fact that you’ve learned all the lines.

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HISTORY

The

First Family

Before the Kennedys of Boston, there were the Carrolls of Maryland.

Tom Deignan looks at triumphs and tragedies of America’s first Irish dynasty.

76 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

A painting of Charles Carroll as a young man.

The Carroll Mansion today.

Catholic signed the famous document: Charles Carroll. When the Archdiocese of Baltimore was established in 1789, it was another member of the sprawling family, John Carroll, who was selected to lead it as Archbishop.

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Daniel Carroll, a land baron whose holdings stretched into what is today’s Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of Carroll Museum, Inc.

B

ack in July, Bronx Irish Catholic Edwin F. O’Brien, after a 40-year career as a priest, military chaplain and aide to two cardinals, was named the new Archbishop of Baltimore.

The archdiocese O’Brien will lead numbers more than a half-million Catholics, with 200 priests, five Catholic hospitals, two seminaries and 151 parishes, including two cathedrals, The Baltimore Sun noted.

O’Brien said he will focus on getting to know the priests of his new archdiocese, which covers nine Maryland counties and the city of Baltimore.

As O’Brien becomes more familiar with his new home, he will inevitably make one important discovery. Though it is rarely mentioned in the same breath as New York, Boston or Chicago, Baltimore is historically one of the most important Irish-American cities in the U.S. To begin with, Baltimore is named after a village in Ireland. It is also the oldest Catholic archdiocese in America, and was long seen as a place of refuge for Irish immigrants who felt the sting of discrimination.

Most importantly, Baltimore has long been associated with America’s first great Irish-American family. Long before the Kennedys built their powerful dynasty from the slums of Boston, the Carrolls of Maryland amassed great influence inside the church and in society at large. By 1776, when America’s Declaration of Independence was announced, just one

These days, with a spiritual leader named O’Brien and an ex-mayor (now Maryland governor) named O’Malley, Baltimore retains its heavily Irish flavor.

Thousands descended upon Canton Waterfront Park on September 14 and 15 for the annual Baltimore Irish festival which celebrated Irish music and culture.

But it is in Baltimore’s past that a fascinating, often forgotten slice of IrishAmerican history resides. Some people have argued that you can use the Kennedy family to understand the history of the Irish in post-Famine America.

It is not an exaggeration to say that you can look at the Carrolls and their experiences in Baltimore to understand Irish Catholic history in America prior to the Famine.

So who were the Carrolls? Where in Ireland did they come from? Why did they settle in Maryland? And why was Baltimore so important to Irish Catholics in general?

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Irish America

Roots in Cork

A Safe Haven Why did Charles select what today is the state of Maryland?

Maryland had a long tradition of reli-

blend of Irish and English Catholics, not to mention Irish and English (and Scottish) Protestants, suggests that some people did manage to get along and establish a certain level of peace in the New World.

Along with the tradition of religious tolerance established by Cecil Calvert (Sir George’s son), Baltimore’s geographical location, a substantial distance from the Northeast and bordering on the American South, presumably helped the city avoid some of the problems of New England, where a more rigid form of puritanism held sway.

After all, 1688, the year Charles the Settler came to the U.S., was the same year a devout Catholic and Gaelic-speaking Irish woman named Goody Glover was hanged as a witch in Boston.

Courtesy: Library of Congress.

Baltimore, Maryland was established as a city in 1729, and (according to The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America) was named after a port town in West Cork. The name Baltimore is derived from the Gaelic baile an tigh mór, meaning “the village near the big house.” By that time the Carrolls had already established themselves as an influential family with extensive landholdings in the Maryland area.

In Ireland, the Carrolls had dominated a region encompassing parts of Counties Laois, Offaly and Tipperary, Timothy J. Meagher writes in The Columbia Guide to Irish American History.

The Carrolls, however, paid dearly for their devout Catholicism in Ireland and the U.S. “The Carrolls’ position as Catholic outsiders in Protestant Maryland and their conscious memory of their family’s long, bitter, and ultimately futile struggle against conquest and dispossession in Ireland provide more than a different perspective on early American society,” Ronald Hoffman writes in his 2001 study Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782.

“Threatened relentlessly between 1500 and 1782, first by the territorial ambitions of rival clans, then because of their stubborn attachment to their Gaelic heritage, and finally for their defiant adherence to Catholicism — both in Ireland and in Maryland — the Carrolls consistently developed strategies comparable to those used by their ancestors, confronting each peril with compromise, cunning, implacable will, and a tenacious determination to survive.”

Driven from Ireland by conflict with English Protestants, Charles Carroll left Litterluna, in present-day Offaly, and settled in the American colonies.

gious tolerance, which was forged by the Catholic Calvert family. It was Sir George Calvert who, in 1635, had successfully petitioned King Charles I to establish a colony called the Province of Maryland where Catholics could live freely.

Throughout the 17th century, as Protestants and Catholics across the British Empire battled for supremacy, Maryland and its fledgling port city of Baltimore was seen as a relatively safe haven for Catholics in the American

A stained glass window depicts Charles Carroll signing the Declaration of Independence.

colonies.

As it turned out, Charles Carroll (known as “The Settler”) picked a bad time to come to Maryland. Initially, he was named the colony’s attorney general (serving under the third Lord Baltimore).

However, England’s so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 ushered in yet another era of Catholic subservience and Protestant ascendancy, which made its way to the colonies as well.

Still, though Catholics were disenfranchised, the Baltimore region remained a relatively good place for Irish Catholics, as evidenced by the landholdings and fortunes established by Charles Carroll and his two sons Charles (born in 1702) and Daniel (born 300 years ago, in 1707).

Indeed, despite the swirling religious acrimony of the era, which pit Catholics against Protestants, Baltimore’s diverse

Baltimore’s Irish Foundation Well into the 1700s, Catholics were forbidden to attain a good education or hold public office.

Still, having attracted prominent families such as the Carrolls (who were educated in Europe), as well as Irish Catholic immigrants of more modest means, Baltimore was transforming into a bustling city by the middle of the 18th century.

St. Peter’s on Charles Street was built in 1770 and became the city’s central Catholic church. Around the same time, future Archbishop John Carroll and his brother Daniel built a chapel in Rock Creek, Maryland to serve Catholics in the area.

It is important to note that Irish Protestants also flocked to Baltimore.

Many of the most prominent Irish in early Baltimore were Presbyterian, The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America notes. In 1761 nine or ten Scots-Irish families formed Baltimore’s First Presbyterian Church. Baltimore’s first mayor, the Irish-born John Calhoun, emerged from this church.

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America’s First Catholic Diocese

Courtesy: Archdiocese of Baltimore

debate, the Carrolls entered the fray.

They, along with many other Irish Catholics, argued that freedom from Britain and its Old-World religious conflicts would actually encourage greater religious tolerance in the New World.

“America may come to exhibit a proof to the world, by general and equal toleration, by giving a free circulation to fair argument, is the most effectual method to bring all denominations of Christians to a unity of faith,” John Carroll wrote in his much-discussed book An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America. (John was motivated to write the book not by some antiIrish nativism but by another relative named Charles, who had left the church and become anti-Catholic.)

John and yet another cousin named Charles (this one was the Settler’s grandson, born in 1737) played central diplomatic roles in the buildup to the U.S. war for independence. Both accompanied Benjamin Franklin on an official visit to Canada in 1776.

Charles risked his life and fortune by signing the Declaration of Independence, the only Catholic to do so.

TOP: A portrait of of Archbishop John Carroll

by American artist Gilbert Stuart, c. 1803-05. LEFT: A Vatican-issued postage stamp of Archbishop John Carroll to commemorate the bicentennial of the Catholic hierarchy in America.

1801, and would preside over a family that played key roles in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O).

The Hibernian Society of Baltimore was founded in 1803. The group’s president was John Campbell, a veteran of the 1798 uprising in Ireland.

Nativist Action

All in all, the first several decades of the By 1789, John Carroll was the logical 1800s seemed to bear out Cecil choice to lead Baltimore’s growing Calvert’s vision of religious tolerance Catholic community. from nearly two centuries earlier. Of Carroll, who served as Archbishop course, things were not so simple. In the until his death in 1815, gave future 1830s, there were bursts of anti-Irish American Catholic leaders a blueprint when it came to establishing a Catholic diocese. A The Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad Museum. fierce proponent of education, he pushed for the creation of what would later become Georgetown University. In 1809, he also encouraged Elizabeth Seton to establish the American Sisters of Charity for the education of girls.

Charles Carroll, meanwhile, was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate as well as the Maryland state senate.

The Carrolls, however, were just the most prominent of many Irish contributors to the area.

