Irish America October / November 2016 by Irish America Magazine

IA.Cover.v4.nobarcode_Layout 1 10/7/16 10:39 AM Page 1

THE WALL STREET 50: CELEBRATING THE IRISH IN FINANCE

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

CANADA $4.95 / U.S. $3.95

”Trust, in this industry, is everything.”

CO-HEAD OF GLOBAL EQUITIES

CITIGROUP

The Cold War’s Top Negotiator The Woman Behind “Harvey” Fiction From Donal Ryan Grandpa the Sniper Dublin’s Fair County

Daniel Keegan How a Notre Dame-educated lawyer became one of the most innovative client-focused traders in the business

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 4:49 PM

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 4:46 PM

IA.Oct.Nov.ContentsREV_IA Template 10/6/16 9:13 AM Page 4

contents | october / november 2016

Features

HIGHLIGHTS

32 Dublin’s Fair County

Irish Olympic Diaspora

If you think you know Dublin city, try venturing farther afield into the county’s rich countryside. By Sharon Ní Chonchúir

Medal counts from the global Irish diaspora. p. 13

38 Corporate Chieftain

Citigroup’s co-head of Global Equities is leading the way in a new time for the financial industry. By Adam Farley

Irish Eye on Hollywood

What’s new to TV and theaters from Irish talent. p. 18

44 The 2016 Wall Street 50

Fifty of the top financiers in the business, who share pride in their Irish roots.

72 Bridge of Spies

Taming the Bambino

Babe Ruth said Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan was the best GM he ever played under. p. 24

James Donovan, the lawyer who defended a Soviet spy arrested during the Cold War. By R. Bryan Willits

76 Fiction: “Sky”

From Donal Ryan’s short story collection, A Slanting of the Sun.

80 What Are You Like?

Tipperary-born author Donal Ryan takes our questionnaire. By Patricia Harty

Backstage

Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival. p. 97

84 Kathleen Kearney Behan

Brendan Behan’s mother Kathleen was a true patriot and matriarch. By Rosemary Rogers

Ashes of Fiery Weather

Tom Deignan reviews Kathleen Donohoe’s debut novel about one family’s four generations of firefighters. p. 101

86 Grandpa the Sniper

Searching for answers from the life of a Volunteer 100 years after the Rising. By Frank Shouldice

92 The Woman Behind Harvey

Playwright Mary Chase used her Irish heritage and folklore as inspiration for the 1950s blockbuster. By Marsha Sorotick

Last Word

94 Tim Kaine’s Family Tree

What do the Democratic VP nominee’s family history and Downton Abbey have in common? By Megan Smolenyak

98 The Magic of Mushrooms

The humble fungus that has inspired cooks and fairy tales for millennia. By Edythe Preet

104 Teenage Rebel

Kerry-born Nora Brosnan was involved with the Irish Volunteers by 13, and in prison by 17. By Kathleen Lenehan Nastri

4 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Roots: Keegan

The Keegan (or Egan) clan is explored. p. 96

94 84

Historian Robert Schmuhl on the Irish role in 20th and 21st century American politics. p. 106

DEPARTMENTS 6 8 12 25 90 100

First Word Readers Forum Hibernia Those We Lost Crossword Books + Music

Cover Photo: Kit DeFever

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 4:51 PM

IA.6 Final.rev3_IA Template 10/6/16 10:47 AM Page 6

the first word | by Patricia Harty

A Penny Well Spent rowing up in Ireland in the 1950s and ’60s was a thrifty existence. “Take care of the pennies and pounds will take care of themselves,” my mother would say, encouraging us kids to save. She opened Post Office accounts for us. You could deposit as little as sixpence and the clerk would diligently mark it down on your passbook. I can still see those checkmarks, through there weren’t so many in my book. Despite my mother’s entreaties, any coppers that came my way were soon spent. Having a penny to spend was a magnificent thing back then. Unlike English coinage, with its kings and queens, our money had animals. A copper penny, much bigger than an American penny, bigger, even, than a quarter, had a hen with chicks (a half-penny had a sow with piglets). A penny was something that you could hold on to. It fitted nicely in your fist, heavy enough that you knew the value of it. The copper would warm up in your hand as you walked about with it, clutched it in your pocket. Shame to let it go, really – would it be four aniseed balls, or two gobstoppers? Splurge it on a Penny Bar that would be gone in a minute, the toffee melting in your mouth, or make it last? Those gobstoppers were so big that one would last you a whole day if you resisted the temptation to sink your teeth into it when you had sucked it down in size. Most often, Nell Kennedy’s shop at Ballycommon crossroads, down the road from school, was where we spent our coppers. Though you may have carefully considered and weighed the purchase options during school hours, there was still a psychological barrier to cross before you left the shop with your treat – the Black Baby Box. You had to avert your eyes, close your mind to that box perched on the counter, and swallow your guilt about not saving a soul in Africa, that day at least, before you emerged back out into the sunlight. Some days you didn’t pass up the box, and there was reward in that, too. The warm glow of self-sacrifice would last almost as long as the gobstopper. Even in the poorest of times, Ireland raised millions to support its priests doing missionary work in places like the Congo. As politically incorrect as the phrase, “a penny for the black babies” sounds today, the notion of helping others, drummed into our heads by teachers and nuns and visiting missionaries, was not a bad thing. All this reflection about the Ireland of my childhood was brought on by my visit to Citigroup’s headquarters in lower Manhattan. The sight of the Global Equity floor that Dan Keegan oversees – hundreds of traders focused intently on multiple computer screens – was astounding. I found myself asking, “When did the Irish become so good with money?” Scientists involved in unlocking the secrets of our genes are proving that memories are passed down through our DNA. Did the experience of forebears, of making do in hard times (“stretching a penny”), manifest itself in today’s good money managers? Do those same historic memories also impact the ability to share the wealth? I think so. Irish America magazine salutes the men and women of our Wall Street 50. Their achievements in the world of finance is awesome. Their generosity in helping others is priceless. Mórtas Cine.

6 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Vol. 31 No. 6 • October / November 2016

IRISH AMERICA Mórtas Cine

Pride In Our Heritage

Founding Publisher: Niall O’Dowd Co-Founder/ Editor-in-Chief: Patricia Harty Vice President of Marketing: Kate Overbeck Deputy Editor: Adam Farley Art Director: Marian Fairweather Advertising & Editorial Assistant: Áine Mc Manamon Copy Editor: Bríd Long Financial Controller: Kevin M. Mangan Editorial Assistants: Olivia O’Mahony

875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 201, New York NY 10001 TEL: 212-725-2993 FAX: 212-244-3344 Subscriptions: 1-800-582-6642 E-MAIL: submit@irishamerica.com www.irishamerica.com

Irish America Magazine ISSN 0884-4240) © by Irish America Inc. Published bi-monthly. Mailing address: P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 08099-5277. Editorial office: 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Telephone: 212-725-2993. Fax: 212-244-3344 E-mail: submit@irishamerica.com. Subscription rate is $21.95 for one year. Subscription orders: 1-800-5826642. Subscription queries:1-800582-6642, (212) 725-2993, ext. 150. 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.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 4:43 PM

IA.Letters/ContribsREV_IA Template 10/5/16 11:18 PM Page 8

letters | readers forum Poetry & Science

Point of Clarification

I am grateful to Irish America for the very generous coverage devoted to the work done by me and my Merck & Co. colleagues on the treatment of parasitic diseases. I wish, however, to head off a possible misunderstanding on one point. For more than 30 years Merck & Co. Inc. has donated ivermectin (in its Mectizan formulation) for use in the prevention of river blindness in people. In response to the Editor’s question about the donation, I used the word “collusion” in reference to the process by which the Merck CEO and his advisers reached the decision to give the drug away. There is, I think, something especially appealing in the idea of corporate executives huddling together and plotting to implement a good deed of that magnitude. The Merck CEO, Dr. Roy Vagelos, has himself said that he neglected even to inform the Merck board of directors that he was about to commit the company to that extraordinary action. Nevertheless, readers may see something sinister in my flippant use of the word “collusion.” I would like to assure readers of my unalloyed admiration, then and now, for the decision and the decision makers. My disclaimer of a personal role in the decision was not intended to distance myself from something bad, but rather to acknowledge that I was not a member of the small group of executives who decided in favor of something good! William C. Campbell Cover story, August / September 2016

8 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Congratulations on another lovely issue of Irish America. I especially enjoyed Patricia Harty’s very touching reminiscence of visits as a kid to County Clare and “Biddy Early Country,” as her father called it. My mother grew up as the youngest of nine children in a Gaelic-speaking family in West Clare. She often told me about the long evenings when the old men of the neighborhood delighted and terrified her sisters and herself with stories about the fairies hidden in the specter-haunted darkness. Biddy Early and her magical healing also figured in many of these stories. I’m especially glad

that she brought W.B. Yeats into her reflection and, indeed, the theme of Healthcare and Life Sciences of the whole issue – wonderful stuff, the connection between the arts and sciences in Ireland. Americans are yet to catch up with that. In many ways the stories of my mother inspired my own lifelong interest in Yeats.

James Flannery Director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation Emory University Atlanta, GA

Healthcare and Life Sciences 50

My husband and I were happy to see Dr. Owen O’Connor featured in the Healthcare and Life Sciences 50. My father-in-law was a patient of his at

Memorial Sloan Kettering and we witnessed first hand what an amazing and wonderful man he is. Thanks to him and his clinical trial we had a few extra years with my father-in-law.

Debbie and John Donovan Kearny, NJ

Biddy Early (1798 – 1872).

From “Giving it Up” to “Getting Rid of It”

Congratulations to Ruth Riddick on this important article on addiction. So glad to see it featured prominently in Irish America, as it should be. Understanding the multi-generational aspect of addiction is clearly key to any successful societal treatment approach. That makes the concision and cogency of your article so very valuable. Thank you for your service.

Sarah E. Franklin Submitted online

John Duffy and Ken Gill, who were featured in Ruth Riddick’s article and recently opened the Gill-Duffy House, a family treatment center.

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 10:35 AM

IA.Letters/ContribsREV_IA Template 10/5/16 11:18 PM Page 10

letters |

contributors | Sharon Ní Chonchúir

World Trade Center: 15 Years On

I recently watched Rebuilding the World Trade Center. Two outstanding figures are Mike O’Reilly and Tommy Hickey. Gentlemen, I salute you both. What you are doing for New York City, the state, and the entire United States leaves me speechless. I’ve been watching documentaries for over two weeks concerning 9/11 and this is the best yet. I can’t wait to come to New York to view all your hard work. God Bless you both and your families for putting your life in danger everyday. Godspeed to you both.

Tom Drumm Hornell, NY Mike O’Reilly at work on the Freedom Tower.

Adam Farley

Visit us online at Irishamerica.com to leave your comments, or write to us:

Send a fax (212-244-3344), e-mail (submit@irishamerica.com) or write to Letters, Irish America Magazine, 875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Letters should include the writer’s name, address and phone number and may be edited for clarity and length. 10 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Rosemary Rogers

(Cover story, p. 38) Adam is Irish America’s deputy editor and interviews Dan Keegan for this issue. He holds a Master of Arts in Irish and Irish American Studies from NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, where he specialized in modern and contemporary Irish poetry, and a bachelor’s in creative writing from the University of Washington. He lives in Brooklyn.

(“Dancer in a Rough Field,” p. 84) Writer and humorist Rosemary Rogers co-authored, with Sean Kelly, the best- selling humor/reference book Saints Preserve Us! (Random House), currently in its 18th international printing. The duo collaborated on four other books for Random House and calendars for Barnes & Noble. Rogers is currently co-writing a book on empires for City Light Publishing.

Frank Shouldice

Donal Ryan

(“Grandpa The Sniper,” p. 86) Frank is an author, playwright and documentary-maker. He has worked in journalism across print, radio and television where he is producer/director with the Investigations Unit in RTÉ, the national broadcasting service in Ireland.

Editor’s note: To read Irish America’s feature story on Rebuilding the World Trade Center, visit our archives at http://irishamerica.com/2011/10/ rebuilding-the-skyline/

(“Dublin’s Fair County,” p. 32) Sharon is a freelance writer based in the southwest of Ireland. She writes about food, health, arts, culture, and travel and is particularly interested in the rapid changes that are taking place in Irish society.

(Fiction, p. 80) Born outside Nenagh, Co. Tipperary in 1976, Ryan is the subject of our “What Are You Like?” feature and contributes the story “Sky” from his collection A Slanting of the Sun: Stories in this issue. Ryan’s book The Spinning Heart was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2013 and won the Guardian First Book Award in the same year. His new novel, All We Shall Know, was published Penguin Random House in September. He is a writer-in-residence at the University of Limerick.

R. Bryan Willits He won the Justice Media awards for his radio documentary “The Case That Never Was” and has spoken at numerous festivals about the background to Grandpa The Sniper, the story of his grandfather’s role in the 1916 Easter Rising and War of Independence.

(“The Real-Life Story of Bridge of Spies Hero John B. Donovan,” p. 72) Willits is a native of west Michigan where he earned a B.A. in history from Aquinas College. He also holds an M.A. in Irish and IrishAmerican Studies from NYU and has published on the connections of the Irish and German diasporas in America. He works for the education department at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Untitled-1 11 Untitled-36

8/4/16 4:10 6:53 PM 6/1/16

IA.NEWS.SportsREV_IA Template 10/5/16 11:06 PM Page 12

hibernia | sports “Cycle Around Ireland” Spotlights Mental Health

ormer Irish international hockey player Lisa Jacob and competitive triathlete turned pilot Nikki Dorey (pictured below) were the first all-female duo cyclists to complete the 1,336-mile “Cycle Around Ireland” course, which they did after just five and a half straight days. The two used the milestone feat to fundraise €100,000 for Irish mental health charity Suicide or Survive, with special emphasis on emotional wellbeing among LGBT youth. “The funds they are raising are so important as we continue to work together to address the tremendous pain and suffering associated with mental health and suicide in Ireland,” said Suicide or Survive CEO Caroline McGuigan. “We encourage everyone to get behind these heroes.” In the run up to the event, pilot Dorey said she knew it wouldn’t be easy: “I fully expect to find myself in the depths of pain and despair, but I also fully expect to have some of the most amazing experiences doing this.” – O.O.

Ireland’s Top Goal Scorer Retires Internationally

rish captain and all-time record goal scorer Robbie Keane (pictured right) has commenced his international retirement from the Republic of Ireland soccer team following a friendly match against Oman in August. Keane (36) debuted for Ireland in 1998 and has been Ireland’s leading goal scorer since 2004. He retires with 68 goals in 146 games for the national team – the last of which was delivered in his final match sporting the green jersey. He continues to captain the L.A.

Georgia Tech & Boston College Spar in Dublin

oston College lost a hard-fought game to Georgia Tech 14-17 at the 2016 Aer Lingus College Football Classic (formerly the Emerald Isle Classic) at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium Mills, right, on his touchdown run. on September 3. The game capped off a week of pep rallies and tailgate parties at Trinity College Dublin, as well as an American Football Showcase, with six Atlanta high schools competing at nearby Donnybrook Stadium. More than 40,000 fans attended. Freshman rusher Dedrick Mills, who scored Georgia Tech’s winning touchdown, said he had played big crowds in high school, but nothing like this. “Coming over here, being overseas for the first time with a big crowd, I haven’t played in anything like that,” he told the AP. The game was the first Georgia Tech has played abroad in the program’s 124 year history. For their troubles, they took home the inaugural Keough-Naughton Trophy, designed by Waterford Crystal. It was Boston College’s second game in Ireland, having beaten Army 38-24 in the inaugural Emerald Isle Classic in 1988. – A.F.

Historic Win for Tipperary Hurling Teams

ounty Tipperary, the “Blue and Gold Legends,” won the AllIreland senior and minor hurling finals in Croke Park, Dublin on Sunday, September 4. Hurling is Ireland’s national game and one of the nation's most popular sports. It was the second time in history that Tipperary, the “premier county,” won both the senior and minor titles in the same year. The first time was in 1949. The Blue and Gold Legends won their 27th All-Ireland title with a nine-point victory over arch-rivals Kilkenny (knows as the “Cats”), by 215 to 2-08. Meanwhile, the Tipperary minor team won its 20th All-Ireland in defeating Limerick by six points for a

12 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Galaxy, the U.S. Major League Soccer team. “As a young boy growing up in Dublin and playing football on the street, I could never have imagined the path my life would take,” Keane said in his official retirement statement. “I have been on the most incredible journey with the Irish team and fans over the last 18 years, and words cannot express how proud I am to be Irish.” – O.O.

John “Bubbles” O’Dwyer in action.

winning score of 1-21 to 0-17. Tipperary has ancient ties to hurling, which is said to pre-date Christianity. The first staging of the All-Ireland hurling championship began on July 2, 1887 and ended on April 1,1888, with Tipperary winning over Galway. A few years earlier, in 1884, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing body of Ireland’s national sports, was formed in Thurles, County Tipperary. And it was to Thurles’ Semple Stadium that tens of thousands of fans gathered to welcome the winning heroes home from Dublin. Some of the loudest cheers of the evening were for 24-year-old star forward John O’Dwyer (“Bubbles”), who, on live television after the game, said Tipperary are “champions of f***ing Ireland.” – P.H.

IA.NEWS.SportsREV_IA Template 10/5/16 11:06 PM Page 13

hibernia | olympics

The Irish Olympic Diaspora

reland had a reasonable showing at the 2016 Summer Olympics with two silver medals, including the country’s first for rowing (see right). But what about the Irish diaspora? How did the descendants of emigrants fare in the Rio games? And what would Ireland’s team score have looked like if the diaspora competed as a country? Here are the most obviously Irish medalists from around the world, based on surname. Team sports have been excluded.

GOLD • Cycling KRISTIN ARMSTRONG, U.S. From Boise, ID, she is a three-time Olympian, with golds in ‘08 and ‘12. CONNOR FIELDS, U.S. BMX-rider Fields is originally from Plano, Texas. JASON KENNY, U.K. Manchesterborn Kenny is the joint-holder of the highest amount of gold medals won by any British athlete – six. • Rowing KIM BRENNAN, Aus. Born in Melbourne, Brennan took up rowing in 2005 after a leg injury ended her professional hurdling career. EMILY REGAN, U.S. Regan, who was born in Buffalo, New York, is a three-time gold medalist at the World Rowing Championships. • Swimming CONOR DWYER, U.S. From Winnetka, IL, Dwyer came first in the 4x200m men’s freestyle relay and third in the 200m free this year. RYAN MURPHY, U.S. Born in Chicago, Murphy swept this year’s backstroke events by earning three gold medals and breaking two world records. TOM SHIELDS, U.S. Shields, who swims for the University of California, holds the American record in three different butterfly-stroke events. EMMA MCKEON, Aus. McKeon, from New South Wales, won four medals in total at this year’s Olympic games: one gold, two silver, and one bronze. SILVER • Equestrian MCLAIN WARD, U.S. Now 40, Ward is still the youngest person to win the USEF Show Jumping Derby and the equitation medal finals in the same year, which he did at age 14. • Swimming LIA NEAL, U.S. Freestyler Neal, from New York, currently swims for Stanford University. SIOBHAN-MARIE O’CONNOR, U.K. Bath-born O’Connor is 2016’s most decorated English athlete at the

Commonwealth Games with six medals. TAYLOR MCKEON, Aus. A native of Queensland, breaststroker McKeon also holds a gold medal from the 2014 Commonwealth Games. • Sailing WILLIAM RYAN, Aus. Sydney Harbor Yacht Club member Ryan began sailing at the age of 13 on his grandfather’s yacht. • Rowing CONLIN MCCABE, Can. Born in Ontario, McCabe rowed for the University of Washington for four years, helping the Huskies win three national championships. JENNIFER CLEARY, Aus. Cleary, from Geelong, has been rowing since 2005. Her team placed fourth at the 2014 World Rowing Championships. BRONZE • Athletics CLAYTON MURPHY, U.S. Specializing in distance running, Murphy ran collegiately for the university of Akron and signed as a Nike representative in June 2016. • Diving MADDISON KEENEY, Aus. Keeney is studying physics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. • Beach Volleyball KERRY WALSH JENNINGS, U.S. Coming in third place this year has made California-born Walsh the most decorated beach volleyball player in the world. TOTAL MEDAL COUNT: 25 11 Gold • 9 Silver • 5 Bronze Ranked as a team, the diaspora would have placed 7th, just beating out the French, who had 10 golds. PARALYMPICS Ireland’s Paralympic team performed better than national team did, with four gold, four silver, and three bronze medals. The gold

Gary and Paul O’Donovan.

Silver Streak: Ireland’s Olympic Medals

ary and Paul O’Donovan, of Lisheen, Co. Cork, made history at the Rio Olympic Games in August when they secured the country’s first ever medal in a rowing event. The brothers, who sped from fifth position at the halfway point, came in second place in the lightweight men’s double sculls, a feat which also marked Ireland’s first medal won at this year’s Olympics. The brothers’ 6:31.23 finishing time was not the only thing that drew praise, as the Irish public immediately took a shine to their down-to-earth attitude and Annalise Murphy. laid-back west Cork accents in interviews running up to the event and as post-event interviews went viral. Speaking after the semifinal, Paul, 22, explained cheekily that rowing “isn’t too complex, really. [Get from] A to B as fast as you can go, and hope for the best. Close the eyes and pull like a dog.” His words inspired the viral hashtag #PullLikeADog. Ireland’s second medal came a few days later when veteran sailor Annalise Murphy, from Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, placed second in women’s Laser Radial. First competing internationally at the 2012 Olympics, her first major medal came in 2013 – gold at the European Sailing Championships. “The last four years have been all about Rio,” she told the Irish Times. Now, she says every morning she wakes up, “I feel like I just dreamt about it. I really don’t know how it happened. It still doesn’t feel real.” – O.O.

medalists in question were runners Jason Smyth and Michael McKillop, running in the men’s 100m T13 and 1500m T37 events respectively, Eoghan Clifford,

cycling in the men’s time trial C3, and KatieGeorge Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal, cycling together in the women’s 1km time trial B.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 13

IA.NEWS.14.REV_IA Template 10/5/16 3:36 PM Page 14

hibernia | news

Philippines Missionary Receives Humanitarian Award

Irish Film Institute Brings the Past Online

he Irish Film Institute has digitized over 1,200 minutes of Irish cinema, documentary, and public information films dating back to 1910. The free online archive (available at ifiplayer.ie) also includes a number of rare Irish-American reels. “We wanted to make sure we represented as many parts of the collection as possible,” head of the archive Kasandra O’Connell told the Irish Times. “It’s important that people realize that the archive is constantly being created.” Notably, the collection digitized a 27-minute documentary that details President Kennedy’s historic 1963 visit to Ireland. Produced by Father Gerry Smith of the Columban Fathers, it was completed only a month before the president’s assassination. The collection also includes

The Lad From Old Ireland, a 1910 silent short film that tells the story of an impoverished Irish farmer who emigrates to New York in search of a prosperous new life. A joint Irish and American production, it was the first major movie production to be filmed on two separate continents. – O.O.

ather Shay Cullen, a Dublin-born Columban Missionary based in the Philippines since 1969, has been given the 2016 Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award. Cullen (pictured above with his students) has worked tirelessly over a lifetime to promote human rights, justice, and peace, with a particular drive towards ending child exploitation and abuse of children in the Philippines. In 1974, Cullen set up the PREDA Foundation to help child victims and trafficked women who were being exploited in the sex trade. The award was set up to honor the life of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish prelate who, based in the Vatican from 1938 until 1960, saved over 6,500 lives from the Nazi forces in Rome during WWII. – O.O.