County Down native Robert Garrett came to Baltimore in 78 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

and anti-Catholic prejudice in Baltimore, as there were across the country. One particularly ugly episode was the so-called Carmelite Riots of 1839, when a great mob attacked the Carmelite convent for three days. These followed a familiar pattern of antiCatholic violence in America, when Protestants came to believe Catholics coerced women into becoming nuns.

The infamous Know Nothing movement of the 1850s also hit home in Baltimore.

Worse, a distant member of the Carroll clan, Anna Ella Carroll (who had left the Catholic church), publicly supported the Know Nothings.

But the Irish kept coming, especially once the Famine struck. In the 1850s and 1860s, before the American Civil War, nearly 70,000 new Catholics entered Baltimore, the majority of whom were Irish.

The B&O railroad was a steady source of employment for the Baltimore Irish.

Not surprisingly, Charles Carroll was a key investor in the venture.

Honoring the Irish Five years ago, Baltimore’s Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum at Lemmon Street opened. The site honors the laborers who flocked to southwest Baltimore in the 1840s. Around this time, a new St. Peter’s Church was also built to serve the rapidly growing Irish Catholic population in the city’s western neighborhoods. A young Irish priest named Edward McColgan led the flock.

The Sisters of Mercy (originally formed in Dublin) also established numerous local missions and schools to teach and tend to the needs of these newly arrived Irish.

Church, labor, education – as in many other big U.S. cities, this was the Baltimore Irish recipe for advancement.

One of the most important advocates for Irish Catholic education throughout the mid-19th century was Emily Harper MacTavish, who donated land and funds to many projects.

Then again, MacTavish came from a long line of strivers. Her grandfather was a prominent Baltimore citizen, a senator and signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence named Charles Carroll.

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BILLIONAIRE WHO WASN’T The Billionaire Who Wasn’t by Conor O’Clery, tells the story of Chuck Feeney, a young Irish-American, who became rich beyond his dreams, only to give it all away through his fund Atlantic Philanthropies. The following excerpt opens just after Feeney has graduated from Cornell College in 1965 with a degree in hotel administration.

B

80 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

By midsummer of 1956, Chuck Feeney still had no idea what to do with his diploma. But after Cornell he felt confident he could go anywhere in the world. He had a bankroll of $2,000 based on his casino winnings, and he still had four months left of the thirty-six months of government money from his GI scholarship. To claim the remainder, however, he had to enroll in a course, either in the United States or abroad. Many hours spent in the Hotel School library reading books on tourism and travel had stimulated his urge to see the world. He had always wanted to go to Europe, and the bankroll was burning a hole in his pocket. He went to the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue and Seventyfourth Street in Manhattan to inquire about tuition fees in French colleges. To his surprise, he learned that university education in France was free. That was even better.

He bought a cheap ticket for a Cunard liner and within a few weeks he was in Paris.

After signing up for a month’s intensive course in French at the Sorbonne, he wrote off to colleges in Grenoble and Strasbourg asking for admission.

In early September 1956, the secretary in the admissions office of Grenoble University in southeast France looked up to find the twenty-five-year-old crew-cut American in her office. “Here I am, I want to register for the school, for the political science department,” said Feeney in heavily accented French. “The dean sees no one,” she replied stiffly. “Well, I’m here,” he said.

“I kept sitting there reading my magazine and this guy kept shuffling in and out of the room,” recalled Feeney. Finally, in some exasperation, the secretary said, “The dean will see you.” “Naturellement,” replied Feeney. In his office the dean said, “Monsieur Feeney, you are an interesting candidate.”

“Yes, I appreciate that!” “You see, you are the first person to request admission to the political science school of Strasbourg and send the letter to Grenoble!” Feeney had put his application letters in the wrong envelopes. He shot back. “Yes, but it’s evident I’m here and it’s here I want to be. If I wanted to go to Strasbourg I would not be in Grenoble.” The dean threw up his hands. “Why not!” he said. He admitted Feeney for a master’s course in political science at the fourteenth-century university. The Cornell graduate was the only American in the department, something of which he was always proud.

Life was cheap in Grenoble, spectacularly sited in a broad valley surrounded by the snow-capped French Alps. Feeney’s basic living costs came to about $15 a month. His French, tennis, and skiing improved considerably. The U.S. government inexplicably sent him $110 scholarship checks for six months rather than four. Someone up there likes me, thought Feeney.

At the end of his eight-month course, Feeney hitchhiked south with his kit and tennis racquet, looking for money-making opportunities. Getting rides was difficult as there were so many people on the roads holding up handwritten signs to show their destination. Outside Antibes, he displayed a notice in large letters on his tennis racket saying, “English conversations offered.”

He had no trouble getting a lift after that.

On the Mediterranean Coast, Feeney met an American who was teaching children of naval officers from the U.S. fleet based at Villefranche-sur-Mer, a picturesque port of eighteenth-century houses and steep cobblestone alleyways. Villefranche was the home port of the USS Salem, a heavy cruiser serving as the flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet with a complement of nearly 2,000 officers and enlisted personnel. “I started to realize there were these naval depend-

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military supplier, Saccone & Speed, to work with him and had gone out on his own. He desperately needed an American to help him.

“There’s a big fleet movement, forty ships are coming in,” he told Feeney. “I can only see twenty. I’m looking for a guy that can see the other twenty.” “What do you mean?” asked Feeney. “Go and talk to them about buying booze.”

Feeney and Edmonds started going on board ships to take orders from the crew members, mainly for Canadian Club whiskey and Seagram’s VO. They then arranged for the liquor to be shipped to U.S. ports from warehouses in Antwerp and Rotterdam. There was no need for capital, as they did not have to pay for the merchandise in advance. For a period they had the market to themselves, but competitors were quick to arrive.

Edmonds went to check out new opportunities in the Caribbean while Feeney went to Edmonds’ home in Hythe in the south of England to process orders.

Feeney returned to Villefranche in October and was told the U.S. Sixth Fleet was heading for Barcelona. He took the train to the Spanish port, only to discover that the ships had been delayed.

Feeney had read in a Cornell alumni bulletin that Robert Warren Miller, another graduate of the Hotel School, had started work at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona. With time to kill, he made his way to the Ritz on the tree-lined Gran Via de les Cortes Catalanes. Entering the lobby, he saw the familiar figure of Miller, with a shock of brown hair and cheeky grin, behind the reception desk.

They hadn’t been friends at Cornell – Miller was a year ahead of Feeney – but Miller recognized the wiry blue-eyed American immediately.

“Feeney,” he said. “What are you doing here?” Replied Chuck, “What are you doing here?”

That casual exchange marked the start of one of the most profitable partnerships in international business history.

IA Photo: Peter Foley

ents around,” said Feeney. “I asked him [the American teacher] what they did in summertime and he said they were at a loose end, so I decided to start up a program like a summer camp for the navy kids.” Feeney had seen a business opening, and a way of being helpful. He rented a room in a pension in Villefranche and organized a summer camp on the beach.

Almost seventy American kids were delivered into his care by grateful Navy parents, and Feeney had to hire four other Americans as staff.

In Villefranche, Feeney made a deal with the tennis club manager to sweep the courts in return for playing for free. On the courts he met André Morali-Daninos, a French Algerian psychiatrist on Chuck Feeney in 2005. vacation who was intrigued by the young, educated American doing couple of weeks in August, Feeney made a job young French students would some extra money by managing the disdain. Morali-Daninos was a highly “navy locker club” for Podolin in the decorated war veteran who had joined evenings, opening up the lockers for the French Resistance during World War sailors coming and going to the bars.

II and had brought his family to Paris in As the summer ended, Feeney planned 1945. They came to Villefranche for to head north again. He loved the student their summer holidays, and in those days life and “had enough money squirreled before mass tourism, the family usually away that I could have gone to a German had the beach to themselves. university.” However, one night in a Morali-Daninos’s twenty-three-yearVillefranche bar he met an Englishman, old daughter, Danielle, a student at the Bob Edmonds, who was trying to start a Sorbonne in Paris, was somewhat disbusiness selling duty-free liquor to concerted therefore at the invasion of the American sailors at ports around the beach by dozens of screaming and Mediterranean. He asked Feeney to help whistling children with their American him. counselors. She was particularly struck, The U.S. Navy did not allow the conhowever, by the kindness and firmness sumption of alcohol on board, but with which the good-looking group Edmonds had established that sailors leader treated the children. The vivacould buy up to five bottles of spirits duty cious French Algerian and the twentyfree and have them shipped as unaccomsix-year-old Irish American got to talkpanied baggage to their home port. It ing, and a romance started up. could be a big market: There were fifty In Villefranche, Feeney came into conships in the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the tact with people making a living from the Mediterranean and the crews were rotatU.S. Sixth Fleet. Groups of pretty ed three times a year. The savings for the women and salesmen waylaid the sailors military personnel were huge, and almost and hustled for orders to supply the every seaman on board could afford to ship’s exchange store. He got to know a buy a five-pack for collection back in the money changer named Sy Podolin who United States. A five-pack bought duty had bought up a row of old lockers and free in Europe cost $10, including delivrented them to naval personnel so they ery, while the same five bottles in the could dump their uniforms and change United States would cost over $30. into civvies when on shore leave. For a Edmonds had failed to convince a British

The above excerpt from The Billionaire Who Wasn’t is published with permission from PublicAffairs Publishers.