Ireland Ordered to Recoup €13 Billion from Apple he E.U. antitrust regulator has ordered Ireland to recoup €13 billion ($14.5 billion) in taxes, saying that Apple was given selective treatment in Ireland that allowed it to gain advantage over other companies, and pay almost zero tax on European profits between 2003 and 2014. Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he “disagreed profoundly” with the European Commission’s decision and said Ireland would appeal the decision in order “to defend the integrity of our tax system.”

The ruling could have an impact on other U.S. companies doing business in Europe. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department said, “The commission’s actions could threaten to undermine foreign investment, the business climate of Europe, and the important spirit of economic partnership between the U.S. and the E.U.” Apple also disputed the E.U. ruling and said it would appeal. In an open letter, chief executive Tim Cook added, “Apple follows the law and we pay all the taxes we owe.” – O.O.

2016 Kennedy Summer School

LEFT TO RIGHT: Political media consultant Tad Devine; Ambassador to Ireland Kevin F. O’Malley; former governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley; and Kevin Cullen, Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe columnist who spent more than 20 years covering the Irish Troubles.

he annual Kennedy Summer School took place in September in New Ross, County Wexford. Over 30 guest speakers, including the U.S. Ambassador Kevin O’Malley, attended a series of ten debates relating to Irish and American politics in President John F. Kennedy’s ancestral hometown. “It is quite remarkable to think that 53 years after President Kennedy stood on the quay here in New Ross, we are still coming together in his name,” said Ambassador O’Malley. “There are few presidents who could lay claim to leaving such an illustrious imprint on the world, but then there were few presidents like Kennedy.” – O.O. PHOTO: ANN POWER

14 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 6:52 PM

IA.Hib-Pg16_IA Template 10/5/16 10:52 PM Page 16

hibernia |

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE KELLY GANG

by Tom Deignan

Kellys Are a Charitable Gang

here is former New York top cop

Ray Kelly and his son, Good Day New York anchor Greg Kelly. There’s New

York Post columnist Keith Kelly and former Weather Channel CEO Mike Kelly. All these Irish American Kellys – and many more in media, politics and publishing – gathered last March at Michael’s in Manhattan for their annual Kelly Gang fundraiser. This year, the group ended up raising $100,000, which was donated to the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, currently celebrating a century of serving New York youth. The Kelly Gang’s mission is to “help those who need it most.”

Colleen Kelly, former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Dan Quintero, Ed Kelly and members of the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club at the check presentation.

The Kelly Gang began in the late 1990s as a group of media personalities with the surname Kelly “who happened to land a few good jobs,” members of the group have often noted. Sadly,

one of the original members, journalist Michael Kelly became the first American journalist killed in the Iraq War in 2003. The following St. Patrick’s Day – which would have been Michael Kelly’s 47th birthday – the Kelly Gang raised money for an educational fund established to benefit Michael’s sons, Tom and Jack. All in all, The Kelly Gang has raised more than $600,000 for a wide range of causes from the Bowery Mission and Breezy Point Disaster Relief Fund to City Harvest, Catholic Relief Services in Haiti, and the Wounded Warrior Project. “Everyone in this room is a Kelly tonight,” said Ed Kelly, co-founder and president of the Kelly Gang, when addressing the crowd at the fundraiser. “We could not be happier to bring everyone together tonight to support the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club and all they are doing for the youth of the city.”

The Irish at the Emmys

rom intense dramas to variety shows, the Irish were well represented at the 68th annual Emmy Awards held in September. Winners included producer Mike Gibbons, one of the creative team behind James Corden’s wildly popular Late, Late Show “Carpool Karaoke” special. Gibbons – who previously won a Daytime Emmy – was among those who won for Outstanding Variety series. Up next for Gibbons – a co-creator of Tosh.0 – is a CBS sitcom entitled The Great Indoors, which Gibbons will write and produce. The show, starring Joel McHale, debuts October 27. Among the Irish American nominees were Philadelphia native Michael Kelly, who was nominated as a supporting actor in the Netflix political drama House of Cards. Then there was Maura

16 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Tierney, nominated as a supporting actress in The Affair. Finally, Ray Donovan – the Showtime drama about a Boston Irish family relocated to California – earned two acting nods for Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, who play a father and son with a complex relationship, to say the least.

Dallas Dubliner Headed to Vatican

allas bishop Kevin J. Farrell (below right), a Dublin native, has been named to a new position at the Vatican. In August, Pope Francis named Farrell – who had served nearly a decade as Bishop of Dallas, Texas – the leader of a new Vatican department designed to explore matters related to “the Laity, the Family and Life.” This comes at a time when reformers are calling for changes in the church’s position on a wide range of issues that affect families, from gays and lesbians to divorce. In September, former Irish president Mary McAleese called on the Pope to end the church’s ban on contraception. “The damage inflicted on the poor, on women, on children is a millstone,” said McAleese. Wading into such controversial turf may take some of the shine off Farrell, who has a strong reputation, even among church critics. Farrell speaks fluent Spanish as well as Italian and earned praise in Dallas in the wake of the sex abuse scandals. As the Dallas Morning News put it, the city was “straining to deal with the aftermath of some of the nation’s worst sexually predatory priest scandals. And internal tensions, partly arising from those scandals, created a frosty relationship among diocesan leaders and with the community.” According to Gerard O’Connell in America, “Pope Francis’s decision to choose an American bishop to head this new department is a clear sign of his high esteem for the church in the United States and for the people of this country that he came to know during his visit last year.”

FROM TOP: Mike Gibbons, Michael Kelly, Maura Tierney, and Liev Schreiber. RIGHT: Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 6:52 PM

IA.IEOHREV_IA Template 10/5/16 10:45 PM Page 18

hibernia | irish eye on hollywood

by Tom Deignan

John Crowley

Finola Dwyer Shopping Brooklyn TV Spinoff

eanwhile, Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn will likely have a second life on the small screen. Finola Dwyer – the New Zealandborn producer who guided Brooklyn to the big screen – has confirmed that she is in talks with the BBC to spin off various characters from Brooklyn as the basis for a television drama. The show would “revolve around the boarding house for young women run in the film by Julie Walter’s character, Mrs. Keogh, and feature the same group of Irish, English, and American girls,” Screendaily.com reported. Dwyer told the entertainment web site, “I suggested the idea to Colm [Tóibín] quite early on, before there was even a first draft for the film.... We’re talking to writers now and have a couple in our sights.” There are currently no plans for Brooklyn’s big Irish stars Saoirse Ronan or Domhnall Gleeson to reprise their roles. News of a Brooklyn TV show comes as Amazon is developing a series based on the Boston Irish gang flick The Departed. That film, directed by Martin Scorsese, starred Jack Nicholson as a Whitey Bulger-type Irish mobster who is all too close to law enforcement officials, even as he is still committing terrible crimes.

PHOTO: FOCUS FEATURES

John Crowley to Direct Goldfinch Adaptation

ohn Crowley is staying literary, but going bigger. After directing the Oscar-

nominated Irish immigrant saga Brooklyn, Crowley was the toast of Ireland’s movie scene. The movie – starring Saoirse Ronan as an Irish immigrant in 1950s New York, based on the moving novel by Colm Tóibín – was a hit with critics and audiences alike. It was ultimately nominated for three Oscars – Best Actress (Ronan), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. For all the accolades, the question inevitably rises: What’s next? Well, Crowley is going to direct a film based on yet another acclaimed New York book – Donna Tart’s epic The Goldfinch. The book, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is a coming-of-age tragedy following Theo Decker, who loses his mother in a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to the chaos, Theo was mesmerized by a young girl who had also been strolling the museum with an elderly man. After the bomb explodes, the old man gives Theo a ring – and (perhaps) tells him to steal the famous painting that gives the book its title. All of this sets this long, fascinating book in motion, as we follow Theo well into adulthood. The Goldfinch was a massive best-seller, though some prominent critics did suggest it was overrated. The Irish connections to The Goldfinch are not nearly as prominent as they are in Brooklyn but there are some. Theo’s mother, for example, is described as “half Irish, half Cherokee.” Less flatteringly, several “moving-and-storage guys” are described as “New York City Irish, lumbering, good-natured guys who hadn’t quite made it into the police force or fire department.” And a building where the “doormen were still mostly Irish” includes one with a drinking problem. There is no word yet on a release date for The Goldfinch, but you can bet it will get plenty of Oscar buzz. 18 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Finola Dwyer

PHOTO: BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE

IA.IEOHREV_IA Template 10/5/16 10:45 PM Page 19

J. COUNTESS / GETTY

Irish Talent in Toronto

ake a deep breath, because the Toronto Vanessa International Film FestiRedgrave, val back in September Jim Sheridan, had not one, not two but and Rooney Mara at the at least six films with Irish ties that will soon be making Toronto Film their way to U.S. screens. The most anticipated, clearly, Festival. is Jim Sheridan’s latest The Secret Scripture, based on the celebrated Sebastian Barry novel. Sheridan (In the Name of the Father, In America) is bringing Barry’s complex book to the big screen. The book revolves around a 100-year-old Sligo woman who has been detained in an institution for decades and the reasons for her detention. The Secret Scripture also stars Irish American Rooney Mara and Irish actors Jack Reynor and Aidan Turner. Also screening in Toronto was Irish director Aisling Walsh’s biopic Maudie, starring Ethan Hawke and Sally Hawkins. The film tells the life of celebrated Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis. Irish director Alan Gilsenan was also on the scene in Toronto, touting his new movie Unless, based on the novel of the same title by Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields. Unless stars Catherine Keener as well as Brendan Coyle, the son of an Irish immigrant to England. Dublin-born director Lorcan Finnegan also presented his debut film Without Name, which is set in Ireland and features as Irish cast including Niamh Alger and Alan McKenna. Variety described Without Name this way: “Part-psychological thriller, depicting the growing deliriousness of a man in mid-life crisis, Without Name is also set against the background of recent rampant property speculation in Ireland.” Wrapping up the Irish flicks in Toronto was John Butler’s Handsome Devil and Gerard Barrett’s Brain on Fire.

The Gunn Brothers

Right: Mike O’Malley. Left: Sean Gunn.

he website biography of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn begins like this: “James Gunn was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri in a large Irish Catholic family. At the age of twelve he began his filmmaking career with an eight-millimeter camera. “His first film featured his brother Sean, an actor on the WB’s The Gilmore Girls, being disemboweled by zombies.” Well, Gunn has certainly moved beyond eight-millimeter cameras. Next year is going to be a big one for the Gunn family. The sequel to the mega-successful Guardians will hit big screens in the summer of 2017, with James again directing and Sean in the cast. For now, Sean Gunn will be appearing in the October film Ordinary World, appearing alongside Selma Blair, Judy Greer and Green Day rocker Billie Joe Armstrong. The Gunn brothers will also be collaborating on the March 2017 film The Belko Experiment, which stars Sean and was written by James. The creepy flick is set at a corporation where the employees are given an awful choice: if they do not kill three of their colleagues in 30 minutes, six of them will be murdered. This dark flick is slated to be released – fitting for the Gunns – on St. Patrick’s Day 2017.

Mike O’Malley Helms Survivor’s Remorse

ike O’Malley would not appear to be a likely

choice to work as a top producer for a TV show such as Survivor’s Remorse on the Starz network. The show – which is also produced by NBA great LeBron James – depicts the highs and lows of an African American kid from the projects of Boston who suddenly finds himself living life in the fast lane after he is drafted by a professional basketball team. Still, O’Malley has extensive acting and writing experience – including an Emmy nomination for his work on Glee – and he was smart enough to assemble a writing crew that could make the characters in Survivor’s Remorse seem both entertaining and authentic. “Not only was it intentional to find younger writers and people of color who could write about what people in their 20s are going through – which is four of the five main characters in the show – [but it was critical having them] talk about what’s important to them, as relatable to these characters,” O’Malley told the L.A. Times. So, as the paper added, “the self-described ‘white, Irish Catholic with three kids,’” was able to establish a creative “space where the young folk and those of different backgrounds have room to meaningfully contribute to a show about a black family.” Survivor’s Remorse is now in its third season and has already been renewed for a fourth. O’Malley, meanwhile, continues his acting work. He was seen recently in the Tom Hanks film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood.

Canadian Irish Murder Gets TV Treatment

notorious murder case in Canada involving an Irish immigrant is the basis for a forthcoming Netflix series. The streaming service is developing the best-selling Margaret Atwood novel Alias Grace into a six-hour mini-series. As the Hollywood Reporter put it: “Published in 1996, Alias Grace follows Grace Marks, a poor, young Irish immigrant and domestic servant in upper Canada who, along with stable hand James McDermott, was convicted of the brutal murders of their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, in 1843.” James was eventually executed by hanging, and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment. She became infamous for her crime, though in the decades that followed new evidence emerged and Grace Marks was eventually pardoned. Look for Alias Grace on Netflix next year.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 19

IA.Hib20-21_IA Template 10/5/16 10:35 PM Page 20

PHOTOS: THE BULLY / YOUTUBE

hibernia | people Irish Detective Survives Meat Cleaver Attack

rish immigrant Detective Brian O’Donnell was severely injured when he intercepted a dispute between his NYPD colleagues and an armed attacker in September. O’Donnell, who left Dublin for New York in 1993, was off-duty and traveling to Penn Station to meet his wife and children when he was slashed with an 11-inch meat cleaver by Akram Joudeh. The 43-year-old was admitted to Bellevue Hospital after the attack, which saw a six-inch wound stretch from his forehead to jaw. Joudeh, who had been initially confronted for attempting to remove a boot from his car, was shot by O’Donnell’s fellow officers and also taken into medical care. Upon discharge, O’Donnell was greeted with a guard of honor and applauding crowd. “I was just doing my job,” O’Donnell asserted to the Irish Mirror. “I saw what was happening and I had to help my fellow officers and protect the public. This is what I am paid to do.” Many tributes were paid to O’Donnell following the incident, one of which came from Deputy Inspector Clint A. McPherson, commanding officer of the detective’s own 19th Precinct. McPherson shared a picture of the precinct members standing before the Irish and American flags, saying, “New York Police Department 19th Detective Squad and Precinct send lots of love and get well wishes to our friend and hero, Det. Brian O’Donnell.” “He loves his job, even though it can be very dangerous, as shown by this,” O’Donnell’s brother, John, told the Daily Mail. “He is a great guy and will do his best to get back to work as soon as possible.” – O.O.

Irish Boy in Chicago Directs Anti-Bullying Video

ublin-born Chicago middle schooler Jonah Maxwell has tackled the issue of bullying in his school by writing and directing a video on the subject. The Bully, which dramatizes seventh-grader Maxwell’s own experiences, was posted to YouTube in August and brought in over 350,000 views in its first week online. Maxwell, who moved from Ireland to Chicago with his family at the age of seven, was mocked for his Irish accent by other children at his new school. He also frequently witnessed the bullying of other students. Even after classes ended for the day, the verbal and emotional abuse extended to social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. “My dad told me that when he was a kid, the bullying would stop at 3:30pm every day,” the first-time director told WGN Morning News when speaking about the prominence of cyberbullying among classmates. “I told him it’s not like that any more. They can get you 24/7.” He also stressed that those who allow others to be harassed are scarcely better than the bullies themselves. He asserted, “If you are not part of the solution, you can still be part of the problem.” The video, which features faceless bullies to represent the anonymity the internet can provide, will be shown in classrooms in Ireland, the U.S. and Australia over the coming months as part of an anti-bullying lesson series. – O.O.

Chuck Feeney to End Irish Grants

PHOTO: EVERIPEDIA.COM

Brian O'Donnell coming out of the hospital with his family. 20 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

rish American philanthropist and entrepreneur Chuck Feeney, who has been engaging in philanthropic projects across the globe for over thirty years, announced in August that his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, will make its final grants in 2016, including those to Ireland. 84-year-old Feeney, deemed “the quiet giant of Irish philanthropy” by the Irish Examiner, has said that Atlantic Philanthropies is operating with a limited lifespan and will finish its work this year. Feeney’s first Irish grant went to the educational services after a visit in the 1980s, when third-level institutions were desperately in need of funding. This was instrumental in the transformation of the University of Limerick, where the student body of 735 exploded to over 11,000. Since then, Feeney has invested over €1.1 billion in the Republic of Ireland, €563.7 million of which has gone towards education, healthcare, and heritage centers. “I don’t think we’re going to see another Chuck Feeney here in the short term,” executive director of Philanthropy Ireland Eilis Murray told the Examiner. “We’re going to have to look to other solutions involving government, corporates and private donors to fill the gap.” – O.O. Feeney, top center, with Gerry Adams (left) and Bruce Morrison (bottom) in Northern Ireland during peace negotiations in 1998.

IA.Hib20-21_IA Template 10/5/16 10:35 PM Page 21

hibernia | landmarks PHOTO: MONUMENTAL TASK COMMITTEE, INC. / FACEBOOK

California’s First Irish Hunger Memorial

he community of Eugene, California welcomed the state’s first Irish Hunger Memorial at its dedication ceremony in Saint Joseph’s Cemetery in September. It was the product of efforts by the Irish Cultural Society of Stanislaus County and the San Francisco Chapter of the Irish American Unity Conference, and about 100 locals were present to see it unveiled.

“Mother of Orphans” Sculpture Renewed

S The dedication of California’s first memorial to the Irish Hunger. PHOTO: LORETTA MCCARTHY

The memorial’s location is a significant one – the first settlers in Eugene were a pair of Irishmen named Dillon and Dooley, who erected a change station for horses of the Kelly and Reynold stage line. When the settlement had reached its peak in 1870, James Nolan, another Irish immigrant, became its first postmaster. Nolan would go on to donate the land for Saint Joseph’s Church, which by the 1890s was the settlement’s final remaining building. It too was eventually torn down, leaving the cemetery grounds upon which the simplistic headstone and plaque of the Hunger Memorial now stand. “When the Irish came to California, they were among the first pioneers,” said Philip Grant, Consul General of Ireland in San Francisco, at the unveiling event. “There were no cities to find themselves in the slums of. Instead, they built the cities.” He added, “It is as important to have a Famine memorial in a small rural cemetery in the middle of the foothills in California as it is to have it in Boston, or New York, or New Orleans because this is a very important part of how a people found salvation, how a people found hope.” – O.O.

ince July 9, 1884, a sculpture of humanitarian Margaret Haughery, otherwise known as “The Mother of Orphans” (June / July 2016 issue), has stood on the corner of Camp and Prytania Streets in New Orleans. This September, it received some long-overdue restoration work and a dedication plaque from the Monumental Task Committee, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to the preservation of New Orleans. The $53 thousand restoration, led by local conservation consultant Linda K. Stubbsand Ivan Myjer of Building and Monument Conservation, was funded through donations, grants, fundraisers, and a matching campaign by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “It has been a wonderful experience working on the Pictured above: Donors and Margaret monument,” MTC founder Pierre McGraw volunteers who helped fund said. “It has been over 100 years since she lived in the plaque and restoration of Margaret Place in New New Orleans, but she is still bringing out the best in Orleans. people.” – O.O.

America’s Oldest Irish Pub Closes

he oldest Irish pub in America shut its doors once and for all in September. Patrick’s of Pratt Street, a tourist attraction and local haunt alike, was established in Baltimore by Patrick Healy in 1847. The business lived out its first fifteen years on the corner of S. Schroeder and Lemon Streets, during which time it went by Healey’s. Eventually it was moved to its permanent location on Pratt Street, where it was run by members of the Healy and Rowley families until the time of its closing. Patrick Rowley, the final owner of Patrick’s, inherited the pub from his uncle in 1999. “It’s just time to move on,” he told IrishCentral. “I’m almost 70, and I don’t feel old, just too tired to be on my feet carrying drinks all night. We don’t have an heir or family member to take it over. They’re all too busy with their own professional lives.” Rowley, whose Irish heritage is rooted in Swinford and Foxford of Co. Mayo, believed that Patrick’s was “like a family. Irish pubs are supposed to be friendly, welcoming places. It shouldn’t be about politics, or serious stuff, or what’s wrong with anybody.” Rowley has revealed his intention to focus his newfound freedom on Patrick’s Custom Tours, an Irish tour business he has run with his wife, Anne, for the last 17 years. He said, “I might be too old to stand behind a bar for hours, but I can still sit in a coach and talk about Ireland just fine.” – O.O. OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 21

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 11:35 AM

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 11:39 AM

IA.Hib-BabeRuth/TWL_IA Template 10/5/16 10:08 PM Page 24

Taming the Bambino

hibernia | from the dugout

and Winning Multiple World Series: The No-Nonsense Authority of Bill “Rough” Carrigan

THE GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

ABOVE: (Left to right) Babe Ruth, Bill Carrigan, Jack Barry, and Vean Gregg of the Boston Red Sox. BELOW: Bill Carrigan, 1915.