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ROOTS

Clan Harrington

Photo: Jimmy Cribb, Atlanta Falcons

Sports players, academics, actors, politicians, and poker players. By Liam Moriarty.

The Barony of Kinalmeaky, County Cork, has one of the highest concentrations of the name Harrington, the Irish family name not be confused with the English Harrington. Although some Harringtons living in Ireland undoubtedly come from English heritage, the Irish name in Gaelic was originally O HIongardail, which became anglicized as O’Hungerdell and then Harrington.

In another branch of the family, the name was more commonly anglicized as Heraghty, from the Gaelic word hOireachtaigh, meaning “holding of many assemblies.” The Heraghty name is found in Mayo and Cork. A third strand stems from the O hArrachtains, anglicized to Harraughton, a synonym of Harrington found in the Dingle area of County Kerry.

Some Scots-English Harringtons are believed to have fought with Strongbow (Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke), during his invasion of Ireland. These Harringtons, or the Strath-Clyde Britons, were originally from an area around Glasgow, Scotland. Records show that in reward for military service they were granted lands in southern Ireland. Other Harringtons, from the Cumberland area, were also brought to Ireland as part of British resettlement efforts.

In Ireland’s political history, Timothy Charles Harrington is one of the most famous Harringtons.

Born in Castletownbere, County Cork, in 1851, Timothy was a practicing lawyer and owner of two newspapers, The Kerry Sentinel and United Ireland.

He also served as secretary for the Irish National League, a main base of support for the Irish Parliamentary Party, and acted as counsel for Charles Stewart Parnell, the party’s leader. In 1883, he was elected as a representative for Westmeath, and in 1885 he was elected to the Dublin Harbor constituency, a position he held until his death in 1910.

Harrington served as Lord Mayor of Dublin for three years, 1901-1904, and is remembered for refusing to meet with King Edward VII when the king visited Dublin in 1902. The Georgian house 82 OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA

In the world of entertainment, Pat Harrington, Jr. (born 1929) is most famous for his voice work as Inspector Clousseau in the 1960s animated movies, and for his role as Dwayne F. Schneider in the daytime drama One Day at a Time.

While the Harrington clan has certainly made its mark in all manner of pursuits, nowhere is the clan’s prowess more evident than in the world of sport.

In Ireland, Paddy Harrington played Gaelic football for Cork in the 1950s.

His son, Padraig Harrington, is the 2007 British Open Golf Champion and subject of this issue’s cover story (pg.

38). On this side of the pond, Padraig’s cousin, Joey Harrington, Jr. is quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons. Born in Portland, Oregon, Joey’s grandfather and father played quarterback for the universities where Timothy died is now a of Portand and Oregon swanky Dublin hotel called respectively. A story goes Harrington Hall. that upon hearing of his Meanwhile, in New York birth, the Oregon Ducks’ there is a college center coach Len Casanova named for another famous jokingly sent his parents Harrington. a letter of intent.

Michael Harrington (1928Harrington eventually 1989), a professor of political become a three-year science at Queens College, starter for the Oregon New York, was one of the Ducks, earning numermost prominent socialists ous awards. He was and political thinkers of his drafted to the Detroit generation. The St. Louis Joey Harrington in action.

Lions in 2002 as the third Missouri native’s book The overall pick and became Other America: Poverty in the United their starter. After enduring a difficult States had an effect on both the Kennedy couple of seasons, he was traded to the and Johnson administration’s policies to Miami Dolphins. Earlier this year, he combat poverty. The Michael Harrington moved to the Atlanta Falcons and is their Center at Queens College, was named for starting quarterback this season.

Harrington, who died of cancer in 1989.

And finally, one more champion Also in the academic world, two memHarrington who just happens to be a bers of the tribe have put their stamp on cousin of both Padraig and Joey American colleges. The Rev. Donald J. Harrington. Besides being a former Harrington has been President of St. World Series of Poker champion, Dan John’s University, New York, one of the Harrington is a champion backgammon biggest Catholic universities in the counplayer, and a U.S. chess master. He try, since 1989. And John P. Harrington, played poker against Bill Gates while Dean of the School of Humanities and Gates was at Harvard, and is the coSocial Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic author of three books on tournament Institute, has written several books on poker. Dan’s live tournament winnings to IA Irish literature, history and culture. date exceed $4,750,000.

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Review of Books

Tom Deignan reviews a selection of recently published books of Irish and Irish-American interest.

Fiction

A

few years back, Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor wrote Star of the Sea, an ambitious, multi-layered novel set mainly during the voyage of an Irish famine coffin ship. The book was a best-seller, despite the fact that it was a demanding read. Using flashbacks, jumbled chronology and other trickery, O’Connor took readers all over the British Isles, and his narrative spanned the better part of the 19th century. So we should not be surprised by O’Connor’s latest effort, the equally challenging Redemption Falls.

On the surface, Redemption Falls explores the lives of numerous Irish characters trying to make new lives during the American Civil War. There’s Eliza Duane Mooney, walking across the country on an epic search, and James Con O’Keeffe, Acting Governor of the frontier territory, which gives O’Connor his title. O’Keeffe’s past in Ireland is a troubled one, and his present in the U.S. is not much better.

A Spanish poet, a former African-American slave and a warhardened Irish drummer boy also figure in O’Connor’s long list of characters. But it is the form of this book that makes it so rewarding. Each character speaks in his own native dialect, while O’Connor employs news reports, posters, songs and more to move his story along.

Redemption Falls is not for those interested in a ripping yarn.

But there are strong hints of Faulkner in this epic, which adds a new layer of complexity to our grasp of the links between Ireland and America. ($25 / 464 Pages / Free Press)

Cora Harrison’s new mystery novel My Lady Judge goes even further back in history than Joseph O’Connor’s Redemption Falls. The novel revolves around a 16th-century judge, named Mara and is set in western Ireland. Mara is forced to abandon her usual practice of settling local squabbles when one of her assistants is assaulted with a knife during a colorful festival.

My Lady Judge is a highly readable mystery based on the actual Brehon Law system which did allow so-called “lady judges.” ($24.95 / 368 pages / St. Martin’s)

Paul Carson’s protagonist Frank Ryan has a problem. Several, in fact. As told in Carson’s new novel Betrayal, Ryan is abducted while performing his duties as a medical officer in a Dublin prison. One problem is that no one believes Ryan’s version of events, in part because his girlfriend seems to have vanished and Ryan may have had something to do with it.

So, in search of answers, Ryan becomes enmeshed in a global mystery. Carson (who is a practicing physician) has drawn comparisons to Michael Palmer and Tess Gerritsen, so if you like those writers, give Carson a try. ($25.95 / 400 pages / St. Martin’s Press)

Highway 23: The Unrepentant by Patrick Carlin, is a historical novel of note. Set during the Korean War, Carlin’s book is about a 20year-old Irish-American named Eddie Flynn, who falls in love while stationed in Michigan.

Complete with disapproving parents, colorful scenery and forbidden passions, Highway 23 is a compelling period love story. ($20.95 / 351 pages / iUniverse)

How the Irish Invented American Slang: The Secret Language

T

he Irish saved civilization, Thomas Cahill told readers in a bestselling book. Did they also invent American slang?

That’s what Daniel Cassidy contends in his fascinating new study How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads.

Cassidy argues that words such as “jazz,” “sucker” and “scam” all derive from the Irish language brought to the U.S. by

immigrants. Cassidy’s study has been making big news in Ireland, in part because it completely reverses previous arguments that the linguistically rich Irish somehow were unable to impact English in the U.S. This never sat well with Cassidy, and as he learned more Gaelic the words seemed very familiar to him. “Was it possible that some of the slang words and phrases that I learned

84 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

as a kid in New York in the 1940s and 1950s were derived from the Irish language?” he writes.

According to Cassidy, the Irish changed English in the U.S. so thoroughly that it was hard to detect.

“Americans speak Irish every day, but they do not dig (from the Irish tuig, which means understand or comprehend) it.”

Cassidy has the right background for this undertaking. He is founder and

co-director of An Leann Eireannach, the Irish Studies Program at New College of California in San Francisco.