THE HARRIS & EWING COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

o control a brash young Babe Ruth – who joined the Boston Red Sox at age 19, fresh out of an institution for troubled youths – a strong presence was needed. Enter Red Sox player-manager Bill “Rough” Carrigan, who, despite his average size, was a notorious brawler, viewed by many as the fiercest man in a league that included such feisty characters as Ty Cobb. Aside from being feared, Carrigan – who, for almost a century, was the only Sox manager to win two World Series titles – was also genuinely respected, and Ruth would later describe him as the best manager he ever had. According to most sources, Carrigan was born on October 22, 1883, in Lewiston, Maine. He was the youngest of three children, and his parents, John and Annie Carrigan, were Irish Catholic immigrants who “had arrived in the United States prior to the Civil War,” according to Mark Armour, writing for the book Deadball Stars of the American League. Carrigan’s youth was filled with physical activity, be it farm work or sport. After excelling as an athlete at Lewiston High School, he headed to Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his baseball coach astutely converted him from an infielder to a

24 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

catcher. At the end of his second year at Holy Cross, he signed a Major League Baseball contract with Boston (the current Red Sox were then called the Boston Americans). His debut came on July 7, 1906. It soon became clear that Carrigan feared no one. Nicknamed “Rough” by the press, he used to exchange taunts with the pugnacious legend Ty Cobb and once “took the ball and slammed it into Cobb’s mouth,” according to Derek Gentile’s book The Complete Boston Red Sox. Rough would find himself in separate scrapes with two of Cobb’s Detroit Tiger teammates, including George Moriarty, with whom he engaged in a notorious slugfest following a collision at home plate. Whenever Carrigan was catching, home plate could be a contentious piece of real estate for anyone looking to score. His intrepid plate blocking caused Chicago White Sox manager Nixey Callahan to say: “You might as well try to move a stone wall.” The “stone wall” was also known for being a superb game-caller for pitchers. As for offensive production, his .257 batting average was decent. But with just six home rus in ten seasons, he was not much of a power hitter (though, in fairness, he did play in the “Dead-Ball Era,” when home runs were a comparatively rare event). In general, his contributions were of a sort that didn’t appear on the back of a baseball card. Still not even 30 years old, Carrigan was selected as the Sox manager amid the team’s lackluster standing at the mid-season mark of 1913. Initially, he was not too pleased with this new task. Aside from the fact that he’d liked the outgoing manager, Jake Stahl, Carrigan wasn’t eager to take charge of a roster that had veterans who were older and ostensibly better-qualified for the managerial position. He may have been reluctant to accept the job, but he sure wasn’t hesitant once he took over as a player-manager. He even fined one of his pitchers for failing to make a batter “hit the dirt” when the pitcher was ordered to throw inside. It seems that the Sox were in need of Rough’s stern authority. Team chemistry was lousy, as the roster was divided, to a large extent, along Protestant and Catholic lines. Among the Catholic players who elicited Protestant disapproval was a swaggering rookie pitcher named Babe Ruth. Carrigan was behind the plate to catch the tall lefty for his major league debut on July 11, 1914. Later on, when

IA.Hib-BabeRuth/TWL_IA Template 10/5/16 10:08 PM Page 25

those we lost | passages

the cocky young Ruth began to misbehave, Carrigan decided to make him his roommate; Ruth started to behave, at least for a while, which was more than any other manager would achieve. Having steered the Sox to a second-place finish in 1914, Carrigan would manage the team to consecutive World Series titles in 1915 and 1916. Then, at the top of the baseball world, he walked away from the game. As he was now married and with a young daughter, he had grown weary of the long baseball season and wanted to spend more time with his family. Shortly after returning to his hometown of Lewiston, Maine, he became involved with real estate, owning a group of movie theaters, which he later sold at a significant profit. Whether he was running businesses or players, it seemed he had a knack for knowing what to do. This managerial prowess was acknowledged time and again, as each off-season some Major League ball club made an attempt to draw him out of his baseball retirement. Finally, after a full decade of resistance, Carrigan returned to baseball, rejoining the Sox as their manager. He would wish that he stayed home, as the team finished last each of the three years during his second stint. There was also a generational divide: Rough felt that these players were not focused enough on baseball and too concerned with “golf and stocks and where they were going after the game.” When Carrigan left baseball for the second time, everyone knew it was forever. Despite the foul taste of those last-place seasons, he did manage to return to Fenway Park for commemorative events. And he was named to baseball’s “Honor Roll,” described by the New York Times as “an adjunct of the Hall of Fame,” in 1946. When Ruth died two years later, the Bambino bequeathed his former manager a silver bowl trophy. Back in his hometown – where he raised his three children with wife Beulah Carrigan, née Bartlett, – Carrigan had launched a banking career, ultimately becoming President of Peoples Savings Bank in Lewiston. He died in Lewiston at age 85 on July 8, 1969, some five weeks before an iconic music festival known as Woodstock brought national attention to a blossoming youthful counterculture. One can only imagine what old Rough would’ve thought about that generation. – Ray Cavanaugh

Peter Barry

1928 – 2016 ormer Fine Gael leader, tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Peter Barry died in August at his home in Cork city. He was 88. Barry was an instrumental figure in the establishment of the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement, a treaty which contributed to the ending of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Barry was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD in the 1969 general election, and the party’s win of the 1973 election saw him become the Minister for Transport and Power. In 1976, he served as Minister for Education, and in 1979, he was elected the deputy leader of the Fine Gael party under Garret FitzGerald. After serving fleetingly as Minister for the Environment, he began his five-year tenure as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1982. As well as using his role of Foreign Minister to help negotiate the terms of the Anglo-Irish agreement, Barry became the first joint chairman of the AngloIrish Intergovernmental Conference, a body concerned with political, legal, and security matters in Northern Ireland, as well as the promotion of crossborder co-operation. Following the Labour Party’s withdrawal from the coalition government in 1987, Barry became tánaiste for a brief period. Barry was born and educated in Blackrock, Co. Cork. Despite wanting to become an engineer, he fulfilled family obligations by working in their tea shop, which was not doing well at the time. This business would recover to become Barry’s Tea, a nationallyloved brand, of which he was a major stockholder. Current Minister of Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan paid tribute to Barry in the Irish Times, saying, “His deep commitment to public service and his humble and warm demeanor were admired by all.” He is survived by his children, Tony, Deirdre, Donagh, Conor, Peter Jr., and Fiona. – O.O.

Peter Barry

Bob Dunfey

1928 – 2016 ob Dunfey, an instrumental figure in the Northern Ireland peace process and native of Lowell, Massachusetts, died in August at the age of 88 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was a friend and campaigner of Senator Robert Kennedy and spent much of his career in the “back room” of the Democratic party’s political activities in Massachusetts, later applying what he learned to help repair relations in his ancestral home. He played an essential role in Kennedy’s presidential campaign in Maine, during which the candidate would call him every Sunday to seek advice. He was also behind George Mitchell’s appointment as Senate majority leader in 1980, when he approached the man in question to fill Edmund Muskie’s vacated seat. He accompanied Mitchell when he was appointed Pres-

Bob Dunfey

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 25

IA.Hib-BabeRuth/TWL_IA Template 10/5/16 10:09 PM Page 26

those we lost | passages ident Clinton’s economic advisor on Northern Ireland in his first investigation. There, he met community leaders on the Shankill and Falls Roads in Belfast and witnessed the harsh reality of the Troubles. Dunfey and his family, who owned Omni Hotels International, established the Global Citizen’s Circle in 1968 to create a space for international political progress, embracing Cuba, Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. They reflected this space at the Washington/Boston American Ireland Fund’s annual events, bringing opponents of the peace process together in its early days to promote dialogue that could not be held at home in Ireland. Dunfey bought a house Ballyferriter, a small Gaeltacht village in Co. Kerry, which allowed him to stay connected with his roots. He returned there every summer for 35 years, forging connections and friendships with figures such as Gerry Adams, John Hume, David Trimble, and Monica McWilliams during the bedrock period of the peace process. Dunfey, who is survived by his wife, five children, and four siblings, requested his ashes be returned to Ballyferriter. – O.O.

John McLaughlin

TOP: John McLaughlin. ABOVE: John Timoney.

1927 – 2016 olitical talk show host John Joseph McLaughlin died in August at the age of 89. Best known as the host of public affairs television show The McLaughlin Group, he missed only one broadcast in 34 years in the days leading up to his death. McLoughlin’s loud, brash, and unyielding style of hosting was emblematic of his show. Born into a second-generation Irish American family in Providence, Rhode Island, McLoughlin prepared for a career in the priesthood from the age of 18, and in 1959, he was ordained into the Jesuit order. After obtaining a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, he became a writer and later assistant editor of America, the Jesuit current affairs publication in New York. During the Vietnam War, McLoughlin transitioned from affiliation with the Democratic party to supporting the war as a Republican. He returned to Providence in 1970 in order to run for the United States Senate to represent Rhode Island, but was unsuccessful in his efforts. He later became a speechwriter for president Richard Nixon. In 1975, he left the priesthood to pursue public relations, eventually rising to fame in the political media. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, chairman and publisher of the Daily News and a regular panelist of The McLaughlin Group, said that “the liveliness [of the

26 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

show] was a reflection of [McLoughlin’s] unique personality as well as his keen intellect, which helped to cover and uncover the numerous landscapes of opinions that steered his listeners to make qualified decisions.” In the 2014 year-end award episode of his show, McLaughlin famously said: “Pope Francis – person of the year, especially now that he’s told us that animals can go to heaven. And Oliver is up there waiting for me.” McLoughlin’s Oliver Productions, Inc., is named after his beloved Basset Hound, who, fittingly, is shown in a brand logo animation at the close of each show. – O.O.

John Timoney

1948 - 2016 rish American policeman and law enforcement executive John Timoney died in August after a battle with lung cancer. Timoney, who was once named as America’s best cop by Esquire magazine, was 68. Timoney gained national recognition during his seven-year placement as chief of police in Miami, during which he publicly advocated for the use of non-lethal force among police officers. Timoney took over the department as chief in 2003, the same year that the protests at the Free Trade Area of America occurred. To handle the crowds, Timoney invented the “Miami model” method, which consisted of preemptive arrests, heavily armed undercover cops, embedded police and intelligence gathered from protesters. During his first 20 months in as chief commissioner of Miami, not a single shot was fired by a member of his force. This prompted the New Yorker to deem him “one of the most progressive and effective police chiefs in the country” in a 2007 profile. In 2003, the New York Times reported that to Miami officers who demanded an exception to Timoney’s ban on shooting at cars, he allowed only one: if he arrived at the scene to find a tire-track across a force member’s chest. The starting point of Timoney’s path to Miami was reminiscent of countless other Irish immigrants. At 13, he moved with his family from inner city Dublin to Washington Heights, Manhattan, where he Anglicized his given first name, Sean, in order to fit in. By 1969, he had become a beat cop in the NYPD, and, soon after, the youngest four-star chief in New York. He was later named deputy commissioner under former NYPD chief Bill Bratton. Bratton’s 1996 resignation prompted Timoney to relocate to Philadelphia, where he was named police commissioner the following year. There, he oversaw new training techniques for officers and transformed internal affairs, despite Republican Convention complaints from the ACLU in 2000 regarding his non-lethal force policies. After Miami, Timoney did some consulting work stateside, and since 2011 worked with the Ministry of the Interior of Bahrain to reduce casualties during the pro-democracy Bahraini uprising. He is survived by his wife, Noreen, and children, Christine and Sean. – O.O.

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 12:47 PM

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 12:48 PM

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 12:49 PM

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 12:49 PM

IA.Quotes_IA Template 10/5/16 9:46 PM Page 31

hibernia | quote unquote “This is a big step in the right direction. I think it will have major impact on U.S. entrepreneurship, and potentially on the broader economy.” “Inspired by America’s struggle for freedom and independence, Robert Emmet sparked a movement for Irish independence for generations. For many Americans, the admiration for Emmet reflects a deep and abiding pride in Irish-American history, as well as the lasting worldwide influence of our own American history. I was proud to join a bipartisan group of Members in introducing this bill to coincide with the anniversary of the 1916 uprising.”

Representative Joe Crowley (D-NY). The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to name a park in Washington, D.C. after Irish patriot Robert Emmet on September 23. The Emmet statue, already standing in the park, which is located in the embassy district of the city on Massachusetts Avenue, was reconditioned earlier this year and re-dedicated to mark the 1916 centenary.

Patrick Collison, an Irish immigrant and CEO of Stripe, a payment processing company based in San Francisco, speaking on a possible immigration reform measure proposed by the Department of Homeland Security allowing foreign entrepreneurs temporary entry for up to five years if they are building a company in the U.S. – New York Times.

Actor Matthew McConaughey, who is married to Brazilian Camila Alvez. McConaughey’s mother’s family hailed from counties Cavan and Monaghan and his father has Irish roots as well, on connecting his three children with their Irish roots. – Irish Sun.

“I tell everyone all the time [when] they say, ‘What are you?’ I say, ‘I’m Irish. I’m Puerto Rican.’ I guess I was born to fight… I’m proud of who I am, but it doesn’t define me as a person. I’m a whole lot more than just Spanish or Irish or whatever but definitely it’s given me help. It’s given me a push and I’m very proud of my Spanish heritage.” MMA fighter Eddie Alvarez, who grew up in the heavily Irish neighborhood of Kensington in Philadelphia. He is slated to fight Dublin-born Conor McGregor for the UFC lightweight championship on November 12 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. – Irish Independent.

“My kids are really privileged to call themselves Brazilian Irish. Irish Brazilian, how great is that? Connected to two of the most vibrant, colorful, exciting cultures on the planet. When they’re older, I want to send them to that Irish language summer camp you guys do, it’s like a rite of passage for you guys, isn’t it? When you’re teenagers. I want them fluent – which means I gotta do a crash course too.”

“America is like the best idea the world ever came up with. But Donald Trump is potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America, potentially…. Because America is not just a country – Ireland is a nice country; Great Britain is a great country, all the rest of it; it’s not an idea – America is an idea. And that idea is bound up in justice and equality for all…. I don’t think he’s a Republican. I think he’s hijacked the party and I think he’s trying to hijack the idea of America and I think it’s bigger than all of us. This is really dangerous. Wise people of conscience should not let this man turn your country into a casino.”

Bono, in an interview with Charlie Rose, who asked, “Does Trump come to you as somebody who is a change agent, because people are so unhappy about the status quo? Or does he come to you as something else?” – CBS This Morning.

I keep saying that election is a referendum on decency. It is a chance to reject the gutter and punish people who want to live there. But we are rewarding them. . . . Now in America when you act like an a**hole, you’re a hero. . . . The real infectious disease affecting our election isn’t pneumonia, it’s a real lack of class.

– Bill Maher on Real Time With Bill Maher. OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 31

IA.DublinTravelREV_IA Template 10/5/16 9:35 PM Page 32

Dublin’s

Seaside villages, mountains and castles. There’s more to Dublin than its famed city.

By Sharon Ní Chonchúir

thought I knew Dublin. I’ve spent lots of time in the capital and even accompanied friends from other countries on trips to tourist sites such as Trinity College and the Guinness Storehouse. Surely I’d seen all there was to see of Dublin’s fair city? On a recent trip, I realized how wrong I was. By confining myself to the delights of the city center and ignoring areas north and south of the River Liffey, all I’d done was skim the surface. The Irish Tourist Board is currently running a publicity campaign which boasts that Dublin represents “a breath of fresh air.” What they mean is that it is more than its city center. As I was to discover, Dublin is also its seaside villages, its nearby mountains and its countless unexpected surprises. The first of these is Howth, an old fishing village 32 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

eight miles north of the city. A former Viking stronghold, the Howth of today combines the ramshackle charm of the working fishing port with an elegant yacht club and upmarket eateries. I was shown around by Pat Liddy, one of Ireland’s most entertaining tour guides. We started at Howth Castle, which dates from the 14th century and is still inhabited by descendants of the original Lord of Howth. “The Pirate Queen Gráinne Mhaol came here once seeking shelter,” said Pat. “She was refused entry and was so angry that she kidnapped the Lord’s son. She only returned him when the family promised that they would always set an extra place at their table for any stranger that needed hospitality. The family do that to this day.” Funnily enough, they do that while keeping the castle itself closed to visitors except on Sundays during August and September. However, its higgledy-piggledy grounds are well worth a wander. You’ll find the National Transport Museum in one corner, a cookery school in another, and a golf course in yet another. From the castle, we ambled along to the Cliff Path, a looped walk that starts and finishes in the village and culminates in a viewing point that takes in Howth,

IA.DublinTravelREV_IA Template 10/5/16 9:35 PM Page 33

its lighthouse, Ireland’s Eye just off the coast and Dublin City in the distance. Back in the village, Pat told me about the gunrunning that happened in Howth prior to the 1916 Rising. When the Ulster Volunteers imported arms in 1914, the Irish Volunteers decided to do likewise. A group comprising of Erskine and Molly Childers, Roger Casement, Alice Green, and Mary Spring Rice, arranged for guns to be brought to Howth in the Childers’ private yacht, the Asgard. Molly and Erskine and a crew of five others sailed the yacht to the Belgian coast where they picked up 900 rifles that had come from Hamburg and brought them back to Howth, where they unloaded them on the 26th of July. Molly kept a diary of all that happened on that journey – a diary now viewed as an important historical document and

kept in Trinity College’s archive – and the guns went on to be used in the Easter Rising. Pat pointed out where King George IV landed in 1821. Dublin had been suffering economically since the Act of Union in 1800 and this royal visit was seen as a hopeful indicator for the future. So hopeful were the people of the city that they festooned Dublin with banners, flags, and bunting. On Howth Pier itself, locals went so far as to mark the exact spot where King George’s feet made contact with the pier and a stone mason then chiselled his footprints into the granite for posterity. After strolling along the harbor, Pat and I sat by the pier enjoying some of the best seafood Dublin has to offer in Deep Restaurant. We cast our eyes enviously over the luxurious yachts berthed in the yacht club and giggled as seals tried to steal fish

LEFT: Three Rock Mountain, which forms part of the group of hills in the Dublin Mountains. TOP: Howth Harbor Lighthouse, built in 1817, is located at the end of Howth Harbor. ABOVE: A small section of Howth Castle which dates to medieval times and has been the home of the Gaisford-St. Lawrence family for over 800 years.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 33

IA.DublinTravelREV_IA Template 10/5/16 9:35 PM Page 34

from fishermen on the working side of the harbor. After lunch, I traveled further north to Malahide, which is another seaside town with a castle at its heart. The perfectly-preserved Malahide Castle was occupied by the Talbot family for 800 years up to 1975. At the entrance, there’s a portrait of the last Talbots who lived here. There’s Lord Milo who died in 1973 and his sister Rose who sold the castle to Dublin City Council in 1976. The castle stands as testament to the life that they, and their ancestors, lived. The impressive oak room has walls that are inlaid with carved oak panels that are more than 500 years old. The drawing room is painted in a shade that was created especially for it and is to this day known as Malahide Orange. A guide pointed out the fireguards that were used to protect the ladies’ thick makeup from melting. Apparently, this is where the phrases “saving face” and “losing face” come from. When servants would see makeup melting, they would rush over with a fireguard and say: “My lady, you are losing face. May I save your face?” I was most struck by the family bedrooms. They are furnished with children’s toys, dressing tables, wash stands, and personal items that make the era come truly alive. I loved the gardens, too. Lord Milo was a keen botanist who traveled the world collecting specimens. The gardens are his living legacy. The following day, I traveled east of the city center to Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the largest city park in Western Europe. There, I visited Farmleigh House. For two hundred years, this was one of the homes of the Guinness family, but in 1999, it was bought by the Irish government who set about establishing it as Ireland’s official guest house. It’s now where heads of state stay when they visit the country.

The public can take guided tours whenever the house is not in use. These tours take in the dining room, which is laid with official State-branded crockery. Then there’s the library, which is home to some of Ireland’s most valuable first-edition books. The ballroom is a marvel with its elaborate plasterwork, chandeliers and oak floor that is said to be made from disused barrels from the Guinness brewery. So too, is the conservatory, with its marble floor,

WHERE TO EAT IN DUBLIN CITY: • Luna on Drury Street combines a sophisticated interior with exceptional service, fine Italian cooking and the best Irish and European ingredients. • Avenue by Nick Munier in Temple Bar showcases modern Irish food (think Irish charcuterie boards and local oysters) as well as international trends such as ceviche, steaks and burgers.

• Eden Bar and Grill on South William Street offers great food and fantastic cocktails. • East End Tavern on Leeson Street is an updated version of the classic Dublin bar. Its leather seats, exposed brickwork and open fire make it an inviting place to be while its great bar food, whiskeys, excellent craft beers and cocktails may mean that you never want to leave.

34 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

IA.DublinTravelREV_IA Template 10/5/16 9:35 PM Page 35

TOP LEFT: Sailing boats in the harbor of Howth Peninsula. TOP CENTER: Sutton Martello Tower at sunset. TOP RIGHT: View of Dublin from Three Rocks. LEFT: Farmleigh, the official Irish State guest house. It was formerly one of the Dublin residences of the Guinness family. BELOW: A walk along the cliff path in Howth.

Victorian glazing, and exotic plants. The grounds at Farmleigh are also worth exploring. There’s a fountain, a sunken garden, a walled garden, a boathouse and a café. You may even spot some of the wild deer that roam freely in Phoenix Park. Later, I continued south to Airfield, a place that offers another fresh perspective on Dublin. It’s a 38acre estate that was bought by a Dublin family called the Overends in 1894. Three daughters were born to this family, but one died as a young child after contracting tuberculosis from unpasteurized milk. That tragedy defined the lives of her surviving sisters. They went on to turn Airfield into a city farm and to devote themselves to pushing for improvements in food and farming in Ireland. You’ll learn all about these eccentric sisters as you roam through their home and farm. You’ll hear how they went to buy a car for use around the farm and come home with the latest Rolls Royce instead. That car is still on the farm and it’s the only known Rolls Royce in the world to have been fitted with a tow bar, to which the ladies would attach trailers of Jersey cows to bring to agricultural shows around the country. You’ll see the pasteurization parlor the sisters installed at Airfield, which was the

first of its kind in Ireland. And you’ll be told how even though they are now dead, the staff of this city farm are determined that the sisters’ legacy will live on. Airfield now offers visitors an opportunity to learn about food and farming. Everywhere I went, children were being shown how to feed and look after animals. I even saw some excitedly collecting freshly-laid eggs and bringing them into the kitchens where they made scrambled eggs and toast. From Airfield, I continued south to Sandycove, home to Dublin’s famous Forty Foot swimming spot. Although, I visited in winter, there were still people swimming in the cold, grey Irish Sea. Everyone is welcome to dive in and on that day, some visiting French tourists joined Dubliners in stripping down to their togs and taking to the sea. There’s a Martello tower right beside the Forty Foot. The coast of Dublin is lined with these towers, which were erected during the Napoleonic Wars, each within sight of the other so that they could signal in the event of an attack. Round and squat, they have been put to various uses over the years. The one at Sandycove was occupied by a friend of James Joyce’s in the early 1900s. Joyce stayed there and it is said that he wrote the first part of Ulysses in the tower. Today, the tower is a museum that is run entirely by volunteers. These enthusiasts have assembled a treasure trove of Joyce’s letters, books, photos and OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 35

IA.DublinTravelREV_IA Template 10/5/16 9:35 PM Page 36

Extra information on all thE placEs sharon visitEd: • Pat Liddy Tours pat liddy and his team of experienced guides give you an insider’s view of dublin and its surrounding villages. Group and individual tours are available. www.walkingtours.ie • Howth Castle find out more about visiting the 800-year-old castle and its grounds at: www.howthcastle.com

TOP: A calf on Airfield Estate, a working farm which is open to the public all year round. ABOVE: Walking in the Dublin Mountains with Liz McEvoy who runs Trails and Tales. RIGHT: James Joyce Tower bed and hammock.

Photos courtesy of Tourism Ireland

first editions. They even have one of his death masks. A section of the tower has also been kept as it was when Joyce stayed there. Anyone who considers themselves a fan should visit. My final day in Dublin was spent in the Dublin Mountains with Liz McEvoy, the walking tour guide who runs Trails and Tales. A mere ten miles from the city center, Liz led me through unspoiled countryside, regaling me with stories along the way. One of our walks was in the Glenasmole Valley (which comes from the Irish for “valley of the thrushes”). “Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna roamed this area in mythological times and Fionn himself is said to have given the valley its name,” said Liz. As we walked, Liz pointed out 5000-year-old passage tombs. She told me how the reservoir in the middle of the valley was built during the Famine and that everyone in the valley was involved in building it. So much so that many had to go back to school once the building work was done in order to learn to read and write. “We have records of men in their 40s starting primary school,” she said. Liz’s family have lived in the area since the 1600s so she has personal stories to tell too. She tells one of an uncle who had the same name as Michael Collins. “The Black and Tans would arrive at the family home during the War of Independence and the poor man would have to convince them that he wasn’t the Michael Collins they were searching for,” she laughed. My three days of exploration changed my understanding of Dublin entirely. I now know there is much more to it than its city center. Its surrounding suburbs are home to castles and seaside communities, Martello towers and museums, city farms and swimming spots and the natural wonders of the Dublin Mountains. I can’t believe what a breath of fresh air IA my capital city proved itself to be.

36 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

• Malahide Castle malahide castle and Gardens are open all year round, offering guided tours, exhibitions, and a visitor center. www.malahidecastleandgardens.ie • Farmleigh the official state residence is set in 78 acres of dublin’s phoenix park and it’s open for tours when it’s not in use. www.farmleigh.ie • Airfield City Farm visit a working farm in dublin city and explore the lives of the eccentric sisters who founded this farm at the beginning of the last century. www.airfield.ie

• Joyce Museum the James Joyce tower is open 365 days a year and admission is free. the volunteers who staff it guarantee that Joyce enthusiasts will always get a warm welcome. www.jamesjoycetower.com • Hiking in the Dublin Mountains local liz mcEvoy offers short walking tours through the quiet valleys, bog lands and lakes of the dublin mountains, giving an insight into the past and pointing out the views of dublin city and Bay as she goes. no specialist walking gear required. www.trailsandtalesdublin.com

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 11:08 AM

IA.KeeganREV_IA Template 10/6/16 11:47 AM Page 38

Dan Keegan

IA.KeeganREV_IA Template 10/6/16 11:47 AM Page 39

Thriving as a Leader in Changing Times

As Wall Street remaps its understanding of the markets, Daniel Keegan, co-head of Global Equities at Citigroup, is leading the way, shepherding his company through wholly novel and unprecedented conditions.

By Adam Farley

ne of the most influential leaders on Wall Street, Dan Keegan is a third-generation Irish American with roots in west County Meath and Cork on his father’s side, and just outside of Dublin on his mother’s. He is a devout Catholic, a proud member of a large Irish American family, and a lifelong supporter of Notre Dame. Keegan’s father is an alumnus, so too his three brothers, and when the time came for Dan to go to college, his father told him he could go anywhere, but if he wanted it paid for, he should pack his bags for South Bend. He earned his B.A. in American studies, with concentrations in English, history, and government. Robert Schmuhl, professor of American studies and journalism, taught Keegan as an undergraduate and the two have remained close. He remembers his student’s combination of humor and inquisitiveness. “Curious, smart, personable, he made a winning impression then, and he continues to do so,” he told Irish America. “Laughter is never far away when he’s around, and each day his Irish good humor adds to the gaiety of this nation and others.” Though Keegan has an abiding interest in history, when he graduated in 1991, he decided to study law, and where better than Notre Dame Law School, the oldest Roman Catholic law school in the nation. His father, a lawyer himself, wasn’t overly enthused at his decision. His advice to Dan was “don’t take notes.” Asked why, his father, he says, told him bluntly, “Others will take better notes, what you really need to learn is how to think.” To this day, Keegan, now 47, says it was the best advice he ever received (even if he didn’t feel that way at the time). “The idea of thinking about how to think, make arguments and defend one’s position is invaluable,” he says. “You can’t make an argument without understanding the other side and, by definition, understanding the other side implies that you’re listening and are committed to understanding every aspect of the debate.” After graduating, Keegan worked with his father’s law firm where he gained experience in general legal matters on a variety PHOTO: KIT DEFEVER

of topics ranging from personal injury law to family law, but after a year he decided to move on and try something different. Keegan grew up in Rumson, New Jersey, on the Shore, the middle of five children, and graduated high school in 1987. As a kid, he liked puzzles and was fascinated by his father’s Wall Street friends and their work: “I had always been interested in the markets and how they worked. And, so as not to be disingenuous, I admit it took me a long time to really understand them. It was not native, so I found it akin to a puzzle, to a degree, one that I may never solve, but love working on nonetheless.” Having been in the industry for 20 years now, Keegan still maintains that analogy to today’s markets. Still, too, his passion is unflinching, and he attributes much of his success to that puzzle-solving drive and hard work: first at Salomon Brothers in 1996 as a research sales assistant in Chicago, then with JPMorgan in San Francisco during the dot com boom, then back to Chicago in 2000, and back again to San Francisco in 2001 after the bubble burst. In 2002, JPMorgan asked him to move to New York to start a business for them in electronic trading. He later moved to Automated Trading Desk, which was acquired by Citi in 2007. He has been there ever since and has “the scar tissue to prove it,” he jokes, having weathered the 2008 financial crisis, the 2010 flash crash (during which the Dow dropped almost 1,000 points in just over half an hour), and countless other minor crises. He is analytical and not prone to hyperbole, so when he says today’s markets are unique in historical terms, you believe him: “It’s a fascinating time as global central bank coordination has pushed rates and volatility to unprecedented levels, all the while forcing investors out on the risk curve.” Because of that, no two days on the street are the same, he says, “and just when you think that you’ve got it figured out, the market serves up a big old piece of humble pie. Rest assured, I have had my fair share of said pie over the years.” That humility and an early passion for sports has left him with some natural leadership qualities including team building and making decisions under pressure that have helped his career. For him, it is now more about analyzing the game and its OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 39

IA.KeeganREV_IA Template 10/6/16 11:47 AM Page 40

ancillary aspects to the simple dichotomy of winning or losing: “I love sports not just for the sport itself but for all the other things that come with it – competition, confidence, failure, the need for resiliency, and, of course, teamwork.” Basketball was his early passion, but, in his own words, “a slow first step and shaky jump shot” led to an abrupt end to his career on the court. Nonetheless, his passion for sports continues unabated. These days, Keegan, who bears a striking resemblance to Brian Kelly, Favorite book: Notre Dame’s legendary football Gone with the Wind. coach, has switched his focus to Favorite movie: golf, and he loves to golf in Ireland. Wedding Crashers. His favorite place to play is BallyFavorite band: bunion Golf Club, in County Kerry. Tie between Bruce Springsteen One of the most beautiful courses in and U2. the world with spectacular views of the ocean and grassy dunes, the old Best breakfast you’ve ever had: links course is also one of the most Ham and cheese omelet challenging. from Edie’s Café down on And Keegan loves a challenge, the Jersey Shore. be it on the golf course or on Wall Piece of advice you return to: Street. “It is a very special feeling The kids will have lots of friends, when you can bring a team together but they will only have one dad. and that team collectively can accomPro football team: plish something its members may The Giants. But Notre Dame have initially thought unachievable.” football is a passion. Citigroup is one of the world’s largest financial conglomerates and On your bedside table: the global equities division that A jar of coins from all over the Keegan oversees with his co-head, world. Several funeral cards of Murray Roos, is a huge part of the special people who left us. business with 1,000 employees. Phone/Blackberry. The occasional The market never sleeps, and this Jack and diet Coke. Notes from means that Keegan’s days are long, my kids. Our wedding photo. too. He is up at 5:30 a.m. and in the Your most cherished possession: office by 6:30 if he’s not at a breakAssuming my kids don’t count, it fast or traveling. At nights, after would be my wedding ring. family time, he works until about midnight. He doesn’t mind it though. According to him, “very rarely does it feel like work.” Keegan met his wife, Elizabeth, at Notre Dame, where they dated in their senior year. They reunited in the late ’90s, married in 2000, and now have four children – a son, Danny (15), and three daughters, Rosemary (“Roey,” 13), Margaret (“Meg,” 11), and PHOTO: KIT DEFEVER

SHORT ANSWERS

40 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Katherine (10). It is clear in listening to him that his wife and kids take precedence over all else, a vestige of how he remembers his own upbringing (and parents in particular). “As frustrating as I probably was to my parents, and as strict as I might have perceived them to be in certain instances, they never quit. They never gave up on me,” he says. “I think that is the most important thing in parenting. While they never hesitated in holding me accountable for the mistakes I made, they never turned away from me either; everything was perceived as a teaching moment.” But when it comes to kids and parenting, there’s always time for fun, especially if there’s a history or life-lesson involved. Fitting for a man involved in the cash business, Keegan loves Hamilton, the biographical musical about Alexander Hamilton, father of the national banking system and founder of the First Bank of the United States. He has been to see the show several times and it’s also a big hit with his kids. It’s important to him that his children are exposed to the arts and different cultures, and he recently took the family on a trip to China, which he says was not only educational, but also character-building. He has also taken them to Ireland. For his father’s 65th birthday in 2000, Keegan and his siblings surprised him by joining the celebration in Ireland. It was Dan’s first time in the country and he loved it. Since, he has gone back several times to play golf with friends. Most recently, he took his family to Dublin in 2012 for the Notre Dame v. Navy football game. It was his children’s first time in Ireland, and his third child, Meg, looking around, turned to Keegan and said, “Dad, I can see why this is where you’re from!” Keegan, who couldn’t pretend to be anything but Irish, was incredulous and almost offended, knowing his Hibernian features all too well. “What does that mean?” “No, I mean everyone’s the same!” True to form, Keegan, convinced no offense was intended, acquiesced and laughed. “You’re right. We all kind of look the same.” However true it may be with respect to Irish looks, it’s anything but on the trading floor, where Keegan distinguishes himself through measured consideration of issues, decisive execution, and, of course, his Irish good humor. The following is edited for clarity and length. What is your assessment of the current financial climate? In many ways, we find ourselves in unchartered territory. Quantitative easing around the world has created distortion in financial assets. The equity markets, for example, are approaching all time highs as ultra low rates have forced investors out on the risk curve. While investors remain relatively sanguine about the current set-up, it won’t take much in terms of a change in investor sentiment to introduce a far more volatile environment. What does that mean for you in this role? The macro environment is challenging, which,

IA.KeeganREV_IA Template 10/6/16 11:47 AM Page 41

when coupled with some of the cyclical and secular challenges specific to our business, makes for a difficult operating environment. That being said, our business is focused around clients, namely understanding their needs, anticipating what comes next, and ensuring that we are delivering per their want. As a firm, we are quite unique in our global footprint, increasingly a competitive advantage as service provider capacity comes out of the system. Coupled with a commitment from senior management to invest back against the business, I feel very optimistic about what we can achieve on behalf of our clients over the next several years. How do you and your co-head break up the responsibilities? The co-head structure is new to me but something that I have taken to very quickly. My co-head Murray Roos is a great guy and very talented to boot. Other than the fact that he is younger, better looking and smarter (maybe!), we operate as equals. Having a partner to discuss ideas and challenge assumptions with is very valuable. In terms of the structure itself, we came to the conclusion early on that if this was to work, both of us needed to sign up to do the entire job. As such, we are each jointly and severably liable for the globe and every aspect of the business. Communication, as such, needs to be seamless, something that we focus on everyday. What is your decision-making process? While deliberate in thought, I tend to be decisive when it is time to act and I try to never look back. Exercising sound judgment is a key aspect of the job and many of the decisions made revolve around people where the human element is often on full display. As such, people decisions in particular require an elevated level of transparency such that the entire team understands the core thought process around it, with the want being to move forward. Sometimes no decision is a decision, but when it is time to make a decision, you have to make it. Now, in the context of a co-head structure, there is no decision I make in isolation, but once it’s made there is no looking back. Finally, in the context of decision-making, you can’t be afraid to make mistakes; it is an inevitability, everybody makes mistakes. The key is, once mistakes are identified, to rectify them as promptly as possible. What is your mentorship philosophy towards your employees? The assets in our business go up and down the elevator everyday. Accordingly, investing in our people is of paramount importance. Citi, in particular, I think is very strong in this regard, providing an array of development opportunities that zero in on product knowledge, leadership seminars, on-line training and the like. Moreover, within the business, we provide mentors for new employees that persist long beyond the first few years. Culture too plays a critical role. Creating an envi-

ronment where people feel comfortable asking questions and/or challenging the norm is an equally important part of developing our people. The more you can get people to engage, the more we can learn from each other while advancing both the individual and the business along the way. How do you build the team in order to maintain that culture? I play a very active role in both recruiting and hiring. I want naturally inquisitive people. I want people who are not afraid to take risks. I want people who hold themselves more accountable than they would otherwise be held and I want people who genuinely want to be around other people and believe more in the value of the team than they do in themselves. On the flip-side, what I don’t want are people who read their own press clippings or who think themselves better than somebody else, whether it be their peer, the bathroom attendant, or the security guard at the front desk. We all work for the same firm. We all have jobs to do. Treating everyone with respect and appreciating the role that they play is a major part of building a winning culture. It does not mean that we don’t hold everyone accountable; we do. But the manner in which you do it matters. How has the industry changed post-crash? The financial crisis was painful in many, many ways and as an industry, we have to be honest with ourselves in terms of the role that we played. Nonetheless, if there is a silver lining to be found, it lies in a heightened awareness of the responsibility that we have to our clients and the broader public at large. Every morning when I arrive, our mission statement is prominently displayed on my desktop (no different than any other employee) and what it speaks to is responsible finance, the need to think first and foremost about our clients, and the obligations that we have to them and each other. You can automate a lot of things away, but you can never automate the way that relationship works. The relationship is ultimately the thing upon which trust is formed and trust, in this industry, is everything. The ultimate litmus test for me centers on my kids – whether I would feel comfortable introducing them into the industry. As it stands today, that answer is unequivocally yes. For all of the pain caused, I am proud to tell people what I do for a living and the value we are delivering to society at large.

PHOTOS COURTESY DAN KEEGAN

TOP: Keegan with his wife Elizabeth and their children, from left, Katherine, Roey, Meg, and Danny. Above: Dan’s parents, Diane and John. Far Left: Keegan thinks of the markets like a puzzle “that I may never solve, but love working on nonetheless.”

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 41

IA.KeeganREV_IA Template 10/6/16 11:47 AM Page 42

What would you like to see more of in the industry? The industry has changed a great deal post the crisis and I would like to see us promote those changes while speaking more to the role we play in society and the opportunities a career in our industry can provide – the role you can play in helping others. Citi does so much good for cities, towns and municipalities. It is very charitable organization and, in serving clients, plays a prominent role in how our society functions. Should we do more? Yes. Can we do more? Yes. Should we hold ourselves responsible for doing more? Absolutely. But I would like to see us trying to promote the benefits of what comes from having a career in financial services, the impact you can have – whether it is a broker servicing a widow or an institutional salesperson servicing a pension fund that manages money for teachers and unions, whether it is an investment banker servicing a corporate client who is trying to restructure a business that has failed, or whether it is the consumer bank where you are helping consumers around debt forgiveness. We need to make sure we are promoting that specifically in the context of the industry, so that people outside of it know the real value Wall Street creates. Tell me about Notre Dame. What is your relationship with the school like today? Notre Dame is a special place. It is a Catholic University that is recognized the world over for leading the discussion on a range of society’s most pressing issues. The faculty and administration are second to none, the facilities are amazing and the student population is quite unique. Yet Notre Dame is more than that. Notre Dame is a place where all students are challenged to look beyond themselves, to question their place in society and how they can give back. Having spent seven years at Notre Dame, with the good fortune too of having met my wife while there, Notre Dame will forever carry a special place in my heart. How important was your Catholicism to your upbringing? I am very proud to say that I am a Catholic. I went to Catholic grammar school, high school, college, and law school, so religion has always been a big part of my life and shaped my belief system in many ways. For me, it provides perspective and has taught me to focus less on myself and made me more focused on others. At Notre Dame, every dorm has a chapel in it, so irrespective of whether you are Catholic or not, the sense of being part of something that is bigger than you – which is what I think religion speaks to – is very, very powerful and should drive how it is we live our lives. Do you think there is anything you have particularly inherited from your parents? My parents are great. They have taught me much of what I now know. Leading by example, they both work very hard, yet never take themselves too seriously. They are not afraid to laugh at themselves, but never will they laugh at others. They are both exceedingly good people who have provided me great role models to emulate along the way. From a heritage perspective, they taught me how much our ancestors suffered to give us the opportunities that we now have, for the courage of their conviction to make the move. They worked super hard and as a result of that we had a really 42 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

nice upbringing. That work ethic and making sure that you don’t take shortcuts is something that stuck with me.

PHOTO COURTESY DAN KEEGAN

Above: Keegan, second from right, golfing with friends in Ireland.

How do you interact with your own children about their connection to Ireland and their Irish American ancestry? Well, we took them there. You can tell all the stories you want, but there is no substitute for seeing it first hand, learning the history, and coming to appreciate the sacrifices those before you made in giving the opportunities they now have. In particular, touring a replica of the type of ship that transported their ancestors was eyeopening. Ireland has such a rich history, and its unique relationship with America will provide them continued opportunity to understand their heritage in the context of who they are and from where they came. As is the beauty of youth, they are only getting started. How do you address the work-life balance? Life is all about making choices, but striking the “right” balance between work and everything else is not easy. Prioritizing what is most important in your life and managing your time efficiently are key determinants in striking the right balance. I love the people with whom I work; I believe in the firm. So, in and of itself, that provides me a great pleasure, but nothing trumps the pleasure that I get from being with my family. For now, just about everything else needs to take a backseat. What is the most important value for you to teach your children and how do you do it? Like all parents, we want our kids to work hard, have fun, take chances, and not be afraid to fail. Most importantly, we want them to treat everyone the way they would like to be treated. Admittedly that is easier said than done, and the mistakes that they make are often very much on display, requiring a more immediate response or analysis of where they have fallen short. The world in which they are growing up in is quite different from the one I knew as a child. The external pressures that they feel are quite pronounced, the stakes seemingly greater. Accordingly, we try to engage our kids in a dialogue, in some ways to act as an outlet for them to share their challenges. Does it work? Only sometimes, but ensuring that they know there is somewhere to go with their problems is important. In terms of rules, there are many and the consequences for breaking them are swift. However, taking responsibility for their mistakes is critical. Just as they fail, so do we as parents, but so long as we all understand that and try everyday to get better and learn from our mistakes, we are moving in the right direction. Thank you.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 6:54 PM

Wall Street 50

IA.WS50 Intro.rev2_IA Template 10/5/16 3:41 PM Page 44

IRISH AMERICA’S ANNUAL

Celebrating the Irish in the Financial Industry

or nineteen years, Irish America has sought out and recognized the best and the brightest Irish-American and Irish-born leaders in the financial sphere, and this year is no exception. The fifty honorees of 2016 are an extraordinary, inspiring, and diverse group – from standout rising stars to masterful Wall Street veterans, this year’s list is comprised of both new faces and longtime friends of Irish America. And as varied as the counties they come from, so too are the sectors in which these distinguished financiers work. The 2016 Wall Street 50 honorees share a commitment to bettering the American economy. Some do this by handling investments and capital, some by developing and implementing the strategies and technology that make it all happen. Together, they recognize a heritage of unrelenting perseverance, a commitment to family, and the responsibility to others because of the struggles of their forebears. Whether it’s humility or a sense of humor in the face of hardship, determination or an immigrant work ethic, the gift of gab or ease in making friends, our honorees in the following pages all agree they have inherited something unique and personal from their Irish ancestors. As a whole, they are a testament to the power of the diaspora and its ground-breaking influence – from the fourthgeneration Irish Americans who are themselves the manifestation of their ancestors’ dreams, to the many Irish-born who continue to work to maintain the strong connections and forge new bonds between our two great countries. Mórtas Cine, The Irish America Team

44 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

The Generations:

1ST GENERATION

10% IRISH BORN

28%

16% 4TH GENERATION

2ND GENERATION

18%

3RD GENERATION

18%

10% UNKNOWN

Most Popular Counties Cork Dublin Galway Tipperary Donegal Other

28% 14% 14% 12% 10% 22%

Most Mentioned Schools Harvard University University of Notre Dame New York University Mount Saint Mary College Manhattanville College St. John's University Boston College Trinity College, Dublin Rutgers University Princeton University

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 7:15 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 46

WallStreet50

Michael Brewster Wells Fargo Advisors

Michael joined Wells Fargo Advisors as managing director in March 2016 from Credit Suisse, where he spent 8 years. Michael heads the Brewster Financial Strategies Group of Wells Fargo Advisors. He has spent the past 24 years managing investments for high net worth and institutional clients, 16 of which were spent at Lehman Brothers. Michael is the sole manager of the MB Value and Growth, MB Strategic Dividend and Income and MB Small Mid-Cap and Special Situations Portfolios on the team. Michael was recognized from 2010 to 2016 as one of Barron’s Top 1,000 Advisors. Michael serves on the boards of Irish International Business Network (IIBN), National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), the Ireland U.S. Council and is involved with the Gaelic Players Association in the U.S. Michael graduated from Athlone Institute of Technology in Ireland with a higher diploma in management finance from Thomas Edison State University with a B.S. in business administration. Michael was fortunate to immigrate to America in 1989 and counts himself blessed. His father’s family comes from Co. Fermanagh; his mother’s family, the Hegartys, hail from Co. Longford.

Mary Ann Callahan Paxos

Mary Ann Callahan is market infrastructure advisor to Paxos, a financial technology company that is introducing Bankchain, a post-trade settlement solution for gold bullion in partnership with Euroclear, as well as other innovative securities settlement services. Previously, she was a managing director at DTCC, with more than 25 years in global relations and development in New York and London. She currently represents Paxos on two Federal Reserve payment task forces and is affiliated with Global Markets Advisory Group. Her experience also includes work as an expert advisor to the International Monetary Fund in Africa and on a World Bank expert working group. A third-generation Irish American, Mary Ann earned a B.A. at Manhattanville College and an M.B.A. in finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Her maternal grandfather, whose parents emigrated from Dublin, served with the Fighting 69th during WWI. During her childhood, her grandfather marched each year with his Irish-heritage regiment at the front of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Her paternal great-grandparents hailed from Mayo, where she recently reconnected with and visited a second-cousin who lives in their original home in Drunganagh. She and her partner, Peter Kennedy, also enjoy spending time with his family in Glenties, Co. Donegal. Regularly in touch with Invest Northern Ireland’s U.S. team, Mary Ann is also a supporter of International Center in New York and the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties. 46 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Jason Carroll Live Oak Bank

Jason Carroll joined Live Oak Bank in 2012 as managing director to start the Investment Advisory lending vertical. To date, the team has lent more than $375 million to independent financial advisors. As a former manager of a multi-million-dollar RIA loan portfolio at a major custodian, he is seasoned at lending in the industry. Live Oak Bank offers a turn-key financing solution for advisors to achieve growth, succession, transitions and more. Jason has held several strategic roles within large financial institutions designing, developing and executing lending programs and products. Of his Irish heritage, he notes that his grandfather died 20 years before he was born and his great-grandfather 60 years before he was born. “So that chain is nearly exhausted,” he says. “But, my father was told by his mother that we were Irish – so therefore it must be. Besides, I have the Carroll name, one of the 25 most common in Ireland, and follow the long practice that it is the birth right of anyone with the name themselves to be part of a global and inclusive Irish Carroll group. Long live the Irish!”

Shane Clifford EnTrustPermal

Shane Clifford is global head of Corporate Strategy for EnTrustPermal. He was previously an executive vice president and member of Permal’s executive committee, where he was responsible for broadening and executing Permal’s global business development strategy. Prior to joining Permal in 2008, Shane was with BlackRock in London and the U.S. Mr. Clifford began his career with Merrill Lynch covering institutional markets in the Americas. He serves on the board of the Gregorian Foundation. Born in Limerick but based in the U.S. since 1998, Shane received his M.B.A. in international management from Boston University. He also holds a B.B.S. in business from the University of Limerick and says that his Limerick origins have endowed him with a personal and professional “drive to succeed.” Shane currently lives stateside in New Jersey with his wife, Tricia, and three children, Liam, Owen, and Sean.