He has written about the Irish language in U.S. and Irish publications and now his research is gathered in this single volume with an Introduction by acclaimed author Peter Quinn. How the Irish Invented Slang, however, is no dry linguistic study.

Cassidy also explores the gritty Irish urban underworld where slang was born

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Memoir

Non-Fiction

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For better or worse, Rosemary wo Irish-American women have recently told their personal stories of family and perMahoney will forever be rememseverance. First there’s Circling My Mother bered for Whoredom in Kimmage,

by Mary Gordon, one of the great chroniher 1994 study of sex and gender clers of Catholic America. Gordon’s mother Anne in Ireland. Mahoney’s latest book died in 2002, and the writer explores the world of Down the Nile: Alone in a blue-collar ethnic Catholicism which shaped her and also left an Fisherman’s Skiff is quite differindelible mark on her daughter Mary. Gordon’s work can seem harsh, ent, though not entirely. but here, her words are imbued with wisdom, love and compassion.

Mahoney has long been an avid rower, and the ($24 / 272 pages / Pantheon) book began when she set out to purchase an Egyptian rowboat and sail the ancient river, the world’s longest. For this reader, an account of Carole O’Malley Gaunt’s Hungry Hill is a coming-ofsomeone floating down a river seemed less than age memoir in which the world of high school fascinating. However, when your guide is as dances and budding romance is shattered by the learned, humorous and observant as Mahoney, the death of the author’s mother. Seven brothers and trip becomes a worthwhile one. an alcoholic father become Gaunt’s reality in this So, how is this similar to Whoredom in harsh yet poignant book set in the working-class Kimmage? Well, it turns out even a simple ride Irish world of Springfield, Massachusetts. down a river can be loaded with cultural questions $19.95 / 284 pages / University of Massachusetts Press) related to sex and gender and culture.

Suffice it to say a lone Western woman rowing herself down the Nile is not a sight to which Egyptians are accustomed. Mahoney is forced to keep this a secret? Why does this billionaire refuse to spend confront and navigate numerous cultural questions that are nearmoney on first class travel or even a car or house? O’Clery, the ly as troubling as the crocodiles in the Nile. ($23.99 / 288 pages / Little, Brown) award-winning Irish Times journalist, attempts to answer these questions. He also notes that Feeney, now in his mid-seventies, Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey during the Great has a new project: spending the remaining four billion of his Depression, Irish-American Chuck Feeney fortune while he is still alive. ($26.95 / 352 pages / PublicAffairs) went on to become one of the richest men in the U.S. He made a fortune owning and operatA dark moment in Irish history is explored in ing Duty Free Shoppers, a chain of affordable The Killing of Major Dennis Mahon, by Peter retail stores.

Duffy. Mahon was ambushed and killed durBut these are not the most fascinating details ing a roadside attack in 1847, during the height located in The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, Conor of the Irish Famine. Mahon controlled land on O’Clery’s biography of Feeney. The world discovered in 1997 which some 12,000 peasants struggled mightthat Feeney was also one of the world’s great philanthropists, a ily to scratch out a meager existence. fact he managed to keep secret until he sold much of his busiWhat precisely spurred Mahon’s killers? ness interests. It was then that Atlantic Philanthropies, Feeney’s Were they justified? These are some of the questions Duffy charitable operation, became known to the public. Why did he explores in a fair and balanced manner.

The book also takes a close look at the trial of Mahon’s killers, and how prejudices of the day and other factors played out in the courtroom. and became a kind of ($25.95 / 352 pages / HarperCollins)

of the Crossroads code language to deceive various authorities.

What are some other slang words and phrases the Irish gave to the U.S.?

“Baloney,” as in nonsense; the phrase “mind your own bee’s wax”; “cold turkey,” as in to quit; and even “Gee Whiz.”

Cassidy has come across some interesting discoveries in this provocative study, which combines dif ferent strands of Irish-

American history. ($18.95 / 224 pages / Counterpunch)

Irish Times journalist Patsy McGarry also has a fascinating story of crime and punishment to recount in While Justice Slept: The True Story of Nicky Kelly and the Sallins Train Robbery.

This story has been called Ireland’s own great miscarriage of justice, on par with the Guildford Four/IRA scandal in Britain.

Though he signed a confession, Kelly is believed to have been innocent of involvement in the infamous 1978 train robbery. Kelly was officially pardoned in 1992.

McGarry takes an authoritative look at what happened not just during the robbery and ensuing trial but the fallout, public reacIA tion and Kelly’ s crusade for exoneration. ($24.95 / 262 pages / Dufour) OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 85

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MUSIC

Home Is Where The Music Is! Ian Worpole talks to Cathie Ryan and reviews the latest Irish music releases.

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y mum had a phrase that fascinated me – whenever something like the vacuum cleaner showed signs of failure, she would say, “Oh, it’s going home.” I’ve always had a vision of what a strange and wonderful place that particular Home may be, filled with weary appliances. It’s a powerful phrase, and as I grew older and maybe wiser, I realized it is more usually indicative of the human condition, of finding one’s place in the world.

Ireland as Home seems to hold a particularly special place in the hearts of millions, and it was with great pleasure that I was recently invited to the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI), which promotes Arts in Education, to hear and talk to one of Irish America’s foremost singers, Cathie Ryan.

Some of the Irish-related events the LCI has mounted over the years include a stage production of James Joyce’s Dubliners, traditional Irish music as part of a program called “Duo Loco: A Percussive Explosion,” Irish story-telling, and readings of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. This year’s presentation by Ryan, titled “From Shore to Shore: IrishAmerican Music,” is a return event that had a highly successful tour of schools around the NYC area last year, and it is great fun. Donal Clancy, son of Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem fame (a fact which drew a gasp of recognition from the crowd), accompanied Cathie on guitar, with Ben Power, a fine flute player from Liverpool, New York fiddler Sara Milonovich, and Scottish guitarist Alan Murray alongside also.

After running through a selection of traditional and original material, Ryan invited questions from the audience, and was immediately grilled about the bodhrán she was playing. Percussion seems to be all, and Cathie detailed how she broke the ice at one school by luring a somewhat recalcitrant group of young kids onto the stage to break dance along to her playing.

I caught up with Cathie before the concert; it had been a breathless few days for her. In addition to the Lincoln Center performance she was back in New York to celebrate and sing at her son’s wedding.

Cathie was born and raised in Detroit by Irish parents who instilled in her a love of Irish music. After a long stint with Cherish the Ladies, and a successful solo career, the longtime New York resident recently moved to Ireland.

86 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

So why the move?

Since I was young I would visit Ireland two or three times a year, and it really did feel like home. My son, now grown and soon to be married, simply said, “Mom, why don’t you move over there, you love it so much.” It was a revelation. After a time, I sold the house in New York and moved my furniture over to a lovely little cottage on the shores of the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth. I wake up in the morning and drink my coffee gazing out at the Irish Sea. Has the move inspired any new songs?

I’m feeling that something new is in the air. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it’s very exciting! For so long, I’ve been on the road more than I’ve been at home. The Farthest Wave was recorded in a rush between tours; now I’m looking forward to having much more time to myself, and writing new material will be an important part of it.

How personal are your songs?

(Laughter.) My really personal songs I only sing at home. But when I’m looking for a song, I look for a universal emotion, something that my audience can relate to,

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The Waterboys and More

Cathie Ryan

S

You have worked with a wealth of great musicians – Seamus Egan, John McCusker, the Rusbies, John Doyle, Donal Clancy, Kris Drever.

It’s a great community.

It is. We all live together when recording an album, and someone will come down in the morning with a new idea to try out – it’s great fun.

When I’m on the road I meet up with friends at festivals and we play some tunes together, it’s wonderful, but I’m also looking forward to some down time when I can just get together with them, without the pressure of being on the road.

Thanks, Cathie, and good luck with your new adventure. I’m sure more than a few of us are dead jealous!

For more information about the LCI, go to: www.Icinstitute.org.

For more information about Cathie, go to: www.CathieRyan.com

in between, with some of the best Waterboy alumni back in the saddle.

Having said that, one or two tracks probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day, but as a whole, the album builds slowly into a full-blown Celtic-rock anthem, peaking with the exhilarating “Everybody Takes a Tumble” with Steve Wickham’s fiddle instantly transporting us back to the glory days. Scott is a man hugely in love with words (“cranium/uranium” – not many people could get away with that!), and the album bears repeated listening, to catch all his usual trickery and ultimately leave us pining for more. wo great new releases from Compass Records this month.

Lightweights and Gentlemen from guitarist and singer Kris Drever with his band, Lau, is a quirky mix of virtuosic traditional and original Irish tunes that twist, turn and thrill with every note.

With Aidan O’Rourke on fiddle and Martin Green on piano accordion, this album is essential listening. And last, but not least, there is A Letter Home (how appropriate!) from fiddler Athena Tergis.

On this, her first solo CD, Tergis is accompanied by Compass’s best, John Doyle, Liz Carroll, and Sharon Shannon amongst many. This is a stunning album

T

Photo: Compass Records

whether it’s my own song, or some other writer like Gerry O’Beirne. I do love the great traditional Irish songs, “Danny Boy” for one, but for the most part I will sing those unaccompanied, sean nós style, and never in a pub!

peaking of Ireland as home, The Waterboys have a new CD out, called The Book of Lightning.

Where to begin with the hugely enigmatic Mike Scott? For he is, by his own proclamation, The Waterboys.

No matter that many other fine musicians have passed in and out of the band, their main purpose has always been to provide any number of backup styles to articulate Scott’s latest visions and fancies. This Is the Sea and In a Pagan Place set the stage in the mid-eighties for a new kind of glam-rock, known as the band’s “Big Music” period. A mix of Bowie, T-Rex and Roxy Music, these albums contained all sorts of oddities, including some serious gems that became the title tracks, and a hit song called “The Whole of the Moon.”

Then a strange thing happened: Scotsman Mike Scott moved to Ireland, and discovered Irish music and musicians. The waves were seismic.

Fisherman’s Blues, followed by Room to Roam, were rollicking albums of Irish folk-rock. The sessions were legendary; so much material was recorded, there are still cuts being released. Suddenly it was cool to like Irish music; it launched the careers of Karl Wallinger (sole

Mike Scott

member of World Party – you know, “Put the Message in the Box”) and Sharon Shannon, who went on to become the biggest-selling traditional Irish musician of all time. Then everyone went home.

But since those heady days Scott has continued to record in his unique and various ways, and now with The Book of Lightning has come full circle with a return to the style of In a Pagan Place, but imbued with all the wisdom learned

of Scottish, Irish, and Cape Breton sets of jigs, reels, and flings. With her exuberant and rousing playing, Tergis seems to be having the time of her life. Rather than attend music school, she spent three years in Ireland playing at sessions before joining the Las Vegas production of Lord of the Dance, followed by Riverdance on Broadway. She is now living and running a recording studio in Italy.

Wow, I’ve figured it out. Home is IA where the music is!

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 87

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CROSSWORD • BY DARINA MOLLOY

ACROSS 1.

4.

6.

8.

Defunct airline (1, 1, 1) To converse with God (4) See 8 across (7) (& 6 across) NY Rose won the day in Tralee (4) 10. Ireland’s national plant (8) 11. Kerry home of the late John B. Keane (8) 12. Male religious (4) 16. Low-ranking officer of U.S. Navy (6) 17. Belfast is in this county (6) 19. This Padraig won the British Golf Open (10) 20. (& 35 across) Matt Damon’s Bond-like alter ego (5) 22. Rosslare is in this county (7) 23. (& 34 across) With Liam Clancy, this late singer revolutionized Irish folk music (5) 25. Unexpected obstacle or difficulty (4) 28. (& 30 down) Former soccer player now a manager (3) 29. West of Ireland town with an airport and a shrine (5) 31. Limerick is in this province (7) 33. Wager (3) 34. See 23 across (5) 35. See 20 across (6) 36. Metal monument in Dublin’s O’Connell Street (5) 37. See 21 down (4)

DOWN 1. Religious sounding new album from Sinead O’Connor (7) 2. Government appointee who represents his country abroad (10) 3. New Waterford Crystal range named for a dance (6) 4. Degree of acidity or alkalinity (2) 5. This NY street is the financial center (4) 7. Traditional Thanksgiving pie (7) 8. Body of still water (4) 9. Irish hand-held drum (7) 10. Cartoon family now on the big screen (8) 13. Much-loved orphan of film fame (5) 14. Picturesque Mayo town (8) 15. See 26 down (5) 18. Irish for Mary (5)

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 Ocotber 19, 2007. A winner will be drawn from among all correct entries received. In the event that there are no 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 next issue. Xerox copies are acceptable.

Winner of the August / September Crossword: Coleman Hession, Springfield, Illinois.

88 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

21. (& 37 across) Mag that shares name with Thackeray novel (6) 22. The Billionaire Who ___; title of new Chuck Feeney bio (5) 24. This O’Malley is Governor of Maryland (6) 26. (& 15 down) Britain’s new Prime Minister (6) 27. Galway home of Saw Doctors (4) 29. Book of ____, kept at Trinity College Dublin (5) 30. See 28 across (5) 32. Tipperary town (5)

August / September Solution:

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When Tommy Makem died on August 1, the world lost not only a great musician and storyteller but an original thinker, who was passionate about Ireland, and unfailingly gracious.

By Terry Golway.

We’ll Not See The Likes of Him Again OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 89

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Tommy was a man of high integrity and honesty and his courage really showed through towards the end.

“We shared a great hunk of our lives together, and we were a hell of a team.

Our paths diverged many times, but our friendship never waned. I suppose he was my brother in every way.

“I think Tommy’s greatest strength was as an entertainer. He just had the knack of making an audience laugh or cry . . . holding them in his hands.

“I learned from Tommy how to handle an audience. I can still see him sitting on a high stool, stilling a packed, noisy hall by tapping out the rhythms of a shoemaker and launching into ‘The Cobbler.’ There was

a great spark between us.”

– Liam Clancy (RTE Radio/Morning Ireland)

I

t was a coincidence, of course, that legendary folk singer Tommy Makem and hotel mogul Leona Helmsley departed this world within two weeks of each other last August. While the two had nothing in common other than their humanity, I can’t think of Tommy without thinking of Helmsley. Odd? Not if you were listening to Tommy 15 years ago, when he routinely worked Helmsley into his rendition of “Isn’t It Grand, Boys.”

I can see it and hear it now: Tommy on the stage at his restaurant in midtown Manhattan, banjo slung across his chest, Ronnie D’Addario playing in the background, and a standing-room-only crowd knowing exactly what was coming and loving it all the same. He’d break into that wonderful Irish song about the charms of being dead, and he’d work his way to the verse about the woman left behind: Look at the widow, Leona Helmsley!

Isn’t it grand, boys, To be bloody well dead.

I must have heard Tommy sing that verse a dozen times back in the days when Helmsley was dubbed the “Queen of Mean,” and it never failed to crack me up. It still does all these years later. It reminds me of Tommy Makem’s irreverence, his politics and his common touch.

Tommy died in early August of lung cancer at the age of 74. A native of County Armagh, Tommy rose to fame when he hooked up with the Clancy brothers of County Tipperary in New York in the mid-1950s. They all wanted to be actors; they found their calling in music. As every fan knows, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem hit the big time on the Ed Sullivan show in 1961 and went on to revolutionize Irish music on both sides of the Atlantic. Tommy left the Clancys in 1969 to pursue a solo

90 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

around the same time, and wound up working just a few blocks from Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavillion, his bar-restaurant on East 57th Street. It became a home away from home, and if memory serves (and it doesn’t always), I probably saw Tommy play at the Pavillion five or six times a year. He was unfailingly gracious and always made mention of the piece I wrote in Irish America. But in person, he was not the outsized personality he appeared to be on stage. Quiet Niall O’Dowd presents Liam Clancy and Tommy and thoughtful, he once got me Makem with their awards at Irish America’s “Irish of the Century” gala dinner in December, 1999. into a conversation about Michael Harrington’s famous book, The career, but reunited with Liam Clancy in Other America, which explored poverty 1975. They toured and recorded together in America in the early 1960s. until 1988.

Tommy’s politics were not hard to figReared in a household that had put ure out. Let’s put it this way: He lived in Ireland in the distant past, I was a lateNew Hampshire, but voted (unless I miss comer to the Clancy and Makem phemy guess) as if he lived in Vermont. nomenon. But once Tommy got my Unlike many entertainers, however, he attention in the mid-1980s, I was hooked. was never in his audience’s face, he was I’m not qualified to tell you about his never self-righteous, and he never competency on the banjo or the penny seemed to believe that he had all the whistle, but I know a storyteller when I answers. He preferred humor to sermohear one. And more than anything else, nizing, but you got his point. Leona Tommy was a storyteller. His most Helmsley wasn’t the only powerful perfamous story was, of course, the ballad son to be satirized on stage at the Irish “Four Green Fields,” and if you never Pavillion. So were President George heard him sing it in person, you missed H.W. Bush and Tommy’s fellow New something special. But he understood Hampshire resident, John Sununu Sr. that every song was a story, and he knew I regret that I didn’t get to know how to convey its plot, its characters, and Tommy better, and earlier, but I’m glad I its message. It didn’t matter whether he caught him when I did. Back in 1988, wrote the song or not. His great baritone Tommy’s wife Mary told me that he and impeccable timing turned even the never seemed more relaxed and more slightest song into a story worth hearing. energized than when he was on stage at I would hardly claim to have been a the Pavillion. Considering how much friend of Tommy Makem, but I knew time I spent there from the early 1980s him a bit, in part thanks to a piece I wrote until it closed several years ago, I take for this magazine when he and Liam comfort in knowing that I heard Tommy Clancy played their last concert together in a place he loved so well. in 1988 at Stonehill College in Best of all, I can still hear him, even Massachusetts. I moved to Manhattan at now.