Vincent P. Colman PwC

Vincent P. Colman is the New York Metro vice chairman of PwC, where he oversees all aspects of assurance, tax, and advisory client service delivery for the region. In Vin’s more than 30 years of professional experience, he has served marquis clients across a variety of industries in the areas of accounting, financial reporting, compliance, risk management, and mergers and acquisitions, and has held various management positions of increasing responsibility. Previously, Vin led PwC’s multi-billion dollar U.S. Assurance practice, with approximately 16,000 partners and staff, served as a member of the Global Executive Assurance leadership team, and as the national office leader. A magna cum laude graduate of St. John’s University and a New Jersey native, Vin is third-generation Irish American on his father’s side, with roots in Cork. He serves on the boards of St. John’s Tobin College of Business, Don Bosco Prep, and Ramapo College, and has worked closely with the Irish nonprofit Project Children, hosting several children from Belfast and Derry. He and his wife Jean live in New Jersey with their four children, Kevin, Chris, Conor, and Katelyn.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:20 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 48

WallStreet50

Gerald Corcoran R.J. O’Brien

Gerald Corcoran (Gerry) has been the chief executive officer of R.J. O’Brien & Associates since 2000 and chairman of its board since 2007. The independent futures brokerage firm is the nation’s oldest and largest, beginning in Chicago under Irish egg-merchant John McCarthy as John V. McCarthy & Co. in 1914. Like his firm, Gerry is in touch with his Irish roots, which trace back to counties Dublin and Limerick as well as Northern Ireland. Both sides of his family emigrated to Canada in the late 1800s, before settling in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Gerry was born in Chicago and is a graduate of Loyola University, holding a B.A. in business administration. Prior to joining R.J. O’Brien in 1987, he served as the controller of the Chicago Sun-Times. He served as Chairman of the FIA from 2014 until taking on the role of global treasurer this year when the organization merged with its European and Asian counterparts. Gerry currently sits on the board of directors and executive committee of the National Futures Association, and in 2013 he and his wife Maureen received the Heart of Mercy award from Misericordia Home.

Ryan Crowe Dixon Hughes Goodman

Ryan Crowe is the office managing partner in the New York City office for Dixon Hughes Goodman, one of the top 20 public accounting firms in the U.S. Ryan, who is currently responsible for growing the NYC advisory market for the company, has more than 10 years of experience providing assurance and advisory services to a broad range of clients. Over the last several years, Ryan’s focus has been on providing consulting services to large global financial institutions. These services have included physically delivering high profile global finance transformation and regulatory projects in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong and Brazil, and virtually throughout the Americas; Europe Middle East, and Africa; and Asia Pacific regions. He is a CPA in Florida and New York and is member of the American Institute of CPAs. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in both accounting and finance from Canisius College in Buffalo, NY.

Martyn Curragh PwC

Martyn Curragh has been the chief financial officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers since July 2016 and has been with PwC for over 23 years, holding positions in both the U.S. and U.K. Like many previous generations on both sides of his family, Martyn was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There, he attended Queens University where he earned his undergraduate degree in economics. He relocated to New York in 1998 to begin with PwC’s U.S. Transactions Services group, of which he was elected leader in 2010. Never forgetting his beginnings as a trainee accountant in Coopers and Lybrand, Belfast, Martyn believes that he uses the skills he learned there every day in his position as a CFO. He says, “I feel blessed to have been born with the great Irish gift of storytelling in my soul and a sense of humor that sees me delight in being able to laugh at myself.” Martyn is based in New York with his wife, Nicky, and children, Luc and Ellie.

48 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Tony Dalton R.J. O’Brien

Based in New York, Tony Dalton is head of the Foreign Exchange (FX) Division at Chicagobased R.J. O’Brien & Associates, the oldest and largest independent futures brokerage and clearing firm in the U.S. Until accepting this role in July 2015, he had been a managing director in FX Prime Brokerage at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. “There is strong potential among hedge funds and other institutional investors who trade FX as an asset class,” Tony says of his new role at R.J. O’Brien. “It’s an honor for me to play a role in bridging those two worlds and leading the team to build the FX business to the next level.” Tony joined Bank of America in 2000 and played a major role in successfully building FX Prime Brokerage businesses from the ground up, first at Barclays Bank in the mid 1990s, and subsequently at ABN AMRO in 1998. He began his career in financial services at MBIA. He is a member of the Bond Club of New York and is also a board member of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Foundation. Born in Dublin, Tony is a former member of the Irish Junior Olympic basketball team. He holds a B.A. in economics with a concentration in finance from Manhattanville College. He lives in New York with his wife, Jeanette, and their four children.

Mary Callahan Erdoes JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Mary Callahan Erdoes is chief executive officer of JPMorgan’s Asset Management division, a global leader in investment management and private banking with $2.4 trillion in client assets. She is also a member of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Operating Committee. Mary joined JPMorgan in 1996 from Meredith, Martin & Kaye, a fixed income specialty advisory firm. Previously, she worked at Bankers Trust in corporate finance, merchant banking, and high yield debt underwriting. Mary is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business School. She is a board member of Robin Hood, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the U.S.-China Business Council. She also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets. An Illinois native, her great-grandparents emigrated from Cork and Tipperary. She lives in New York with her husband and three daughters.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:23 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 50

WallStreet50

Hollie Fagan BlackRock

Hollie Fagan, managing director, is head of BlackRock’s registered investment advisor and retail investor platforms. Her team is responsible for delivering BlackRock’s full capabilities to RIAs, including distribution, marketing, and investment support as well as portfolio consulting and risk analytics. Additionally, the team supports BlackRock’s business with the direct to retail consumer platforms. Prior to joining BlackRock, Hollie was a managing director with Alliance Bernstein in their Global Business Development Group. She graduated magna cum laude from the College of New Jersey with a B.S. and cum laude from Rutgers University with an M.B.A., and holds her series 7, 66, 24, and Life & Health Insurance Licenses. As a fourth-generation Irish American, Hollie traces her family tree back to immigrants who settled in the New York and New Jersey area during the Great Hunger. She believes her heritage has endowed her with a thick skin like a “good Irish potato” and a sense of humor to help her stay resilient to life’s challenges. She currently resides in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, with her four children, Sophie, Cullen, Lawson, and Trip.

Anne M. Finucane Bank of America

Anne M. Finucane is vice chairman at Bank of America and a member of the company’s executive management team. She is responsible for the strategic positioning of Bank of America and leads the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts, including its $125 billion environmental business initiative, in addition to overseeing public policy, customer research and analytics, and global marketing and communications. Anne chairs the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, including its 10-year, $2 billion charitable giving goal, oversees the company’s $1.2 billion Community Development Financial Institution portfolio, and helps manage Bank of America’s 10-year, $1.5 trillion community development lending and investing goal. Active in the community, Finucane serves on both corporate and nonprofit boards of directors including the American Ireland Fund, Carnegie Hall, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, CVS Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Special Olympics. She also serves on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy board. She has roots in Cork on both sides of her family, most notably through her grandfather, who came to the United States as a young boy.

Erin Fitzsimmons First Republic Bank

Erin Fitzsimmons is the managing director of the wealth management company First Republic Bank, where she has held tenure for the past eleven years. In her role, she leads the development and expansion of the Eagle Lending Group on the East Coast, overseeing teams in both New York and Boston. Presently, she specializes in customized lending solutions for the refinancing and consolidation of student debt. She attended the College of Charleston and holds a B.A. in communications. Born the youngest of six children in Brielle, New Jersey, Erin is a second-generation Irish American with grandparents born in counties Cork, Donegal, and Louth. “Thoughts of the sacrifice [they] went through to start a new life in America keep me grounded,” she says. “I feel their work ethic and determination fuels my life every day.” Erin celebrates her heritage through a membership with the American Ireland Fund, participating regularly in their Young Leader Group in New York, where she currently lives with her husband, Patrick Tully. 50 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Bill Gorman RSM US

Bill Gorman has been partner and the chief operating officer of RSM US since 2015. He guides firm-wide strategy execution efforts, overseeing the firm’s change management framework that engages its employees in strategy execution. Bill was born in Arizona and is an alumnus of Mt. St. Mary’s University, from which he holds a B.A. in political science. He has more than 35 years of audit and business advisory experience, and has served as a board member and board chair for organizations such as the Sellinger Business School of Loyola University, Maryvale Preparatory School, and Bon Secours Hospital. As a fourth-generation Irish American, Bill believes the value of hard work is synonymous with being Irish. His grandfather was an entrepreneur, owning a general store in New Jersey, and was an active member of the Democratic party. Bill’s own first ever job was as a janitor; he says it was “hard work that I remember daily, and always make sure to thank those in those roles today.” Bill and his wife, Kimberly Davey, have two daughters, Erin and Kate.

Suni Harford Citigroup

Suni Harford is a managing director and Citigroup’s regional head of Markets for North America. In this capacity, she oversees the North American sales, trading, and origination businesses of Citi’s securities and banking franchise. In addition to her current responsibilities, Suni is a member of Citi’s Pension Plan Investment Committee, and a director on the board of Citibank Canada. From 2010 to 2015, she was the co-head of Citigroup’s global women’s initiative, Citi Women and currently serves on two industry level boards, DTCC and SIFMA, the industry advocacy group. Suni is also passionate about awareness and support for our veteran community, and is involved in many organizations in this regard. In addition to serving on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Veterans’ Employment Advisory Council, she has worked with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Joining Forces initiative. She represents Citi as a founding member of Veterans on Wall Street, a coalition of major financial services firms established in 2010. Having helped formalize Citi’s very successful Veterans Initiative, CitiSalutes, in 2009, Suni remains the senior business sponsor for the initiative. For those efforts she recently received the Outstanding Civilian Service Award from the U.S. Army. Suni received her B.S. from Denison University, in physics and math, and holds an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Suni lives in Connecticut with her husband, three children – Devon, Jenna, and Liam – and their dogs, Sully and Mike Wazowski.

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:13 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:14 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:15 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:15 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:16 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:17 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:17 PM

Untitled-2 1

9/22/16 3:19 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/6/16 9:42 AM Page 59

Kate Healy TD Ameritrade Institutional

Since becoming the managing director of marketing for TD Ameritrade Institutional in 2012, Kate Healy has overseen the development of marketing strategies and growth of the company brand, including the division’s website, social media, acquisition and advertising efforts. In 2014, she was named TD Ameritrade’s Impact Award winner for diversity and inclusiveness. Kate is a trustee for the Foundation for Financial Planning, a member of the Invest in Others board, and a founding member of the CFP Board Women’s Initiative. She also sits on the Center for Financial Planning’s Advisory Council. She was named among Investment Advisor magazine’s 2016 list of the 25 most influential people in her industry. With roots in counties Roscommon, Cork, and Clare, Kate is a third-generation Irish American who believes that “whether it’s with your own family, relatives, or those you meet along life’s journey, being Irish allows you to be part of something bigger.” Kate was born in Somerville, NJ, holds a B.A. in economics from Rutgers College, and has completed the Securities Industry Institute Program at the Wharton School of Business. She continues to live in New Jersey.

Cecilia Healy Herbert iShares Funds

Cecilia Healy Herbert is the board chair of iShares Funds, BlackRock’s family of exchange traded funds, and has been a board member there since 2005. Having worked in corporate finance in New York and San Francisco for JPMorgan, she retired as head of their West Coast office. She serves on the boards of Stanford Hospital, New York’s WNET public media station and also on the board of Salient Funds. Formerly she was president of the Board of Catholic Charities CYO in San Francisco. “Besides being blessed with more than my share of Irish luck,” she says, “I think my Irish Catholic heritage contributed to a sense of compassion, social justice, and of the importance of family.” A native of Washington State, Cecilia received her B.A. from Stanford University and her M.B.A from Harvard Business School. Cecilia lives in San Francisco and New York with her husband, James Herbert.

WallStreet50 Maureen McGetrick Hogan BDO U.S.A.

Maureen McGetrick Hogan is a tax partner at BDO U.S.A., and is also member of BDO’s corporate tax consulting practice. With over 21 years of experience in tax and public accounting, she has served a number of professional consulting and financial firms. Maureen has been featured in tax-related stories appearing in MarketWatch and CNNMoney, and has authored articles for both the Tax Advisor and the CPA Journal. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in accounting from the College of Business Administration at Fordham University. Born in Flushing, New York, Maureen is a first-generation Irish American, with her maternal and paternal families rooted in counties Galway and Sligo, respectively. “Being able to grow up and hear my parents’ stories about growing up in rural Ireland during World War II gave me an appreciation for the sacrifices and hardship endured by previous generations,” she says. Maureen continues to live in New York with her husband, John Hogan, and their two sons, Connor and Jack.

Paul Jennings Silicon Valley Bank

Paul Jennings is head of Product Advisory Services at Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank is the premier global bank for technology, life science, venture capital and private equity. Paul has responsibility for the Bank’s foreign exchange and interest rate advisory businesses. Paul is also part of the SVB Ireland Team, which expects a lending commitment of $200M to the fast-moving Irish technology and life science sectors. Paul is the winner of the Silicon Valley Bank President’s Club in 2011 and 2012, and received the prestigious Irish America Wall Street 50 award in 2013, 2014, and 2015. He was born in Warrenpoint, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, moved to Boston in 1992, and became an American citizen in 1997. Paul is a graduate of Ulster University, President of UU New England Alumni Association, and a board member of The American Friends of Ulster University. He is also on the Board of Boston Irish Business Association (BIBA). Paul lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife, Aine, and their three children, Catherine, Maura, and Neil.

Adrian Jones Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Adrian Jones is a managing director in the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in New York, where he focuses on investing in the healthcare sector. He is also a member of the Corporate Investment Committee and serves as co-sponsor of the firm-wide Disability Interest Forum. He joined Goldman in 1994 and became a partner in 2004. Following his cadetship at the Irish Military College, Adrian, a Roscommon native, was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Irish Army in 1983. From 1987 to 1988, he served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Southern Lebanon. After moving to the United States in 1989, he worked for two years at the Bank of Boston in Credit Derivatives. Adrian is a graduate of NUI Galway (B.A.), UCD (M.A.) and Harvard (M.B.A.). In addition to representing GS Capital Partners on a number of corporate boards, Adrian serves on the boards of Autism Speaks, the American Ireland Fund, and the Galway University Foundation. In 2012, he was the Wall Street 50 keynote speaker. He resides in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with his wife, Christina, and sons Danny and Liam. OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 59

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 60

WallStreet50

Martin Kehoe PwC

Martin Kehoe is a partner with PwC in New York. He has over 27 years of experience serving clients in the U.S. and internationally. Born and raised in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Martin attended the Christian Brothers School and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with an honors degree in business. Joining PwC Dublin after graduation, he subsequently moved to New York with PwC, becoming a partner with the firm in 1996. He says, “It is great to be part of the Irish community in this wonderfully diverse and vibrant city.” Martin is married to Mary Kelly from Bree, Wexford, with whom he has two daughters, Allison and Laura. Martin is active with organizations such as Young People’s Chorus of NYC, the Gaelic Players Association, the American Ireland Fund and the American Friends of Wexford Opera. Martin and his family also enjoy supporting Part of the Solution in the Bronx, which attends to the basic needs of people in their community.

Denis Kelleher Wall Street Access

Denis Kelleher is founder and chairman of Wall Street Access, which combines an independent, entrepreneurial culture with a powerful platform to build and operate a diverse set of successful financial service businesses. He began his career in 1958 as a messenger with Merrill Lynch. He rose through the ranks at Merrill Lynch and was the head of operations at Ruane Cunniff and treasurer of Sequoia Fund. In 1981, he founded Wall Street Access. A native of County Kerry, Ireland, he is a graduate of St. John’s University where he also served as chairman and member of the board of trustees. He is currently a member of the Staten Island Foundation, and is a former director of The New Ireland Fund and a former member of the board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2005, Denis was Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City. He received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame. He lives on Staten Island with his wife, Carol. They have three children and eight grandchildren.

Sean Kelleher Wall Street Access

As President of Wall Street Access, the financial services organization founded by his father Denis Kelleher, Sean Kelleher has helped guide the firm through successful ventures in online brokerage, institutional research, global execution services and trading, fixed income and asset management. In 1992, Kelleher joined the firm as a clerk and now manages a team of more than 50 analysts, traders and salespeople. A graduate of Wagner College, Kelleher now serves on the college’s alumni board. He also served as co-chairman of the Staten Island Film Festival, served on the board of the Staten Island Zoo and co-founded the Gerry Red Wilson Foundation to support spinal meningitis research. He is actively involved in New World Preparatory charter school, Camp Good Grief and Project Hospitality. Kelleher, who spent the summers of his youth in Ireland working the bog, says the catalysts behind his love for Irish culture are his family and playing Gaelic football in his father’s village in County Kerry. He lives on Staten Island, New York with his wife Wendy and their three children, Maggie, Jack and Denis.

60 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Shaun Kelly KPMG

Shaun is the global chief operating officer for KPMG International. In this position, he manages the day-today operational aspects of KPMG’s Global Strategy and oversees the delivery of the firm’s global initiatives. A native of Belfast, Shaun joined KPMG International’s Irish member firm in Dublin in 1980 and transferred to the San Francisco office in 1984. He was admitted to the U.S. partnership in 1999. Shaun earned a Bachelor of Commerce, first class honors from UCD, is a fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, and a CPA. Shaun is co-chair of KPMG’s Disabilities Network, and a member of KPMG’s Diversity Advisory Board. He is treasurer and member of the executive committee of Enactus. He also serves as chairman of the North American Advisory Board of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, and is on the boards of the American Ireland Fund and the Irish Arts Center in New York. Shaun and his wife, Mary, who is from Donegal, live in New York City.

Sean Kilduff UBS Private Wealth Management

Sean Kilduff is a managing director and private wealth advisor at UBS Private Wealth Management. He focuses on managing risk and delivering needsbased solutions to corporate executives, entrepreneurs and their families. He is also a senior portfolio manager in the portfolio management program and concentrates on developing customized investment strategies that incorporate tactical allocations. Born and raised in New York, Sean is a graduate of St. John’s University with a B.S. in finance. He began his career at Lehman Brothers and spent nine years at Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management before moving his team and practice to UBS Private Wealth Management.

Sean’s mother was born and raised in Dublin and his father’s family is from Westmeath. He notes, “Having visited my grandmother in Dublin often, Ireland has been a part of my life from an early age. I gained a true appreciation for the world-famous warmth and incredible wit of the Irish people.” Sean lives in Rockville Centre, New York with his wife, Jean, and their four children.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 7:17 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/6/16 9:34 AM Page 62

WallStreet50

Barbara G. Koster Prudential Financial, Inc.

Barbara G. Koster is senior vice president and chief information officer for Prudential Financial, Inc., and head of the Global Business & Technology Solutions Department. She is also chairman of the board of Pramerica Systems Ireland, Ltd., founding member of Prudential Systems Japan, Ltd and oversees the company’s Veteran’s Initiatives Office. Barbara joined Prudential in 1995 as CIO in Individual and Life Insurance Systems and previously held several positions with Chase Manhattan. In 2014, Barbara was named one of STEMConnector’s “100 Corporate Diverse Leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics” and in 2013, she was inducted into Junior Achievement’s New Jersey Business Hall of Fame. In 2011, NJ Biz newspaper named her one of the “Fifty Best Women in Business.” She is a member of Executive Women of NJ (EWNJ) and The Research Board. A third-generation Irish American with roots in Cork and Tipperary, Barbara holds both an A.S. and B.S. from St. Francis College, from which she also has an honorary doctorate. Barbara and her husband, Robert, have two daughters, Kathryn and Diana, and two grandsons, Zachary and Connor.

Sean Lane Morgan Stanley

Sean Lane is a senior vice president and financial advisor at Morgan Stanley with over 23 years of experience in the industry. He is responsible for providing expert financial planning, risk management and investment advice to ultra-high net-worth individuals, families, endowments and foundations. Sean holds an honors post-graduate diploma in business and a B.A. in French and English literature from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and is a board member of the university’s foundation. He holds both the Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner designations. A first-generation Irish American born in New York, Sean is vice-chairman of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Foundation, and a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. He is also on the board of the 69th Regimental Trust, the Abbey Theatre Advisory board, and the leadership circle for the NorthWell Health Department of Medicine. He also holds a black belt in judo. His mother hailed from County Mayo and his father from Galway. Sean lives in Garden City, New York with his wife, Cielo, and their two children, Sarah and Ryan.

Kathleen Lynch UBS

Kathleen Lynch is chief operating officer Americas and Wealth Management Americas (WMA), UBS. She is also a member of the Americas and WMA Executive Committees. As WMA COO, Kathleen supports the execution of the business division’s strategy, while also ensuring operational efficiency and effectiveness to make WMA a better place to be a client and an employee. In her role as Americas COO, Kathleen is focused on further integrating all of the firm’s businesses and support functions across the region. Kathleen joined UBS in June 2012 as an advisor to senior management on a number of key initiatives, including the strengthening of UBS’s regulatory and operating framework. Born and raised in the United States, her mother’s roots in Burtenport, Co. Donegal have greatly influenced her interest and appreciation for Irish culture. And as a firstgeneration Irish American, Kathleen dedicates her time to philanthropic efforts on both sides of the Atlantic. Married with three children, she and her husband Tim are actively involved in their local community of Madison, NJ. Kathleen has her undergraduate degree from Bucknell University and holds a Master’s in Business Administration from NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 62 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Liam Lynch Studio.VC

Liam Lynch is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor focused on growth companies that have a positive impact on peoples’ lives. He has managed, acquired, started, or invested in dozens of private companies and mentored countless others. He is the founder and managing partner of Studio.VC, which invests in early stage companies, primarily focused on media and entertainment, internet, health, transportation, fintech, and AI. Previously, as an executive of Key Brand Entertainment, Liam is credited as the driving force behind their acquisition and growth of Broadway.com. He holds an M.B.A. from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a B.A. from Rhodes College with additional studies at Oxford. Liam is a New Jersey-born Irish American with connections to Cork and Belfast. His father worked for the Lawyers Alliance for Justice in Ireland, leading to Liam’s interest in Ireland from a young age, he says. Today, Liam serves on the Board of Co-operation Ireland and is the chairman of IrishCentral.com, which he recently acquired with a group of strategic investors after having been an avid site reader himself. Liam lives in Manhattan with his wife, Kristine Covillo, a Broadway performer and choreographer.

Francis C. Mahoney Ernst & Young

Francis C. Mahoney currently serves as vice chair for assurance for EY Americas, heading a staff of more than 20,000 finance professionals. Frank was appointed to this position in 2014, after serving as EY Global Audit Transformation and Innovation leader and with more than 30 years of increasing management titles at the company. Born and raised in Boston (his first job was a hot dog vendor at Fenway Park), Frank is a fourth-generation Irish American with roots in Cork on both his parents’ sides. “When I think about my Irish heritage,” he says, “I feel connected to a group of people who are widely known for an indefatigable work ethic, an openness to take on challenges and a tenacity that helps them see those challenges through.” Frank holds a B.A. from Boston College and has served on several boards in the Boston area, including Catholic Charities, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Business Roundtable. He currently serves as a trustee of Xaverian Brothers High School and the Newton Country Day School. Frank and his wife Mary have four children, Sarah, Frankie, Lindsey, and Jack.