IA

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Clockwise: Paddy Clancy, Tommy Makem, Liam Clancy and Tom Clancy.

“The death of Tommy Makem is a huge loss for Irish music. He was one of the most influential and talented folk musicians this country has produced. He transported a unique style of music across the world and fostered a love of it in many hearts. He will be sorely

missed.”

– Stephanie O’Callaghan, Arts Council Art Director Ireland

“What the man was all about is love, and he is missed. Tommy was a grand man; a loving father, and a loving husband.

He loved words and he had that very pure love of Ireland – not the rambunctious, fake, patriotic stuff that passes for it.

He suffered fools, not gladly, but suffered them.

Bob Dylan raved about The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in No Direction Home and Chronicles, describing Makem perfectly:

“The singer always had a merry light in his eye, had to have it.”

“Tommy was a wonderful ambassador for Ireland, its music, culture and traditions, through his appearances on

Pretentious associates, he laughed at. Drunks didn’t bother him. He went about his merry way.”

– Malachy McCourt, author, actor, and wit.

Tommy Makem was original and genuine in a genre that is timeless and traditional. He had that rare ability to tap

Now, with his passing, he has left behind a rich and enduring legacy of music, song and story to be enjoyed and appreciated by this generation and generations to come.”

into the empathy, humor and humanity of a song, a story or a poem, and to create a newness in every re-discovery of nature or human nature. Watching his show you were sure that he had been hanging out just the night before with Willie Brennan, Roddy McCorley, and Red Hugh O’Donnell. You had the impression that only that afternoon he had been consoling the old woman over the loss of her fourth green field.

“I warmed up for him a couple times. Drove him back to the Lord Baltimore after his performance at Baltimore Irish Festival one year. He was piecing together the words to a song called “Kitty from Baltimore” and asking me if it’s sung around here. Before a show at Flanagan’s in Bethesda where we opened for him, I interrupted his tune-up time to thank him verbosely for all he’d done for me and people like me who had been playing the music for enjoyment and tuition and livelihood and because of what he’d done for the music in this country. He let me finish, paused a few seconds, and looking over his glasses said with dry understatement, ‘You’re welcome.’”

– Seamus Brennan, The Irish Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism.

– Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, whose band O’Malley’s March opened for Tommy Makem on several occasions.

TV, radio and concert halls throughout the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe.

“Tommy was truly a music legend in his own lifetime.

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SLÁINTE • GOOD CHEER

Ballinasloe’s Great October Fair Edythe Preet writes about Europe’s longest-running horse fair.

An Irish adage advises: Go East for a woman; go West for a horse.

When I was a girl I had a bicycle. I wanted a horse. That was not in the cards for this city child, so I named my bike Lightening and careened about the neighborhood, crouched racing-low over the handlebars, doing daring (so I thought) one-legged pedal stands, hair flying, pulse pounding, and imagining I was galloping over wide-open countryside.

Gerry Stronge Photography

The hustle and bustle of the October fair in Ballinasloe, where Ireland’s splendid horses steal the show.

longest-running horse fair occurs annually in Ballinasloe, County Galway and fortuitously coincided with my time on the island. It zoomed to the top of my Must Do list.

Lying just 40 miles east of Galway, I expected modern horsepower to reduce the one-day horseback trek to less than an hour. Ten miles outside town my zippy little compact was gridlocked in a sea of cars, trucks, and horse trailers. Dusk was settling in when I topped the stone bridge overlooking the Fair Green and gaped at

Hany Mourzuk

92 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

Gerry Stronge Photography

My uncle owned a pair of ponies.

Despite their slight height they looked darn big to me, and I thought my cousin was the luckiest boy in the world. Vivid memories center on the times I accompanied them to the boarding stable where my uncle pooh-poohed my mother’s protests and allowed me to feed his beauties carrots and apples. I can still feel their velvet noses nuzzling my palm, hear their hooves thunk and bridles clink as they trotted out from their stalls, and smell the musky mix of horse and hay.

I grew up hearing stories about ancestors whose lives intertwined with horses: my grandma’s beloved black mare and her cavalry vet father, my dad’s Hansom cabbie patter and famous jockey cousin.

But my urban upbringing never permitted me to become the horsewoman I yearned to be. So I seize every opportunity that comes my way for even the briefest encounters of the equine kind.

Several years ago, while planning a trip to Ireland, I discovered that Europe’s

the sight below. Seemingly shoulder-toshoulder they stood. Huge Clydesdales and petite Connemara ponies. Jumpers, hunters, and thoroughbred racers. Darling docile donkeys. Shaggy massive black and white piebalds, the trademark horse of Ireland’s gypsy Travelers.

That Ballinasloe is a gathering spot is no accident. Beneath the region’s green fields an underpinning of shale left at the retreat of the last Ice Age affords safe passage through the boggy Midlands and easy crossing of the River Suck. For centuries the sure terrain was known as the ‘royal road’ between Connaught and Tara, seat of the Irish kings.

At most times the hamlet is a sleepy one-horse town, but during the Great October Fair the number swells to thousands. Millions of cattle, goats and sheep have traded hands since the event’s inception as a harvest celebration in 1757, but it is Ireland’s magnificent horses that steal the show. And no wonder. The history of the Irish and their horses stretches across centuries. It is a tale of friendships and working partners.

It is a romance born of the land, nurtured

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SLÁINTE

by necessity, and fastened by ancient bonds. It is one of the oldest love stories on earth.

Horses arrived in Ireland long before it became an island. Millennia ago a land bridge connected Ireland to Scotland and another joined Britain to France. From the Asian steppes where the horse originated, herds migrated west. Diggings at Lough Gur, County Limerick and Newgrange, County Meath indicate the Irish had domesticated horses before 2000 B.C. In the ancient Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, the great warrior Cuchulainn rode a chariot pulled by two horses that were equal in size, beauty, and speed.

One was grey, broad in the haunches, fleet and wild. The other was jet black, his head firmly knit, his feet broadhoofed and slender. These steeds were so swift that even the best Ulster horses could not catch them.

A story about the goddess Rhiannon also concerns horses. While she was out riding her magical white mount, a prince tried to capture her. Every time he neared, she sped off and left him in her dust. Finally, the fellow thought maybe he should just ask her to wait. The polite request was exactly what Rhiannon had wanted to hear. When he trotted up beside her, she admonished, “It would have been far better for your horse had you asked long before this.”

More than just legend, horses count as one of Ireland’s most important

industries. This vital economic resource centers on three breeds: the Connemara Pony, the Irish Draught, and the Thoroughbred.

The Connemara is the oldest pure Irish breed. Small native ponies called Breakers were crossed with two imports, Welsh Mountain ponies, which arrived with traders in the seventh century, and Spanish Andalusians brought in over a thousand years later. The Connemara’s size and sure-footed agility made them ideally suited for harvesting and hauling turf from the bogs of West Galway.

The Normans came to Ireland with large-boned Great Horses, which had been bred to carry armored knights.

These behemoths crossed with another small native horse, the Hobby, produced an entirely new breed: the Irish Draught.

This hefty workhorse is tough, agile, intelligent, and well-mannered. It was ideally suited to farm labor, and until tanks replaced cavalry it was the preferred horse of Europe’s cavalries.

During the nineteenth century, as many as 6,000 Irish Draughts changed hands at Ballinasloe in a few days! The most famous steed bought was Marengo, Napoleon’s mount at Waterloo. Local wags boast the Emperor met his defeat because Wellington probably shopped the Fair first. Today the Irish Draught is prized as one of the world’s finest show jumpers.

The Connemara and the Irish Draught

RECIPE

The Bookmaker’s Sandwich NOTE: Before automation, horserace bookmakers were so busy taking bets that they never took time to have a real meal.

1 1-2 1

long crusty loaf of bread, Vienna style tablespoons butter pound sirloin steak mustard salt and pepper

Slice the loaf in half lengthways and butter it well. Cut the steak in two lengthways, rub with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill the steak under high heat but do not over-cook. Put the meat strips straight away onto the buttered half loaves. Season with salt and pepper, and spread with mustard. Put the two halves of the sandwich together. Wrap tightly with foil, and put a weight on top. The steak juices will absorb into the bread and keep it moist. When cool, cut into fairly thick slices and serve. Makes 3-4 servings.