Untitled-12 1

10/6/16 4:19 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 64

WallStreet50

Ken McCabe Axiom Investors

As the vice president equities trader of Axiom Investors, Ken McCabe trades domestic and international equities and foreign exchange across all of the company’s long only and long short strategies. In total, he has nearly 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Ken graduated magna cum laude with a degree in finance from Pace University and later acquired an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Connecticut. Prior to joining Axiom, he was a vice president international equities trader at Citigroup. Born in White Plains, New York, Ken is a firstgeneration Irish American. His parents were raised on farms – his mother in Kilrush, Co. Clare, and his father in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. “Growing up,” he says, “a typical Sunday morning was spent with family listening to Fordham’s WFUV Irish radio program, going to mass, and then watching football at Gaelic Park in the Bronx.” Today, he is a member of the Gaelic-American Club in Fairfield, Connecticut. Ken lives with his wife, Annette, and daughters, Ashley and Caitlin.

Robert J. McCann UBS

Robert J. McCann is Chairman UBS Americas. In this role, Mr. McCann works with the firm’s leaders across the Americas region to shape and advance UBS’s strategy, partnerships and business development efforts. Previously, he served as President Americas and President Wealth Management Americas (WMA), UBS, and a member of UBS’s Group Executive Board from 2009 to 2015. As regional president, Mr. McCann led the execution of a cross-divisional strategy to deliver the full capabilities of UBS to clients across the Americas. As head of WMA, Mr. McCann led its transformation and return to consistent profitability. Prior to joining UBS, Mr. McCann had a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch during which he held a variety of executive leadership positions. Mr. McCann serves on the board of directors of the American Ireland Fund, a leader in integrated education, and is vice chairman of the board of trustees of Bethany College. A third-generation Irish American with roots in County Armagh, Mr. McCann received his B.A. in economics from Bethany College and his M.B.A. from Texas Christian University. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland. 64 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Gerry McNamara Korn Ferry International

Based in New York, Gerry McNamara is the global managing partner of the Information Officers Practice for Korn Ferry, the preeminent global people and organizational advisory firm. He provides management and oversight to the CIO leadership teams in North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America and EMEA. Prior to his consulting career, Gerry spent 15 years in information technology with IBM. He also held the rank of Captain in the United States Marine Corps. Gerry holds a master’s degree from Pepperdine University, and a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s University. He is a surviving passenger of US Airways Flight 1549 which made an emergency landing on New York’s Hudson River on 15 January 2009. Born in Brooklyn, Gerry is a second generation Irish American with familial roots in Ballynahinch, Co. Down, Butlersbridge, Co. Cavan, and Tralee, Co. Kerry. “I have always admired with greatest pride the courage my ancestors showed leaving their homeland to chart a course for the future here in the U.S.A.,” he says. He and his wife Debbie live in Charlotte, North Carolina and have three children.

Neil McPeak Wells Fargo Advisors

Neil McPeak is the managing director of investments at Wells Fargo Advisors, a position in which he oversees investment planning and portfolio management services. Born in Gloucester, New Jersey, Neil is a graduate of Drexel University, where he earned a bachelor’s in accounting before joining Wachovia Securities, a predecessor group of Wells Fargo. He has been named to the chairman’s council of the firm every year since 1993, and was named among Barron’s Top 1,200 Financial Advisors of 2015. With Co. Donegal-based great-grandparents on both sides of the family, Neil is a third-generation Irish American. “The Irish culture has shaped my life through caring and a hard work ethic,” he says. “This is reflected in my business and enables me to continue doing what I enjoy the most: helping others in all financial circumstances.” Neil has a wife, Barbara, and four children, Neil Jr., Matthew, Lauren, and Kara.

Peter A. Merrigan Taurus Investment Holdings

As the chief executive officer of Taurus Investment Holdings, Peter Andrew Merrigan defines and oversees the company’s real estate, investment, and entrepreneurial strategies. He has negotiated over $3 billion worth of real estate transactions for his company, an achievement which spans over 20 years and nine countries. Peter is a second-generation Irish American and has paternal roots in Ballydangan, Co. Roscommon. Since 1851, he says, all males on this side of the family have shared the name of Peter Andrew Merrigan, and he has continued this tradition with his own son. His mother’s line, bearing the name Melody, traces back to Tiernascragh, Co. Galway. Peter was born in Boston and holds both a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross and an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He continues to live in Massachusetts and has three children: Peter Andrew (or Drew), Caroline (Carly), and Alexandra (Allie).

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 10:33 AM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 66

WallStreet50

Brian Moynihan Bank of America

Brian Moynihan leads a team of more than 200,000 employees dedicated to making financial lives better for people, companies of every size, and institutional investors across the United States and around the world. Bank of America is recognized as a top employer, including by Working Mother magazine, the Human Rights Campaign, and G.I. Jobs magazine. Moynihan participates in several organizations that focus on economic and market trends, including the World Economic Forum International Business Council, the Financial Services Forum, the Business Roundtable, and the supervisory board of The Clearing House. Moynihan leads the company’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Council and is a member of the Museum Council for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Moynihan is also a trustee of the Corporation of Brown University. He served as Irish America’s Wall Street 50 keynote speaker in 2009.

Conor Murphy MetLife

Conor Murphy is senior vice president and CFO of MetLife’s Latin American operations. MetLife is the largest life insurance company in Latin America with operations in seven countries covering more than 80 percent of the region’s GDP. Conor joined MetLife in 2000, having previously spent seven years with PwC in New York. Prior to PwC, he spent five years with Grant Thornton in Dublin. He is a founding trustee of Cristo Rey New York High School in Harlem and has been a proud sponsor of the school’s work-internship program for over 10 years. He is a past president of the Association of Chartered Accountants in the U.S., a member of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. Conor is a native of Donegal, where the third and fourth generations of Murphys run the family store, Murphy of Ireland, which is now in its 77th year exporting the finest Donegal products to the rest of the world. Conor lives in New York with his wife, Ani, and sons, Jack and Aidan.

Kathleen Murphy Fidelity Investments

Kathleen Murphy is president of Fidelity Personal Investing. She assumed her position in January 2009 and oversees a business with more than $1.9 trillion in client assets under administration, more than 17 million customer accounts, and over 13,000 employees. Her business is the nation’s number one provider of individual retirement accounts (IRAs), one of the largest brokerage businesses, one of the largest providers of investment advisory programs, and one of the leading providers of college savings plans. Prior to joining Fidelity, Kathy was CEO of ING U.S. Wealth Management. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Fairfield University and earned her J.D. with highest honors from the University of Connecticut. Fortune magazine has consistently named her one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in American business. She is a third-generation Irish American – her father’s family is from County Cork and her mother’s family is from Kerry. She is married with one son.

66 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Anthony O’Callaghan UBS

Tony O’Callaghan is a senior vice president and financial advisor at UBS Financial Services Inc.’s Private Wealth Management division. Tony has over 33 years of experience as an investment professional. Prior to joining UBS in December 2015 he was with Credit Suisse/DLJ for 21 years and prior to that was with Kidder, Peabody & Co. for 12 years. Tony specializes in asset allocation, fixed income and customer service. He earned his B.A. in economics from Michigan State University. Tony is a fourth-generation Irish American whose great-grandfather came to the U.S. in the late 19th century. Tony’s branch of the O’Callaghans traces back to the town of Mallow in County Cork, where you can still see the ruins of the once great O’Callaghan castle. He and his wife Patti have three children, Anthony Ryan, Julia Britten, and Bonnie Diane. The whole family has visited Ireland where they have many friends and distant family. This past August, Tony and his son Anthony Ryan played in the International Father-Son Golf tournament in Waterville, Ireland.

James O’Donnell Citibank

James O’Donnell is a managing director and global head of Investor Sales and Relationships at Citi. He joined Citi in 1999 and served as head of U.S. Equities for four years. Afterwards, he was co-head of Global Investor Sales, and was appointed to his current position in 2008. Jim is responsible for the distribution of Global Markets products to Citi’s Equities, Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities clients. Prior to joining Citi, he was president and CEO of HSBC Securities Inc. His responsibilities included all equity, debt, futures and investment banking operations for HSBC in the U.S. He was also CEO of HSBC James Cape, HSBC’s global equity business. Before his tenure at HSBC, Jim was president and CEO of NatWest Securities in the U.S. He also held various roles at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Jim received his B.A. in comparative religion from Princeton. He is second-generation Irish American, with his father’s family hailing from Dublin and his mother’s from Galway. He credits his Irish heritage, along with his family and his faith, as being the foundation of his life.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:25 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/5/16 11:47 PM Page 68

WallStreet50

Niall O’Donnell Virtus Partners Fund Services

Niall O’Donnell is the global head of investor services at Virtus Partners Fund Services, where he and his team have secured multiple mandates from global top 10 credit managers to provide services to alternative investment funds. Niall was born in Co. Cork and holds his B.Sc. in finance from the University College of Cork, Ireland. His paternal family have tracked their history back to the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, where they fought alongside Red Hugh O’Donnell. Niall’s maternal ancestors trace back to counties Cork and Tipperary. For Niall, the significance of the Irish American experience became most apparent when he emigrated to the U.S. in 2010, and met those who continued to view Ireland as their home. “The most important part of our heritage to me is ensuring that my family and the generations to come have the same sense of pride, enthusiasm and joy to be Irish as I have,” he says. Niall and his wife Christina live in Greenwich, Connecticut with their two daughters, Aoife and Emma.

Michael O’Grady Northern Trust

Michael O’Grady is president of the Corporate & Institutional Services business unit at Northern Trust and serves as a member of the Corporation’s Management Committee. Northern Trust’s C&IS business unit is a leading provider of asset servicing, investment management, banking and related services to institutional clients worldwide. Prior to assuming his current role, Mike served as executive vice president & chief financial officer of Northern Trust. Mike joined Northern Trust in 2011 from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he served as a managing director in the firm’s Investment Banking Group and head of the Depository Institutions Group for the Americas. He joined Merrill Lynch in 1992 as an associate. Prior to Merrill Lynch, Mike worked for Price Waterhouse. He holds a B.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. A board member of the Field Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Catholic Charities, Mike is third-generation Irish on both his father and mother’s sides. The O’Gradys are from County Mayo and the Kileys are from County Clare.

Thomas F. O’Neill Kimberlite

Thomas F. O’Neill is the chairman of Kimberlite, a firm for which he also heads the financial institutions banking practice. He is the former chairman of Ranieri Financial Services Group, one of Kimberlite’s predecessor companies. Born in the Bronx, Thomas graduated from New York University with a B.S. in accounting. He began his Wall Street career with L.F. Rothschild & Co in 1972. Presently, he is a member of the board of directors of Archer Daniels Midland and chairman of its audit committee, as well as a chairman of the finance committee and member of the executive committee of NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. Thomas is a second-generation Irish American with family roots in counties Armagh (his father’s side) and Tipperary (his mother’s). He vividly recalls stories of his maternal grandfather’s decision to emigrate after standing up to the English lord whose estate he maintained in New Inn, Co. Tipperary. Thomas still takes pride in what he regards as his grandfather’s “ability to overcome great challenges to be here.” He and his wife, Carol, have three daughters, Meredith, Melanie, and Heather. 68 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Jim O’Sullivan High Frequency Economics

Jim O’Sullivan is chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, an independent economics research firm. He forecasts and analyzes macroeconomic developments and policy actions driving financial markets. According to MarketWatch, he is “the best high-frequency economic forecaster in America.” He has been MarketWatch Forecaster of the Year in eight of the 12 years since the award was created, including each of the last five. Ranking is based on accuracy in projecting U.S. economic indicators. Jim began his career at JPMorgan and has also worked at UBS and MF Global. Born in New York, Jim grew up in Co. Offaly. His father is from Abbeyfeale in Limerick and his mother from Drimoleague in Cork. Jim holds a B.A. in economics from Trinity College Dublin, where he earned the distinction of scholar. He also earned an M.A. in economics from Queen’s University in Ontario. He lives in Manhattan with his Offaly-born wife, Margaret Molloy, a marketing executive, and their sons, Finn and Emmet. On Twitter he is @OSullivanEcon.

Peter Quinlan Signature Bank

Peter Quinlan is the treasurer and executive vice president of Signature Bank, where he has managed the investment portfolio, interest rate risk and liquidity management functions of the company since 2006. He also serves as the chairman of the company’s asset liability management committee. He holds a B.S. in business management from Springfield College and an M.A. in business administration from Northeastern University. He joined Signature in 2002, and was an early member of the senior management team, contributing to much of the company’s initial and continued growth and success. Peter is a fourth-generation Irish American whose ancestors’ roots trace back to counties Cork and Tipperary. “My Irish heritage is the foundation of my personal and spiritual life,” he says. “The legacy of my ancestors provides standards of determination, perseverance and hard work. As an Irish American, I continue to embody these standards as an appreciation of the opportunities afforded me.” Peter currently lives in Manhattan with his fiancée, Jennifer.

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 5:08 PM

IA.50 Wall_Pg46-50/59-70_IA Template 10/6/16 9:25 AM Page 70

WallStreet50

Meredith Ryan-Reid MetLife

Meredith Ryan-Reid is a senior vice president in MetLife’s Group Benefits division leading Distribution Development. Responsibilities include broker strategy and relationship management, third party distribution, private exchanges, worksite strategy and voluntary benefits delivery. Previously, she led the Accident and Health group and the Product Specialist organization. Meredith received her B.A. from the University of Richmond and M.B.A. from Cornell University, where she serves as her alumni class president and member of the Johnson School advisory council. Though Meredith says much information about her Irish ancestors prior to her paternal great-grandparents, who settled in Somerville, MA, is lost, she completed a DNA test that found she is 83 percent Irish, with Ryan roots in Tipperary. In America, her family made their living as boxers, police officers, domestics, and factory and railway workers. “I am proud of my heritage,” she says, “and never more so than when I had the honor of marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade with Grand Marshall Alfred Smith in 2013 when I was eight months pregnant with my second child, Madeline.” Meredith lives in Manhattan with her husband and two daughters.

Sharon T. Sager UBS Private Wealth Management

Sharon T. Sager is a managing director and private wealth advisor at UBS Private Wealth Management. A CIMA, she began her career in financial services in 1983 with Kidder, Peabody & Co., which was acquired by Paine Webber Inc. and then by UBS. Sharon is only one of 16 women to be named to Barron’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors each year since the list’s inception in 2006, and was also featured in Barron’s “Best Advice” column. In addition, Sharon has appeared on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street and Closing Bell. Sharon was named to the 2014 Financial Times Top 400 Advisors, as well as to REP Magazine and WealthManagement.com’s Top 50 Wirehouse Women list 2012-2015. Last June, UBS presented Sharon with the “Aspire” award, a recognition that she serves as a role model for other advisors and as a culture carrier for the firm. A native New Yorker, Sharon earned a B.A. from the College of Mount Saint Vincent. Her father’s family, the O’Tooles, are from Galway, and her mother’s family, the Carrolls, hail from Cork. She and her husband, Loring Swasey, live in Manhattan and Long Island. She is co-chairman of the board of overseers for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, secretary of the board for Careers Through Culinary Arts Programs, a member of the Economic Club of NY and the President’s Circle, James Beard Foundation, and was a mentor with the Clinton Economic Initiative UBS Small Business Advisory Program. 70 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Emmet Savage Rubicoin

Emmet Savage is CEO and co-founder of Rubicoin, a Dublin and New York based company with a mission to get the world investing successfully. He studied physics at Dublin City University, finance in the Irish Management Institute, and business strategy at Trinity College Dublin. Rubicoin’s flagship smartphone app, Invest, has earned the trust of tens of thousands of new investors globally. It is ranked first by Apple for investing in several countries, including the U.S. The company’s vision is to create millions of successful stock investors across the world by making the process beautiful, engaging, and enjoyable. Over the past 20 years, Emmet has taught stock investing, written for The Motley Fool and published all decisions relating to his personal portfolio. The audited average annual return of his personal stock portfolio was in excess of 24.4% per year for eleven years. He is currently on the boards of CBC School, Monkstown and Outreach Moldova, an Irish Charity that was set up to assist children living in an orphanage in Eastern Europe. He was born, educated, and lives in Dublin.

Thomas E. Sullivan Merrill Lynch

As the managing director of Wealth Management at Merrill Lynch, Thomas E. Sullivan works with his team to leverage resources to create financial strategies personalized for their clients’ circumstances. He has been a financial advisor with the firm for over 40 years. Born in Jamaica, New York, Thomas graduated from St. John’s University with a B.S. in accounting. In the past, he served as the president of the Long Island Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and currently sits on the board of trustees of Winthrop University Hospital. He has been listed six times on Barron’s Top 1000 Advisors list, most recently in 2016. Thomas is a second-generation Irish American, and believes that being “Irish means you forget the bad days.” He shares this approach to life with his wife, Barbara, with whom he lives in Garden City. They have four children, Thomas, Kristen, Jennifer, and Matthew, as well as two grandchildren with a third on the way.

John Tyrrell Rubicoin

John Tyrrell is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Rubicoin, a Dublin and New York based company aimed towards the increased success of global investments. Over the last 15 years, he has overseen the design and launch of many mass-market enterprise products, including Invest by Rubicoin, a top-rated U.S. smartphone app for investment. He was born in Galway, the county from which his mother’s and father’s families both stem. His father holds four All-Ireland medals from his time spent representing Galway as a GAA player in the 1960s. John attended University College Galway as well as Dublin Business School, and holds a Bachelor of Engineering, a Diploma in finance, and a Higher Diploma in business management. Before Rubicoin, he held several positions with Vodafone Ireland, including head of fixed networks and head of network engineering. He currently lives in Dublin with his wife, Muireann, and daughters, Ella and Rosie.

R.J. Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien would like to congratulate our Chairman & CEO

Gerald Corcoran and Head of Global Foreign Exchange and Metals

Tony Dalton

for being honored in Irish America Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Thank you for all you do and honoring not only your Irish American heritage, but ours.

IRISH AMERICA

would like to extend a special thank you to our annual sponsors Mutual of America The Coca-Cola Company House of Waterford Crystal Tourism Ireland Quinnipiac University UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School The American Ireland Fund CIE Tours International

Go raibh mile maith agaibh

1-800-Flowers.com

Half pages.indd 1

10/6/16 4:51 PM

IA.DonovanREV2_IA Template 10/3/16 10:04 PM Page 72

James B. Donovan The Real-Life Story of Bridge of Spies Hero

The Irish American New York lawyer who defended a Russian spy, and negotiated on behalf of the thousands of prisoners captured after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, is remembered by his daughter Jan. By R. Bryan Willits

t can often appear that the lives of individuals depicted on the silver screen are too fantastic to be real. For James B. Donovan, an Irish-American lawyer from New York who was recently played by award-winning actor Tom Hanks in the film Bridge of Spies, the opposite was in fact the case. His life was ultimately so seemingly fantastic that it would simply be impossible to depict in a single film. Nonetheless, the 2015 film Bridge of Spies, directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Matt Charman and brothers Ethan and Joel Coen, has succeeded in depicting at least one epoch in the fascinating and inspiring life that Donovan led. The film – which took in $165 million at the box office, and racked up Golden Globe and Oscar nominations and wins earlier this year – is finally helping to get Donovan the recognition he deserves. “History hadn’t been kind to him,” says Donovan’s daughter, Jan Donovan Amorosi, the eldest of Donovan’s four children. Of her father’s role in many key events of the twentieth century, she felt until recently, “there was nothing much said. It was like he was a forgotten man.” Nevertheless, the interest now being paid to his life is largely a recent phenomenon – which is a curious fact, considering he played a crucial role in the principal Nuremberg trial at the end of WWII, was the primary negotiator in the exchange of captured agents (the focus of Bridge of Spies), and was personally charged by President Kennedy to negotiate the release of thousands of prisoners following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The acknowledgement that Donovan’s many selfless, heroic deeds are now receiving is a relief to his family as well, as Amorosi explains. “Thank God now everyone knows what an outstanding man he was,” says Amorosi, who remembers saying to her husband, “I don’t understand this. I mean, he did so much for our country and nobody remembers him!” Donovan was born in the Bronx in 1916, the son of Harriet O’Connor, a piano teacher, and John J. Donovan, a surgeon. Brought up Catholic, Donovan studied first at Fordham, a Jesuit University, graduating with a degree in English. He then studied at Harvard Law School, and shortly after graduating in 1940,

72 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

married his Brooklyn sweetheart, Mary McKenna, in 1941. A relatively quiet life at a New York law firm followed, but didn’t last long. After the United States entered World War II, Donovan became a U.S. Naval Reserve officer and served as general counsel to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, which eventually led to Donovan’s crucial role in the principal Nuremberg trials. “Nuremberg as a young man was pretty horrifying for him,” Amorosi said. “He was pretty upset. Spielberg, however, was very impressed with this aspect of my father’s life because he is a Jewish man and he was so appreciative of my father. He told me, ‘Your father was extraordinary.’” Donovan became an assistant to Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, from 1945 to 1949. In his capacity as a lawyer who needed to show the extent of what the Nazis had done, he collaborated with several directors in order to produce some rather harrowing documentaries which would serve as video evidence for the trials. Donovan oversaw the progress of the films and provided legal advice while working with film directors Budd Schulberg, Ray Kellogg, and George Stevens – all of whom were working for the OSS at the time. “There were famous Hollywood directors, for example, George Stevens, and they all gave their talents to the war effort. So my father met them over there, in Europe during the war,” Amorosi explained. Through these connections, films like Nazi Concentration Camps and The Nazi Plan were produced and used as part of the evidence against the Nazis. Amorosi says that Spielberg watched these same films, and even showed them to his 96-year-old father. “They could not believe it,” says Amorosi, adding that Spielberg told her that her father was truly unbelievable. “Spielberg of course couldn’t be more grateful,” she said. As for the family’s first-hand experience with the director, Amorosi was extremely impressed. “Steven Spielberg could not have been nicer to us. He’s such a kind and lovely person. You don’t know what to expect when you meet someone really important like that. We came away so impressed with him.” Outside of garnering interest in her father’s story, Amorosi found the film making process personally

IA.DonovanREV2_IA Template 10/3/16 10:04 PM Page 73

rewarding as well. Since the film had scenes showing the whole Donovan family, Amorosi was depicted as a character in the film, and was played by Eve Hewson (who just happens to be the daughter of Bono, the front man of the legendary Irish rock band U2). “In the film, I’m the girl who dives under the table because supposedly there was a gun that was fired into the house. That did not actually happen,” she explained, but was nonetheless pleased with Hewson’s performance and with meeting her in real life. “That girl is really adorable,” says Amorosi, “She is lovely. She lives in Brooklyn and we hung out for a while at a party. We were sort of leading the Hollywood lifestyle there for a while when the movie came out.” But Bridge of Spies hardly touches on Donovan’s role at Nuremberg. Its main focus, rather, starts around 1957, when the New York City Bar Association asked Donovan to step up to defend Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy who’d been captured and charged as a Soviet agent by the FBI and the INS in Brooklyn. Despite the fact that many other prominent New York lawyers had been approached and refused, Donovan took on the case. At the time, he said it was an important responsibility that gave him “the privilege of advocating unpopular causes.” Amorosi was present when her father made the fateful decision to defend Abel. She remembered that at that time her younger siblings were off at camp, so it was just her mother, her father, and herself at the cottage they were renting in the Adirondack mountains. “The phone rings and it is one of my father’s associates from the law firm saying, ‘they captured a Russian spy in downtown Brooklyn.’ Some of the

FAR LEFT: The resemblance to Tom Hanks is evident in this photo of Donovan, who from 1943 to 1945, was as an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, served as general counsel to the Office of Strategic Services – predecessor of the CIA. (Courtesy of Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University)

JAAP BUITENDIJK/DREAMWORKS AND TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

other lawyers had convened a meeting and they had decided that because of my father’s background, in particular, the Nuremberg trials, that my father would be a very good choice to defend this Russian spy,” she says. “As you see in the movie, my father was at first startled. He said to us, ‘What do you think I should do?’ And we both said, ‘You should do what you feel you want to do.’ “He said, ‘I’m going to go out for a while and I’m going to think about this.’” Amarosi thought then that he would be pondering this momentous decision for days or even weeks – it was an onerous and dangerous decision for him and his family indeed, since Abel was sure to be depicted as persona non grata in the media, and Donovan would be seen as his defender. “But instead, he came back within a couple of hours,” Amorosi says. “We had just arrived – we were unpacking our things for our vacation and he came back to the house and said, ‘Well. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to do it!’ “He made quick decisions, and he loved challenges in his life. So every challenge he could face, he faced. And I think this may have come from Nuremberg, where as a very young man he had to face the Nazis and witness things that were horrifying. He was in charge of the visual evidence at 32 years old. How many young men would do some-

CENTER: Hanks and actor Mark Rylance (center) as Rudolf Ivanovich Abel in a courtroom scene from Bridge of Spies. TOP RIGHT: Donovan (right) and Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1963. (Courtesy of John Donovan) BELOW: Rudolf Ivanovich Abel.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 73

IA.DonovanREV2_IA Template 10/3/16 10:04 PM Page 74

TOP : Donovan (center) was editor-in-chief of Fordham University’s The Ram. CENTER: Donovan and John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, c. 1963. FAR LEFT: The Donovan family at Lake Placid, New York, c. 1967. From left: Dr. Edward Amorosi and his wife, Jan; Mary Ellen; James Donovan; John; and James’s wife, Mary. (Courtesy of John Donovan) BOTTOM: Donovan with his daughter, Jan Donovan Amarosi.

thing like that? He welcomed the challenge.” During Abel’s trial Donovan was up against a difficult test since the local New York population, the media, and all the government agencies involved in the case had already made up their minds that Abel, who had spent nine years undetected in the U.S. posing as a painter – his studio across the street from the local FBI office – was guilty. Though Donovan lost what became known as the “Hollow Nickel Case,” and the U.S. Federal Court in New York convicted Abel on three counts of conspiracy as an enemy agent, the resourceful lawyer managed to persuade the court not to impose the death penalty. “The death penalty would end all possibilities of Abel helping us,” he explained at the time. “Some day in the future an American of similar rank may be held by the Russians and an exchange can be worked out.” Such thoughts came naturally to an insurance lawyer like Donovan, who spent a great deal of time thinking about hedging one’s bets. While most lawyers would have called it a day when Abel was carted off to serve 30 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and a return to a steady and lucrative corporate practice would have been the smart play for a lawyer with a young family, Donovan continued to litigate on the spy’s behalf. He argued that evidence used against Abel was tainted, since the FBI had seized it in violation of the Fourth Amendment. When he took Abel’s case all the way to the Supreme Court he only lost by one vote – Abel v. United States was rejected in 1960 in a five to four decision, with the dissent led by Justice William Brennan, and Justice William O. Douglas Despite losing the case, Donovan was satisfied he had pursued it to the full extent of U.S. law and that Abel had been given a fair hearing. “The very fact that Abel has been receiving due process of law in the United States is far more significant, both here and behind the Iron Curtain, than the particular outcome of the case,” he said at the time. Amorosi recalled that the family was very proud of him throughout the whole process. “Because let’s face it,” she says, “he was probably the only person to say that he would do it. Someone had to do it – and he did a great job. Everything he did was to the best of his ability. He was very dedicated, and very brave

74 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

about everything. He was incredible. He just made up his mind, and whatever he did was so well done. I don’t know what to say except that we’re so proud of that.” Arguing to keep Abel alive turned out to be an incredibly prescient move on Donovan’s part when, three years after his trial, a top secret U.S. spy plane – the U-2 – was shot down while taking surveillance photographs of Soviet military installations from 70,000 feet. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured and tried in Moscow as an enemy agent, and sentenced to three years imprisonment and seven years in a labor camp. Powers was in prison from September 9, 1960 until February 8, 1962 when the CIA opted to use Abel as a bargaining chip. Unsurprisingly, they turned to Donovan to negotiate a prisoner swap. Donovan led a mission to East Berlin, and following a week of negotiations at the Soviet embassy there, successfully negotiated for the exchange of Powers, as well as an American student, Frederic Pryor, for Abel. For Amorosi, and the rest of the Donovan family, Bridge of Spies is a well-deserved salute to their father’s bravery and doggedness through this episode of his life. The film, incidentally, came out one hundred years after his birth. “For us it was an exciting movie – and it continues to be exciting – because, before this, people had forgotten him,” Amorosi says. “But now our father’s role has finally been recognized. And while this is something that should have been done quite a while ago, thank God it’s been done now! And we’re very, very thrilled.” She’s happy, too, that as well as being celebrated in the movie, Donovan’s account of the inspiring tale in his own memoir of these events, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary

IA.DonovanREV2_IA Template 10/3/16 10:04 PM Page 75

Powers, which was first published in 1964 – and was widely acclaimed at the time – has been re-released by Simon & Schuster. But just when the dust began to settle after Abel, Powers, Pryor, and Donovan were back in their respective countries, Donovan’s life took another interesting turn. Again, it began with another surprise call – but this time to the Donovan home in Brooklyn. When the phone rang, Amorosi recalled that her father was sitting at his desk in his wood paneled den that featured, upon his insistence, a ceiling painted blue. “He liked a blue ceiling in a room because he found it very peaceful,” she said. But when that phone rang it was not peace and quiet that was on the other end, but rather, a new special mission request – this time being made by the President of the United States. “A call comes from President Kennedy,” Amorosi says with the nonchalance that could only come from a person who grew up with a father of larger-thanlife design. “And so he took the call.” Because of his success at Nuremberg and his dealings with the Soviets, the president wanted to know if Donovan would be willing to negotiate on behalf of prisoners captured after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 17. 1961, funded in part by the U.S. government. Despite the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, Donovan agreed to take on the job, and according to Amorosi, shuttled back and forth to negotiate with Fidel Castro no fewer than 15 times. Here too, Donovan proved highly effective in his negotiations and secured the release of over a thousand prisoners to the U.S. Part of this was done through earning Castro’s trust and respect, which was achieved in no small part by Donovan’s decision to bring his son John down to Cuba with him. “What was behind it is that he felt that Castro would admire him for taking the risk in bringing his son along,” says Amorosi. “My brother was really only a very young boy at that time.” The gambit paid off, and Donovan

himself recalled: “Castro was enormously pleased to meet John and was completely taken by my self-confidence in bringing him.” Throughout the negotiations the two men developed a rapport and a great deal of mutual respect, and on December 21, 1962, they signed an agreement to exchange the 1,113 prisoners that had survived the invasion in exchange for $53 million – what today would be $410 million – in food and medicine. Apparently Donovan came up with the idea to exchange the prisoners for medicine after he suffered an attack of bursitis and found the Cubans had nothing available with which to treat it. On top of that, and just as he had upped the ante in getting Pryor released from East Germany along with Powers, in the instance of his high-profile negotiations in Cuba at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he nevertheless managed to negotiate for the freedom of an additional 8,500-odd political prisoners from Cuban detention. Meanwhile, certain forces in the CIA also attempted to get Donovan to assassinate Castro by gifting him a wetsuit laced with poison. Just as was the case during the spy exchange in Germany, Donovan refused to be a pawn in the CIA’s game. “[The CIA] wanted my father to kill him,” Amorosi ruefully recalled. “They wanted my father to put a poison dart in Castro’s wetsuit. But my father, since he was in the OSS, had a feeling that something would be amiss – that they were going to try to pull something. So he thought, you know, I’m not going to be part of this. So he went and bought a different wetsuit in New York and brought it with him to give to Castro.” Despite all of that, Donovan still managed to make friends with the locals while in Cuba. “Every place he went he made friends,” remembers Amorosi, “He got to know some local Cuban people and became friendly with all these people.” Many of these relationships, she maintains, lasted for years after the fact – a testament to the sort of kindness, humanity, and integrity that her father embodied throughout his life. Amidst all the stories of adventure and intrigue, Amorosi insists nonetheless that it’s the seemingly banal incidents in her father’s life that have taken on a special significance for her since his death of a heart attack, his third, at the age of 53, on January 19, 1970, at New York’s Methodist Hospital. “My father was a fantastically interesting person,” she admitted. “He had a lot of enthusiasm for life, and because he was such a lively person, we all reveled in that.” In particular, she remembers he loved family holidays together, celebratory meals, and especially Christmas Day. “He had a favorite bathrobe that he wore every Christmas,” she remembers with a smile in her voice. “It was so funny,” she adds. “I was speaking to my brother this year on Christmas day and I said, ‘Remember that red plaid bathrobe that daddy had and always wore on Christmas?’ And he said, ‘Guess what. I’m wearing it right now!’ We have truly fabulous IA memories.” OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 75

Sky

Fiction.rev.4_IA Template 10/5/16 11:13 AM Page 76

FICTION

Donal Ryan

©PHOTO BY RACHEL BROWN GIESE / THE DONEGAL PICTURES “SUMMER RAIN: BAILC SHAMHRAIDH”

Fiction.rev.4_IA Template 10/5/16 11:13 AM Page 77

HE ROAD OUTSIDE this house is the same one my mother and father walked together each morning of their married life to Mass. Hand in hand, then arm in arm as they got older. That now is nearly seen as being sinful. Daily Mass-going is a thing to be suspicious of. Have you nothing better to be doing? No, faith, I have not. It’s not as though I sink too deeply into it; I only do it in memory of my dear parents. I only stay on nodding terms with Christ, just in case. What harm can it do to send a prayer or two skyward? Suspicious also is living where you were born, on the road your parents walked. Did you never want to have a look at the world? No, faith, I did not. This road is as good as any, or as bad. The crows that blacken the sky above my yard each night are descended from the ones my mother watched. The same squawks and caws in the same prickled sky. What business have those crows in the hills east of here? Something important takes them there with each dawn, anyway, to Pallasbeg and Pallasmore and Ton Tenna. They process home with the fading light, an hour or so of staggered returning, weighed down and weary. And I stand beneath them, wondering, the way my mother and father did. Crows have great notions. They perch before bed for a nightly confab on the ridges of the roofs of all this town’s important buildings: the courthouse and the town hall and the bank. They never grace the grocery shops or townhouses or any of the lesser structures, only relieve themselves on them as they pass. Then they shout across at one another all the news of the day. There’s three gangs, as far as I can make out, with a HQ each, triangled around the square, shouting over Our Lord’s stony grey head. Three factions, one murder. Once they’ve all their arguing and organizing done they turn their arses to the town and peel away to the dark insides of the giant evergreens in the grounds of the two Saint Marys. They’re fixed as firm to their home as I am to mine. The houses of this road are strung with sorrow, like rows of old houses anywhere. A map of loss plotted all down it. Children taken, a preponderance of boys, accidents and sickness and other things. All those people would presume the stab of their sorrow to be unknown to me, occluded from me, but they’re wrong. I well know the freezing grip of it, the way it can steal the breath from your lungs, the jagged thumping of a broken heart. I saw a light like a moving star one night in early winter. Right the way from east to west it floated and it was back again a while later, and hurled itself across the vaulted sky in two or three short minutes. My neighbour told me it was the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth, and there were men and women inside in it. He was out watching it too. He’d heard on the radio it was going to be clearly visible that night. Spacemen and spacewomen, flying in a space station. What separated them from me? The line

of the sight of my eye, nothing, everything. I’ve seen that speeding light since, a good few times, and others like it. Satellites, my neighbour said, and he even knew the names of some of them. I started reading up on science after seeing that spacecraft, in books and magazines, at the library mostly, and I learnt a lot about things. The names of the parts of the heavens known to man and visible to man’s naked eye. I read about the Very Big and the Very Small and how there’s nothing to bind the two but the ideas of mankind, his fistful of imaginary strings. What things are made of, the particles of us. My sister’s child was named after my father, as I was. William. I always called him Billy, as I never was. He was as good as reared in this house because my sister was leaving her husband for most of the years of his childhood. A slow departure, a long and gently sloped vale of tears. My mother and father hardly once took their eyes off him. Then they departed this world nearly as one when little Billy was only barely four and I wasn’t long turned thirty and it was hard for me to tell him where they’d gone. So I pointed at the sky at night and told him they were winking down at him from there and he seemed happy enough with that. My sister was more settled in herself by then and her husband had gone abroad somewhere and she took to doing college courses and bettering herself and I was always here waiting at the gate for Billy, for nights and weekends and weeks at a time. And I’d make him scrambled eggs and sausages in the mornings and look at cartoons with him warm and sleepy on top of me on the couch and take him to the park and the pictures and the swimming pool. And I’d stand at his bedroom door at night and look at him and listen to his breaths. And I’d kiss him on the cheek and wet his hair with tears as he left and I held him to me once until he wriggled free of me and one morning shortly after a letter came in a light blue envelope and it was from my sister and it was to tell me Billy wouldn’t be visiting for a while because he had to study for his summer tests and he had hurling training twice or three times a week now and he’d have adventure camp all summer and they’d see me probably before Christmas. That Christmas came and went without a sign of them or word from them and as spring neared and a fierce longing had grown inside me for just a look at Billy, for a day with him, for an afternoon even, or an hour of the sound and sight and nearness of him, I wrote a letter to Lourda and a reply came shortly after declaring that there was good news and more good news: she had met a lovely man and he wanted to set up home with her in England and Billy was so fond of him and he so fond of Billy and they wouldn’t be tormenting me any more because Lourda had her master’s degree got now and the promise of academic work in an English university and after I had all that good news read and read again I made a cup of tea and set it on the kitchen table before me and sat down to watch the sun disappear behind the Arra Mountains OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 77

Fiction.rev.4_IA Template 10/5/16 11:13 AM Page 78

The sky is enough for me, I decided, and the wonder of all the things in it, besides concerning myself with the webs and ways of imaginary people. What knowledge is there, really? What can be known?

and I was still sitting looking out at the sky as it reddened with the same sun’s rising and my tea was cold, undrunk before me. My Billy is well into his manhood now and I haven’t seen him since that last embrace. There’s a man walks up and down this road most days with makeup smeared and daubed onto his face and a string of pearls across his bared and hairy chest. He has several of the signs of the zodiac fandangled from his blue-veined earlobes. He never talks to me nor would I want him to except the once he stopped outside my gate and asked had I the loan of a tenner because he was fierce stuck for a box of fags. I told him I hadn’t it and he asked had I a fiver so. And again I shook my head and he hawked and spat on the path outside my gate and stomped off towards the corner in a pair of dirty runners with his ruffled skirt swishing around his pale and knotted calves. And I envied him, I’m not really sure why. The freedom he’d granted himself, maybe, to be only missing a smoke. I rang a number one time I read off the notice board in the vestibule of the church. I didn’t mean to memorize it, but my eye was drawn to it so often, and the picture underneath it in black and white of a woman with a hand across her forehead and a phone to her ear and her long hair drawn across her face, and an air about her of sadness and need, that it sat as clear as day before my mind’s eye. Then I felt a terrible rush of embarrassment when a girl answered, with a lovely soft voice, kind and warm. She asked me my name and I said William and regretted not having had a lie ready. I started to tell her how I missed my little nephew and then remembered he was only little now in my memory of him; wherever he was he’d be a man, tall and good-looking and athletic, with only a vague memory of an auld uncle he used to be minded by now and again in his childhood. No matter what, I’ll never see that little boy again. Does the man who was the boy think of me? Hardly if at all, I’d say. I’m only a ghost to him now, and he a ghost to me. I hung up all of a shot for a finish, barely having mumbled my thanks to the girl who was trained to give sympathy, and sat on the seat at the telephone table in the hall in a stew of embarrassment, and a shame, at once strange and familiar, that rose from somewhere, I don’t know, I don’t know where. That wasn’t the finish of my foolishness, though. I fell back into it not even a year later. I read a number that appeared on the television at the end of a programme that was about finding lost family. As I listened to the foreign ringtone I imagined Billy might answer. That kind of a thing happens: wedding rings lost on beaches turning up years later in the bellies of fishes caught by the loser; identical twins separated at birth and never knowing one another turning out to have the same jobs and children of the same names. But it wasn’t Billy, of course. I went off half cocked into my story to another soft-voiced girl, this one with a lovely English accent. Once I stopped talking, after telling her how the years without word from Lourda or Billy had stacked themselves one upon the other

78 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

almost unknown to me into decades, she was silent a long moment until I said Hello, are you still there? I’m so sorry, William, she said, nearly in a whisper, but that’s not really the type of scenario we’re interested . . . and she caught herself and said instead, In a position to get involved in . . . it’s more of a . . . a . . . A what? I could have said. A what? I could have been sour with her, indignant. But I ended her discomfort, her struggle to parse my story into a single word by pushing down the contacts with my finger and I left the receiver cradled between my shoulder and chin and sat listening for a good long while to the unbroken bleep as my tears pooled between plastic and flesh, thinking of heart monitors and hospice bedrooms, and souls unshackled from gravity. I did a computer course in the library and I learnt how to look things up and about search terms and Googles and all of that. I searched there, and searched, and found nothing. The young lad who was the instructor helped me to send away online for a laptop computer of my own and he showed me how to get broadband for the house on a little square thing that only had to be plugged in and turned on and connected remotely. When my laptop came I unpacked it and plugged it in and turned it on and connected it to the broadband step by step the way I’d learnt and I clicked on the Google symbol and the empty rectangular window came up with the cursor inside in it and I looked at it as it blinked and winked back at me and my heart palpitated in time with it and I got scared all of a sudden of what was in behind that window, and the lack of a watching instructor or librarian behind me, and the unfettered access to everything I now had, a world of knowledge and nonsense, and none of it any real use to me, and I unplugged the laptop and the broadband and put them in the back of the hall closet and they’re in there still. And the money goes out of my account every month still without fail for the broadband. The sky is enough for me, I decided, and the wonder of all the things in it, besides concerning myself with the webs and ways of imaginary people. What knowledge is there, really? What can be known? That silence can open between people that can become a gap, a distance, a gulf, and widen and deepen, and be for a finish fathomless and untraversable. That the crows will leave one morning for their last day’s work and I’ll look one night at the sky above me for the last time and feel the cooling of the cores of distant galaxies. That all things tend towards chaos, and chaos itself tends in its turn towards stillness and peace. That all the parts of all the atoms and protons and quarks and leptons of the stars and of me and of the haughty crows and of my parents and of Lourda and of my Billy and all the things that are or ever were will arrange themselves for a finish equidistant from each other in all directions and stop still there in the IA darkness and the cold. From Donal Ryan’s short story collection, A Slanting of the Sun (Steerforth, 2015).

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 6:53 PM

IA.WAULREVfinal_IA Template 10/5/16 3:44 PM Page 80

what are you like? |

by Patricia Harty

DONAL RYAN D

onal Ryan is one of Ireland’s best new writers. His first novel, The Spinning Heart, was published to great acclaim in 2012. It won the Guardian First Book Award, the European Union Prize for Literature, and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and the Desmond Elliott Prize. Born, in 1976, outside Nenagh, Co.Tipperary, Ryan is a keen observer of human nature – the petty class-distinctions and smallmindedness of small-town life, the loneliness and displacement, disquiet and quiet triumphs of a people living in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Though the downturn in the economy serves as a backdrop to much of his fiction, his stories are timeless in that they concern the emotions of the heart – the core of human nature through the ages. Ryan himself, faced down numerous rejections before Sarah Davis-Goff, an intern at Lilliput Press, uncovered his The Spinning Heart manuscript in a slush pile. (Davis-Goff went on to start her own publishing company). Following the success of The Spinning Heart, Ryan’s The Thing About December (written before The Spinning Heart) was published in 2013, also to wide acclaim. In 2015, Ryan released a book of short stories, A Slanting of the Sun. The story from which the book gets its title won the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year. (“Sky,” another story from that collection, is printed in this issue). Ryan holds a degree in law from the University of Limerick, where he is now a writer in residence. He lives with his wife, Anne Marie, and their two children in Castletroy on the outskirts of Limerick City. His new book, All We Shall Know, was released by Penguin, Random House in September.

What is your current state of mind? I’m extremely happy.

Your earliest memory?

Being in my mother’s arms and tracing letters of the alphabet with my fingertip onto a patch of sunlight over the fireplace, while she told me what a clever boy I was.

Did you read a lot as a child?

I never stopped. Comics, annuals, magazines, children’s books, adult novels, everything in between. If I was stuck I’d read lists of ingredients from food packaging. My parents would buy books in job lots and my sister and I would devour them.

When did you start to think of yourself as a writer?

Around the age of nine. After Barry McGuigan lost his world title to Steve Cruz. I loved Barry, 80 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

really loved him. My dad was hugging me that night because I was crying so much, and he was saying, “Don’t worry, love, there’ll be a comeback fight and Barry will get his belt back. It was the heat that tipped it towards Cruz.” I wrote the story of Barry’s reclaiming of his belt and I felt this strange relief, like it could be true because I had imagined it and then sort of made it real by putting it on a page in ink.

Were your family encouraging of your ambition to be a writer?

My family have always been hugely encouraging. My parents instilled the belief in us that there was absolutely nothing we couldn’t do. They did it in a really subtle, natural way, by making it obvious that they believed in us, that it was okay to f**k things up, once you learned from your mistakes. That you had to be decent and hardworking, and everything else would follow.

Did you receive a lot of rejection letters on your way to recognition?

I received 47 rejection letters and emails. If you count the non-responses as rejections you’re up near 100. I asked for it, though. I sent manuscripts everywhere, all over the world. I probably sent manuscripts to people who weren’t even involved in publishing. I got a letter once from a solicitor in Dublin, saying, “Your novel looks very nice, but we’re not sure what you want us to do with it…”

Who are some of your own favorite writers?

Norman Mailer, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Frank McCourt, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Joseph O’Connor, Anne Enright, Roald Dahl, David Mitchell, Sebastian Barry, John Boyne, Paul Lynch, John B Keane, Jim Crace, Frank O’Connor, Martin Dyar, Jennifer Johnston, Julian Gough, Paul Murray, Peter Murphy, Claire Kilroy, Mary Costello, Vladimir Nabokov, Beryl Bainbridge – I could literally spend all day on this list and I’d be in bed tonight thinking, “I should have said…”

Did growing up in small-town Ireland influence your writing?