(Irish Traditional Food – Theodora Fitzgibbon)

cut deep hoofprints in Irish history, but it is the Thoroughbred racehorse that became a multi-million-dollar business.

Part of the reason is environmental.

Calcium-rich grass grown in limestonerich soil ensures rock-hard bone structure. The other half of the equation is simply that the Irish love a good horse race. With dozens of racetracks scattered about the island, there is a horse race somewhere nearly every day of the year. Sometimes a track isn’t even needed, as proven by the several times I ducked into doorways to avoid bareback riders dashing pell-mell in spontaneous races that erupted on Ballinasloe’s narrow streets.

For two blissful days I wandered Wellie-shod and awestruck through the Fair, rubbing shoulders with city and country folk, bluebloods, commoners, and hordes of horse-loving tourists. I noted the signs that warned “enter the Fair Green at your own risk,” threw my mother’s cautionary “never walk behind a horse” to the wind, remembered my grandma say “stepping in manure means good luck,” and dodged more horses’ rears than I’ll ever again see in life. I watched the judging of the Fair’s best cattle, sheep, and pigs, and fell madly in love with the exquisite winner of the Connemara Pony competition. I saw Traveler men seal deals on their gorgeous piebalds with palm spits and hand-slaps, succumbed to the lure of knowing my future via a palm-reading by one of the Traveler women, and was nearly trampled by perhaps the world’s biggest, blackest stallion ridden by a devilishly dashing Black Irish fellow.

In nearly three centuries, the Ballinasloe Great October Fair has remained much the same. Handlers still haggle endlessly over their equine prizes. Church bells, children’s squeals, and traditional music fill the air. Smoke plumes hover over the Traveler camps of chrome caravans and floral hand-crafted wagons. In the pubs, gallons of Guinness wash down thousands of sausage rolls and Bookmaker’s Sandwiches. One thing will certainly never change: whether you buy or not, it’s the show of shows for the horsey set.

Sláinte!

IA Ballinasloe’s 2007 Great October Fair takes place September 29-October 7. For more information and photos visit: http://www.ballinasloe.com OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 93

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IRELAND TODAY • BY JOHN SPAIN

Uniformity and the Irish Police

S

ometimes it’s hard to believe what gets people here talking.

It’s not Shannon, or the slowdown in construction or even who the senior Sinn Féin individual is who is about to be outed as another British spy. It’s whether a Sikh who has joined the Garda (police) reserve (the new part time police here) should be allowed to wear his turban as part of his Garda uniform.

And no, I’m not making this up. This is the issue that got people here riled up because, I suppose, it touches in a very direct and visible way on the core questions about immigration.

And as you probably realize by now, immigration is a big issue with a great many people here in spite of the efforts to sweep it under the politically correct carpet.

This enforced silence on the immigration question builds up a head of steam, and so when an issue like a turban-wearing Garda crops up it allows people to vent their frustration. This particular case also encompasses many of the particular aspects of the immigration issue and what a multicultural society in Ireland should or should not be, and for that reason also it became a big talking point.

So what’s happened? Well, there’s a tiny Sikh community in Ireland – we’re talking a few dozen in comparison with the tens of thousands of Poles and Chinese. We already have one (and I think only one) Chinese member of the Garda, and even though there are so few Sikhs here we now also have a Sikh member of the Garda reserve. And he wants to wear his turban.

Most Sikhs, as you may know, come from India, although there are significant communities elsewhere. They are easily identified because they wear turbans to cover their long hair, which they leave uncut as a sign of commitment to their religious faith. The turban is, therefore, an important part of their religion.

When the issue arose after the Sikh recruit had gone into training in the Garda they took it seriously and studied the ques-

94 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

tion, and the Garda commissioner eventually issued his decision on the matter.

Some of the statement was as follows: “The Garda Siochana (Irish police) has, historically, been seen as providing an impartial police service, policing all sections of society equally. Accommodating variations to our standard uniform and dress, including those with religious symbolism, may well affect that traditional stance and give an image of the Garda which the commissioner feels the public would not want.”

A Garda spokesman later explained that what the commissioner was doing was trying to retain the “image of impartiality” in the Garda while “providing a state service to all citizens.” He said that the Garda were acting “within the principles of an intercultural approach . . . they were not advocating one religious belief over another and they were not in any way being racist.”

Now that was good enough for most people here. Yes, they would be (maybe reluctantly) happy to have a Chinese, Polish or Sikh policeman stopping them and asking them for their driving license, but all the Garda members should wear the same uniform. That’s what a uniform is for, after all, to give an impartial uniformity to those wearing it.

That seemed to be the majority opinion on the matter, judging by calls to radio shows and letters to the papers. But of course, it was not good enough for the lefty liberal set who dominate the media here, the self-appointed guardians of our political correctness who were lining up to be shocked and outraged by the commissioner’s decision. But, but, but, they said, this is racist. This ignores the reality of the new multicultural Ireland. What about Ash Wednesday? asked one seriously smug TV reporter, would this mean that no Garda would be allowed to appear on duty on Ash Wednesday with the daub of ashes on his forehead? What about crosses on chains?

What about miraculous medals? What about scapulars? Would they be banned as well?

The Garda spokesman, a decent chap, struggled to respond but seemed to indicate that visible tokens of any religious belief or racial grouping would not be allowed. The whole point was, he said, that if a Garda knocked on your door, you don’t want to open it and see someone there with tokens or symbols that suggest a particular set of beliefs. The Garda must be absolutely impartial and the uniform has to be a visible indication of that impartiality.

Defending the policy, the commissioner said he believes Irish people do not want the traditional Garda uniform to be changed to allow for religious clothing such as turbans. Instead, he said, the public should be presented with an impartial police force where religious identity is not an issue.

The president of the Irish Sikh Council, however, would not accept this reasoning.

He said the turbans could not be taken off and that the move would mean that Sikhs would not be able to join the Garda as a result.

But the minister for integration (yes, we have one!) backed the Garda commissioner’s refusal to make a special case for Sikhs. The minister, Conor Lenihan, is known for taking a robustly practical approach to these matters and has said in the past that immigrants coming to join our society need to be sensitive to “our way of doing things.”

Meanwhile, the letters columns in the papers and the phone calls to the radio shows were pouring in. If you allow one special case, you open a Pandora’s Box,” one said. Is every Tom, Dick, Harry and Muhammed to dress as they like in the police? asked another. Will men from Donegal be allowed to wear Donegal tweed caps? Will Muslim women who join the Garda be allowed to wear the burka?

Will Dubliners in the Garda be allowed dress as Vikings? Why not have a fancy dress police force? It’s time the people told those politically correct wallies to take a running jump at themselves, another said.

There were a few – but only a few – in the other direction. One letter writer commented: “The management of An Garda

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Siochana have shown that the more the Gardai ‘change,’ the more they stay the same. If Commissioner Conroy had spent a few minutes researching Sikhism on his computer, he could have turned another Garda PR disaster into a ‘bold, multicultural initiative’ by having the first Sikh Garda.

However, he lost that chance forever when he made his decision.”

To add to the debate, the junior government partners, the Green Party, came out in favor of letting the Sikh recruit wear the turban. And their justice and equality spokesman said he was going to take up the matter up with the Justice Minister Brian Lenihan, who just happens to be from the same family as Integration Minister Conor Lenihan who says people coming to our country must accept our culture. That should be a short discussion.

The president of the Irish Sikh Council said that the whole matter was very hurtful to the Sikh community.

“You cannot ask for individuals who come from different countries to come here and to shun their religious beliefs,” he said. Which, of course, prompted the question from one radio caller who wondered exactly who asked them to come anyway?

The Green Party pointed out that police forces in Britain, the U.S., Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan and India had no problems in allowing Sikh members to wear turbans. This may be true, but it’s not as conclusive as it sounds, since the last four are within the region which is home to most Sikhs. India is where Sikhism started and Britain is the colonial power which ran India and now has a resultant large Indian population.

The odd one out is the U.S., but of course that is the great melting pot with people from all over the world. So any comparisons between those countries and the situation in Ireland is meaningless.

What the discussion here has done is reopened again the whole question of immigration and our relationship with immigrants. And this comes at an uneasy time when, as one paper pointed out, the numbers of Irish construction workers now emigrating to Australia is soaring because at home there is a slowdown and their jobs are being undermined by immigrants from Eastern Europe prepared to work for 50 euros a day. It also comes at a time when just last week, the papers reported that the cost of special English language teaching for immigrants had reached 100 million euros.

More people are questioning why we have not had an immigration policy like some other countries (Australia and Canada, for example) where language and job skills were needed to get in. Canada, as you probably know, goes out and targets the skilled immigrants it wants from other countries (like information technology workers from India) but Ireland has had virtually an open door, in spite of the rules that are in place.

We are only now waking up to the real costs of this attitude, costs that are not taken into account when advocates are talking about the economic benefits of immigration. Those benefits have mainly gone to employers looking for cheap labor.

stance of the state here. To be in favor of it is official government policy, and an array of state organizations works to convince the population at large that it is a good thing. But this means that the problems that the recent large scale immigration has brought are never really discussed.

The turban debate at least has forced a lot of people here to think clearly about whether they want a multicultural approach like in Britain, or an assimilation approach like in France (where Muslim veils and Jewish skull caps have been banned in schools, for example.)

The failure of multiculturalism in Britain (as seen in the huge Indian and Pakistani

Two Sikhs dancing in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

The great turban debate has also highlighted the confusion in our overall immigration policy. Conor Lenihan says that people coming in here “must understand our way of doing things.” But in fact, little has been done to promote cultural uniformity or even spatial integration.

The new immigrants live mainly in defined areas, and there are a number of electoral wards in Dublin where immigrants are now the majority of the population, and it then becomes a question of who is integrating with whom. Native Irish children in primary schools in these areas are at a disadvantage because teachers are often overwhelmed by the demands of classes where half the kids don’t speak English.

In spite of Conor Lenihan’s insistence that immigrants must “learn how to do it our way,” multiculturalism seems to be the overriding

housing estates around cities in the north of England from where the London bombers emerged) should be making us think.

Multiculturalism is wonderful in theory, but has it ever worked anywhere? Is it possible to preserve your own language and culture and still integrate? Can you be half integrated?

The most harmonious societies seem to be places like the U.S. where assimilation – learning how to do it our way (the American way) – is the abiding principle.

And under that principle the Garda are right to insist that their new recruit cannot wear his turban.

John Spain is a columnist for the Irish Voice newspaper where the above commentary previously appeared.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007 IRISH AMERICA 95

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DEPARTMENT

BY THE AUTHOR • Family PHOTO ALBUM Pictures •

Where the Traveling Began I am standing at the beginning.

Through the break in the green, Irish, country lane, the house is barely visible. I recognize it from the faded black-and-white photo in my grandmother’s dusty album. The windows are broken, the vines have consumed the façade and the neighboring farmer’s cows have claimed residence on the lawn.

But it is beautiful.

The house is worn the same way that my grandmother is worn; the wrinkles and the broken windows tell the story of experience. This house has survived the birth of 10 children, the death of their father, famine and poverty. It has heard the nightly prayers of a kneeling little girl asking God for food, money, and for her mother to sing again. The house has seen the Costellos walk out the front door, leaving for America and the promise of food, money, and happiness.

Fifty-five years later, I travel back to where the traveling began. Car, plane, plane, bus, car, and foot – I arrive in Fohenagh, County Galway. I walk down the lush lane listening to stories being told by my grandmother’s childhood friend, Fr. Gerry Sweeney.

“And this house over here is your cousin Paul, Seamus and Maura’s son, along with Emily, Megan and little Albahe.” Fr. Gerry points down the lane.

“Tom and Mary Sweeney live in the house down that lane over there. Veronica might be home from school; we should drop in for some tea.”

“Oh,” Fr. Gerry pauses as he looks at his watch.

“It is almost half past five, I’ll run you over to where your grandmother and I went to primary school, and then I am saying Mass at seven. You’re welcome if you like.”

I am here.

I have traveled through time and arrived at my grandmother’s youth. I stand and stare at her house, and I think to myself – this is real. These people are real. Their kind generosity and their simple, fundamental way of life captivates me.

Something inside of me is awakened, and I feel truly alive. It is amazing to connect our two worlds, so many thoughts about my grandmother run through my head. She ran down this very lane on her way home from school. She looked out of that top left window, now broken, into this very pasture. She picked these yellow wildflowers for her mother.

I duck under the vine blocking the door and enter her house.

She sat by this orange-tiled fireplace when it was cold. And she ate dinner at this hand-carved wooden table, cold potatoes. She ran down this steep staircase for Mass every Sunday and grabbed her coat from this rusty hook nailed by the door.

Everything is restored. I see my grandmother’s world through her eyes; the cracks and stains wash away. I enter her world.

This immediate experience is full of clarity. I have come for this, for this moment, for this experience, for this house. I embrace the overwhelming reality that clarifies the significance of life and of the lives of the Costellos who once lived here. I have traveled back to where the traveling began and discovered myself through the eyes of my grandmother.

IA Meghan Townley graduated from Saint Louis University in May, 2007. She plans to pursue a career in travel writing.

Please send photographs along with your name, address, phone number, and a brief description, to Declan O’Kelly at Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10001. If photos are irreplaceable, then please send a good quality reproduction or e-mail the picture at 300 dpi resolution to Irishamag@aol.com. No photocopies, please. We will pay $65 for each submission that we select.

96 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

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THE LAST WORD • BY THOMAS J. MORAN

Haunted by Memories M y trip with Concern Worldwide to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was, as always, quite an experience.

In Rwanda, we visited a Genocide Memorial where 250,000 human remains are buried and new remains continue to be found. Inside the memorial is a haunting exhibit depicting the history of the Rwandan people, united as one and then divided into an ethnic class system after being colonized by Belgium, and finally the story of the genocide. Pictures of slaughtered children, stories of people seeking sanctuary inside a church only to be massacred while crowded inside, videotapes of survivors telling stories of the fear and horror that existed.Just being there at this memorial was incredibly emotional. How do you survive that experience?

ing the conflict, making it difficult if not impossible for commerce to take place between the different villages. Medical care (two doctors for 200,000 people) was no longer accessible. Roads were not passable during the rainy season because they would wash out. So, in addition to everything else Concern is doing, they are also facilitating the

The Kasongo Community-based Therapeutic Care Stabilization Center in DRC (Tom Moran is pictured in the back row). Left, the temporary river crossing while the Kundu Bridge (funded

by Concern) is being built.

Leaving the memorial, we drove several hours to the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent a night in Goma. Goma maintains a very high military and police presence and photographs are not allowed. It was an intimidating place that still has an air of conflict and hostility about it. We left Goma and flew several hours south to Kasongo on a single-engine prop plane.

In Kasongo, we saw some of the innovative and effective Concern programs that I had seen on my other trips, but we also saw programs I had not seen before.

Here, deep in the heart of the Congo, Concern is working with the local villages to rebuild the infrastructure of the region. Bridges had been destroyed dur98 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007

rebuilding of bridges and digging drainage ditches alongside those roads most affected by the rainy season. They were building schools and doing whatever the community identified as essential to their becoming self-sufficient again after 40 years of conflict.

From Kasongo, we flew to Shamwana which was particularly hard hit by the conflict. When Concern arrived in Shamwana in July of 2006, most of the village had not yet returned. They had spent two years living in the bush after being driven away from their village by the Mai Mai rebel forces. Their food, farming tools and livestock were all stolen and their homes were burned. Once the thatched roof was burned, the rainy season reverted the mud bricks used to build the homes back to their original state.

There were only 500 people in Shamwana when Concern arrived. Today there are about 6,000 people, with more still returning. Again, Concern’s role in Shamwana is to help the local people

rebuild their lives by supplying farming tools, seed fairs, goat fairs, livelihood security programs, pay for work, etc.

Concern did what it always does: identify the need, measure its urgency, and find and effect solutions and humanitarian strategies through careful neutrality and purity of purpose. But something was different on this trip, and when I got back to New York, I realized what it was. In the other places I have visited the suffering was the result of a natural disaster and was not man-made. In Rwanda, the people are haunted by the memory of the genocide, and their fear that it is not over. In the DRC, people are slowly rebuilding their lives but are haunted by the memories of their children who were taken away and transformed into child soldiers. And they wonder if the current stability will last or if there be another outbreak of violence and horror.

In both countries, I walked among people who can’t help but be haunted by their own nightmarish experiences. I found myself wondering how anyone can survive these horrors. As I thought about it, I realized that they can survive, they must survive. I thought of Elie Wiesel who has not only survived the Holocaust but who has used those horrific memories to remind the world of its responsibility to all people.

I called Elie Wiesel and talked to him about my trip with Concern and asked him if he would honor us by accepting the Seeds of Hope Award at Concern’s annual dinner on the December 5. I hope you will join us for this very special evening when Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel becomes a part of Concern’s vision of a world where no one lives in poverty, fear or oppression; where all have access to a decent standard of living and the opportunities and choices essential to a long, healthy and creative life; where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.

Thomas J. Moran (Chairman, President, CEO Mutual of America) is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Concern Worldwide.

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