I can’t deny this, since my three novels and all my short stories are set in small-town Ireland. My native place is joyously fecund. Its language and landscape and lexicons are my readily-available raw materials. There’s nowhere in the world for me like North Tipperary.

IA.WAULREVfinal_IA Template 10/5/16 3:44 PM Page 81

I love John B. Keane. He’s my greatest literary hero. His son Billy is one of my favorite writers and a great friend. I’d never heard this quote before. I’m sure he was only slagging!

third novel, Grace, due out in the U.S. next year. Sam Coll’s mad, glistening debut, The Abode of Fancy, is there as well. Christine Dwyer Hickey’s Cold Eye of Heaven is on the pile as it’s due a re-read, as is Billy Keane’s wonderful The Ballad of Mo & G. Some books just feel like old friends. There are two poetry collections on my nightstand always: Martin Dyar’s Maiden Names and Colm Keegan’s Don’t Go There.

Hero(es), dead or alive?

The best gift you ever received.

John B. Keane is reported to have said of Nenagh, your home town, “They should build a wall around it and let no man in and no man out.” What do you think he meant by that?

The aforementioned John B., my parents, my wife, Paul O’Connell, Conor McGregor, Michael Collins, Tom Barry, the Tipperary hurling team, Bernard Dunne, Paul McGrath, Stephen King, Katie Taylor. Again, I could go on and on all day.

What books are currently on your nightstand?

They’re nearly all proofs. Advance copies are one of the serious perks of being a published writer. There’s a copy of Sebastian Barry’s amazing, lifeaffirming new novel, Days Without End. There’s also a printout of Paul Lynch’s stunningly beautiful

The books my parents bought me as a child.

What’s your favorite piece of music? And opening line in a book?

My favorite album is Lou Reed’s New York. My favorite rock song, though, is AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” My favorite piece of classical music is Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” My current favorite opening line in a book is, “I get the willies when I see closed doors.” It’s from Joseph Heller’s Something Happened, and I like it because the book continues, relentlessly, in that vein; a series of confessions, that are sometimes almost too much.

TOP: Writer Donal Ryan. ABOVE AND LEFT: Ryan’s books, all of which won top literary prizes.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 81

IA.WAULREVfinal_IA Template 10/5/16 3:44 PM Page 82

what are you like? | Donal Ryan I live. Paul O’Connell lives near us. He’s a lovely guy as well as being a legend. I love hurling. I rarely miss a Tipp match. I go with my father and our friends, the two Mikes and Jennifer. It’s been the exact same crew for years. I was doing a reading in a theater in Boston in 2014 and my slot happened to coincide with the allIreland replay against Kilkenny. Halfway through, two women rocked in wearing Kilkenny jerseys, and interrupted my reading to say, “Ye beat us, Donal!” I started jumping around like a lunatic, punching the air and screaming, frightening the life out of half the audience, and then they said, “ha ha, ha. We’re only messing with you.” That’s pure Kilkenny, that kind of thing.

Do you have a hidden talent?

I am the world’s greatest arm-wrestler. I have never been beaten. Many a man and woman have tried, all have failed. I once beat a Munster pro, both arms. He threatened to throw me through a window.

Your perfect day? My wedding day.

Where did you meet your wife and when did you know you wanted to marry her?

I met Anne Marie on a picket line when she and her colleagues were on strike. I was chair of a neighboring branch of the union and went to walk in solidarity for a day. After our second date we were sitting in my car outside her apartment and I thought to myself, “I never want this conversation to end. I have to marry her!” It took me a few years to actually ask her, but I knew from that day.

How did you feel about Tipperary winning the minor, and the senior, hurling finals, this year?

Your favorite meal?

Roast beef at my parents’ house.

I was there in Croke Park, four rows from the goal, in the Lower Davin Stand. I can’t describe it. It was beautiful, glorious, perfect. My dad had spent the whole week telling everyone we were going to win by nine points. I don’t know how he did that!

Favorite place in Ireland?

Youghal Quay, near the village of Newtown, North Tipperary.

Favorite place outside of Ireland?

Paris. I know probably half of people asked will say it, but I just love it.

Why do you think Ireland produces such great writers?

Where do you go to think?

Out running. The more I think, the easier the running becomes.

Where do you go to write?

My office at the University of Limerick, where I teach creative writing.

Best advice you ever received?

“Be yourself.” Followed by, “shut up and listen.”

Did you play sports as a boy?

I played Gaelic football for Nenagh Éire Óg, and I cycled with the North Tipp Wheelers. I was terrible at football but I never missed a training session so our coach, the brilliant John Kissane, always played me and I never failed to let him down.

Are you a rugby or a hurling fan?

I like rugby. It can’t be avoided in Limerick, where

82 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

FROM TOP: Donal with his mother and his sister, Mary. Donal with his sister, and his parents, Anne and Donie Ryan. Christmas 2014 (L. to R): Donal’s brother, John, Donal, his parents, his sister, Mary, and Mary’s son Christopher.

Here’s my theory. Our country was taken from us and a foreign language was forced upon us. Irish is a glorious language of stories, hyperbole and outright lies. “Tá ocras an domhain orm!” Not “I’m very hungry,” but “The hunger of the world is on me.” The cells of our bodies are Gaelic, and we twisted and corrupted and broke the English language apart, to fit our being, to rest comfortably on our tongues. We spoke a half-language of stories and plámás and exaggeration because we were forever in fear, under the cosh, trying to hoodwink the invader, the lord of the manor, the magistrate, the redcoat, the big man who could crush us. Our most powerful weapon was language, and we revelled in it, and we used it to devastating effect. Stories were our hope and our salvation. And if that all sounds a bit precious, the core of it is, we’re great craic, and we love an old story. IA

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:11 PM

IA.WildIrishWomenREV_IA Template 10/4/16 12:15 AM Page 84

wild irish women |

by Rosemary Rogers

Dancer in a Rough Field

The extraordinary life of Kathleen Kearney Behan, 1889-1984 istory has cast Kathleen Behan in supporting roles, reducing her to the “sister of” or “mother of” someone important. But she deserves so much more – Kathleen was a political powerhouse, raconteur, and gifted singer who, in the course of her long and often tragic life, managed to have a bit of fun along the way. Kathleen Kearney was born in a Dublin tenement to a family of socialists and nationalists who spent evenings speaking Irish and singing patriotic ballads. But patriotism wasn’t enough to save the family from the destitution that forced the Kearney children into orphanages. Released in her early teens, Kathleen declined to join a light opera troupe, having sworn herself to the cause of Ireland’s freedom. She joined the Cumann na mBan, the women’s paramilitary group of the Irish Volunteers led by Countess Markievicz. During the Rising, she was a courier darting through Dublin, running dispatches to and from GPO headquarters. Throughout the Irish War of Independence Kathleen was a Zelig-like figure, appearing everywhere, and with everyone. She was friends with all the leaders especially Michael Collins, her “Laughing Boy.” The Countess got her a job with Maud Gonne, employment that put her in contact with W.B. Yeats, whose poems she had memorized as a child, and artist Sarah Henrietta Purser, who painted a portrait of her that is now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Kathleen’s brother, Peadar Kearney, joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Like his sister, he was an active participant in the 1916 Rising and, like his sister, was devoted to Michael Collins. Peadar is best known for writing the Irish National Anthem, “Amhrán na bhFiann,” or “A Soldier’s Song,” explaining he wrote it “to impress on Irishmen that they did not have to join the British army to be soldiers.” But when Collins was killed by a fellow Irishman, a broken-hearted Peader abandoned politics. The writer of Ireland’s national anthem became a housepainter, later dying in poverty. It was through the Irish Volunteers that Kathleen met Jack Furlong, another 1916 veteran. Brought close by Republican fervor, they soon married and had a child, Rory (or Roger Casement Furlong), but Jack died of Spanish flu in 1918. Kathleen, now a widow with one small child and another (Seán) on the way, moved in with her mother-in-law, Granny Furlong, a rebel and seamstress who made uniforms for the Volunteers. Kathleen and Granny, fellow firebrands, saw no conflict in being devout Catholics and fierce Communists. Kathleen may have rocked her children to sleep singing “The Red Flag,” but her home was named “The Christlike Kremlin.” And Granny? When she was finally arrested for running an IRA safe house, Granny earned the distinction, at age 77, of being the world’s oldest political prisoner. When Kathleen met IRA man Stephen Behan, it was for her love at first sight. During the Irish War of Independence, Stephen Behan, who once studied for the priesthood, became one of

84 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Michael Collins’s “12 Apostles,” the men who assassinated British Intelligence officers one Sunday in 1920. But Behan broke with him, rejecting the Anglo-Irish treaty that Collins had so painfully cobbled together and joined the anti-treaty forces during the Civil War. He was arrested again, this time by the Irish army, and confined to Kilmainham Jail. Stephen was still in Kilmainham in 1923 when Kathleen gave birth to their first son, Brendan (who, in time, proved no stranger to prisons himself). In the stuff of opera, Kathleen stood outside Kilmainham on a freezing winter night, holding high her newborn. Standing at the window, looking through the bars, Stephen saw his son for the first time. Now, with an infant, two small children and a husband on the inside, she had no choice but to live with her new and decidedly loathsome, mother-in-law. Stephen’s mother used the name of her (deceased) second husband, English, an almost comical moniker in this family of rabid republicans. Christina English, a greedy slumlady who tormented her tenants, ruled her empire from bed – a bed she shared with her grown son, Paddy. Once she even tried evicting Kathleen, who wouldn’t budge, snapping, “What I have, I hold.” Stephen, having refused to take an oath of loyalty to the king, couldn’t return to teaching after his release from prison. Instead he became a housepainter, a profession oddly ubiquitous to the Kearney/Behan/Furlong/English households. After Brendan, other Behans arrived – Brian, Dominic, Seamus, Carmel and Fintan, who died in early childhood. Granny ignored her other grandchildren, having time only for her pet, “Bren,” whom she festooned in frilly shirts before unleashing him on the neighborhood to gather gossip. All of this horrified Kathleen, especially since Granny rewarded him with large servings from her teapot… filled with whiskey. Granny barely tolerated her son Paddy, disliked her son Stephen but more than anything, despised her daughter-in-law. She called her the “ugly wan” while the neighbors, alternately, addressed her as, “Lady Behan” or “Commie Fenian.” Kathleen remained indifferent to all until a local priest asked her for a contribution to help African babies “see the face of God.” This, finally, was too much, “Don’t they have enough gods of their own without ours?” Why, she demanded, didn’t he take up a collection for the children of Dublin who have no shoes? The priest countered, calling her a “Red.” Kathleen corrected, “I’m not red, I’m scarlet.” The children may have slept six to a bed but their evenings were filled with music and books. Kathleen sang ballads or arias from her huge repertoire of over 1000 songs or the family would read – aloud – Greek classics, Irish drama and poetry, the works of Zola, Dickens, and Karl Marx. More than anything, they talked of freedom and rebellion. Kathleen took her young brood on walking tours of Dublin visiting the haunts both Ireland’s writers and rebels. She showed them the sea.

When Granny English died in 1935, her tenements were condemned and her will gave the goby to the Behans as she left her hefty fortune to her bedmate, Paddy. The family moved to a suburb, Crumlin, which Kathleen said looked like a “a place where people eat their dead.” The situation got worse during the Depression of the 1930s when the Behans were starving, once forced to dine on a pin cushion stuffed with oatmeal. Still, the house was filled with lively talk as a steady stream of visitors – union agitators, anarchists, IRA men and communists – came to call. Locals would identify their house simply as the “Kremlin.” The Behan offspring received their mother’s political ideology – her stories and songs permeated their consciousness and work. Dominic, playwright, poet, singer and songwriter wrote what would become an international anthem, “The Patriot Game.” Brian, author of several books and plays, was a radical trade unionist in London whose strikes included a bricklayers’ shutdown where he denied entry to outsiders, including the queen. But it was her son Brendan, genius and wildman, who became one of the 20th century’s most “Portrait of Kathleen Behan,” by Sarah Henrietta Purser (1848 – 1943). Oil on board. legendary writers. Brendan joined the IRA at 16 then took it upon himself to bomb England – alone. Arrested in a vigil by his hospital bed, briefly reprieved by a nun who adLiverpool on explosives charges, he was sentenced to three years justed his pillows and wished him a blessing. Brendan, always in a British reformatory or “borstal.” There he wrote his mother partial to nuns, opened one eye. “Thank you, Sister, and may all that her hatred of the English fired his passion: “It is entirely atyour sons be bishops,” he said, and died. Kathleen returned to tributable to yourself that I am here.” His stint in the borstal and find that her son was gone or as she put it, “his race was run.” later, an Irish prison, inspired The Borstal Boy (1958) and the hit She wrote of this moment in her autobiography, a universal keen plays The Quare Fellow (1954) and The Hostage (1957). of every mother who’s outlived a child, “My little poet, my heart, The Hostage included an homage to Michael Collins based my life. I had seven sons, then one died, but still I thought I had on one of Kathleen anecdotes. In 1923, the once-close friends six to carry my coffin. Now there were five. There is no love like accidentally ran into each other on a Dublin street, Kathleen a mother’s.” Many years later, as Kathleen was planning her own was pregnant with Brendan and her husband in prison for fightfuneral, she insisted that a song be sung, a family favorite that ing Collins’s Free State Army. Her “Laughing Boy,” not one to echoes the wild and fearless spirit of all the Behans: hold a grudge, slipped Kathleen a lifesaving 10-pound note; 35 years later, her son, remembering this kindness, wrote a song Hey ho slainte the revelry, “Laughing Boy” for The Hostage. It ended, “I’ll praise your The singing and dancing and drinking so merrily, name and guard your fame, my own dear laughing boy.” Red nights, which we will never see again Because of his talent, Brendan became instantly famous and For down in the village we tarried too long.long. because of his drinking, instantly infamous. Formerly a talking/drinking/fighting fixture of Dublin pubs, he now took his Twenty years after his death, a new biography of Brendan act on the road, carousing and getting arrested in London, Paris, Behan was published revealing his homosexual activities. His and New York. The world, it seemed, always forgave him – he compatriots, fans and friends were outraged at the disclosures. was gifted and he was as lovable as he was outrageous. Many Not so his mother, who loved the biography and relished the sextimes he wandered onstage during Broadway performances of ual content, finding it, well, gay. She traveled to London to celeThe Hostage, improvising dialogue, delighting the audiences and brate the book’s publication and sang heartily at the launch party, the cast. upstaging and outsinging Dominic. The crowd loved her. Even at the peak of his fame, Brendan would drag the rich and At last, Kathleen’s time arrived. She took her singing and famous, the down and out, to Mother’s house to partake in her storytelling public, was on the radio, BBC and RTÉ television. gargantuan (and, by all accounts, none-too-tasty) pot of Irish stew. She recorded a folk album and wrote her autobiography, which In front of this captivated audience Kathleen would entertain with was later made into a popular play, Mother of All the Behans. her beautiful voice, her performances now flourished with elabNow she was famous in her own right. It took her until she was orate hand gestures and dance steps. in her mid-90s, but finally, Kathleen Kearney Behan was the IA At the age of 41, Brendan died of alcoholism. His mother kept star she was always meant to be.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND

IA.WildIrishWomenREV_IA Template 10/4/16 12:15 AM Page 85

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 85

1916REV3_IA Template 10/5/16 5:32 PM Page 86

Reflections How the 1916

BOYLETODAY.COM

“Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.”

– Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

By Frank Shouldice e have had much to celebrate If there was a touch of triumphalism about it – this year. Commemoration of the although it was more an expression of pride – north1916 Easter Rising had been ern nationalists and unreconstructed republicans felt anticipated for so long that when left out in the cold. Why or how, they wondered, it finally arrived it felt like it could we celebrate the Proclamation when its aspisuddenly crept up on us. This rations of an egalitarian 32-county republic have not was partly due to the fact that Easter came very been fully achieved? early in this year’s calendar, which meant that the There were other questions whistling down main Rising celebrations kicked off a full four windswept O’Connell Street that day. At a time when weeks before the actual date in 1916. public trust in government is at an all-time low, I And so in March rather than April a massive miliwondered what version of patriotism might flash tary parade stepped through Dublin city centre to through the minds of those basking in the VIP review mark the centenary of these historic events. The stand when the big parade filed past. parade featured all the levers of state of the Irish RePresident Michael D. Higgins took the salute at the public – including the army (complete with tanks and General Post Office (GPO), the very site of Padraig artillery), gardaí (Irish police), emergency services, Pearse’s seismic decree on Easter Monday, 1916. The prison officers and members of the civil President and his wife Sabina were ABOVE: Frank service. Even sniffer dogs from airport Shouldice, and his flanked by senior army officers, customs got a look in before the air force father, Frank, at the Taoiseach Enda Kenny, members of made a spectacular pass over O’Connell unveiling of a plaque in the cabinet, opposition TDs (members Street. The message in its jetstream was Boyle, County Roscomof the Irish parliament) as well as some mon, in July. The plaque loud and clear; 100 years after a militant acknowledges the previous cabinet ministers who group of Irish nationalists boldly de- contribution made by presided over the virtual bankruptcy of clared a republic, we stand today as an volunteers from the the Irish state just eight years ago. including the auindependent, self-governing, modern area, Ireland is not the only modern demthor’s namesake, in the European 26-county state. ocratic state presently trying to work fight for Irish freedom.

86 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

1916REV3_IA Template 10/5/16 5:32 PM Page 87

2016: s on a Centenary: 6

commemorations helped people connect on a personal level itself out of a severe economic downturn. The wider difficulties are indeed global, but the self-inflicted origins of Ireland’s near-collapse insinuate a culture of personal greed within senior business, banking and official circles that it is incompatible with the national interest. Should we invert Kennedy’s famous maxim for the top echelons of Irish public and commercial life – ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you? These thoughts ran through my mind when my father and I made our way to a special area set aside for relatives of the men and women of 1916. This was an intensely proud day for the direct descendants of those who had taken up arms a hundred years ago. Of course the 2016 celebrations were always going to be tricky. Claims by rival political factions to be the true inheritors of the 1916 republican tradition will invariably get lost in the murk of those asserting their own legitimacy when writing – or rewriting – history. My own inheritance made me both a participant and keen observer of this year’s events. Frank Shouldice, my grandfather and namesake, played a very significant role in Easter Week as a member of ‘F’ Company, 1st Dublin Battalion of the Irish Volunteers, along with his older brother Jack. Although my grandfather considered himself a Mayo man, the family came from Ballaghaderreen – the town was transferred to Co. Roscommon from Co. Mayo in 1898. Both brothers joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret revolutionary organisation, when they were working for a time in London. Under Ned Day’s command at the Four Courts garrison, they set up defensive positions at North King Street to prevent British troops moving freely around the city’s northside. As a sniper, my grandfather – aged 23 years at the time – was posted at the top of the Jameson distillery malthouse, whereupon a British army sniper’s bullet missed his eye by inches. He went on to play his part and ‘F’ Company exacted a very heavy toll upon the South Staffordshire Regiment sent to oust them. In fact, the exchange at North King Street was later described by the disgraced British commander General John Maxwell as the scene of the fiercest fighting all week.

The intensity of exchanges there was later used as an excuse for South Staffordshire officers murdering 16 unarmed local men unconnected with the Rising. Nobody was ever brought to trial for the North King Street Massacre although, as I discovered from research, the Home Office in London was fully aware of what had taken place. Like so many of his comrades, my grandfather said very little about the entire experience of taking part in the Rising and then the War of Independence. Apart from co-writing his account of a prison escape from Usk Prison in Wales in 1919, there was one notable exception to his self-imposed silence. At the end of the 1950s, Frank and Jack spent time with historian Max Caulfield, who was researching The Easter Rebellion, a definitive work about the Rising. The brothers explained the mechanics of street fighting at North King Street and my grandfather discussed how his role as a sniper at the Jameson malthouse led to unavoidable and gruesome conclusions. He told Caulfield, “About 15 Tommies turned into Beresford Street right under me. I was on the iron platform and all I had to do was fire down upon them. One by one we knocked them all over. It was a terrible slaughter and to this day I can’t understand why they decided to rush things.” From a position of shoot or be shot, the Shouldice brothers held British officers in contempt for effectively sending these young soldiers to their deaths. Receiving the order to surrender after six days Frank and Jack were despatched to Stafford Prison and Dartmoor respectively – as a lieutenant with the Irish Volunteers Jack’s death sentence had been commuted to five years’ hard labour. My grandfather was then transferred alongside Michael Collins and hundreds of others to an internment camp in Frongoch, north Wales. Upon his release in December 1916, I discovered from classified documents that he was under close surveillance by Dublin Castle’s Special Branch and ‘G’ Division – later wiped out by Collins’s “12 Apostles” – with surveillance reports regularly transmitted all the way to British intelligence at MI5. Subsequent involvement through the War of Inde-

Like so much of his story, particularly his many achievements, he possessed an interior life that remained largely undisclosed. As I would only discover when I began to research a book about him, there were many elements to a legacy that was far, far richer than he would ever let us believe.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 87

1916REV3_IA Template 10/5/16 5:32 PM Page 88

pendence saw him incarcerated for spells at Usk Prison, Wandsworth, Boyle Barracks, Mountjoy, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs and, lastly, Brixton Prison in London. They were turbulent years during which he sacrificed so much but did so without hesitation or complaint. When the Anglo-Irish Treaty led to civil war in Ireland, both Frank and Jack refused to take sides simply because they would not take up against former comrades. They felt the Treaty, however imperfect, was not sufficient reason to turn Irish nationalists against each other. I was aged 11 years when my grandfather passed away. As he lived with us at home in Dublin, my childhood memories are clear of a warm but private man whose bearing showed no apparent contradiction at being both modest and proud of his significant contribution to Irish independence. My initiation to Gaelic games at Croke Park began with him lifting me over the metal turnstiles into football or hurling matches in the old stadium. He never saw fit to mention that he was once himself a

Maybe the centenary is just the time for self-interest to take a back seat. By learning to appreciate the sacrifices of those who selflessly brought us freedom, we have the perfect opportunity to show that we deserve it. gifted inter-county footballer with Dublin and later

Grandpa The Sniper, published by The Liffey Press, is available in the U.S. through DuFour Editions at irishbooks.us/rising1916, priced at $28.

with his beloved Mayo. Like so much of his story, particularly his many achievements, he possessed an interior life that remained largely undisclosed. As I would only discover when I began to research a book about him, there were many elements to a legacy which was far, far richer than he would ever let us believe. Events through 2016 have given me a particular perspective. Over the past ten months I have spoken at events all around the country about Grandpa The Sniper, the book I wrote about him. It has been a memorable and rewarding experience through which I have met a number of direct descendants of my grandfather’s comrades-in-arms. As I recounted his story, several of the descendants have been moved to tears, no doubt re-living their own private memories. It has also re-affirmed the strange circularity of history. For example, in 1966 as part of the half-centenary of the Rising, my grandfather, the last surviving 1916 veteran ostensibly from Co Roscommon, was requested to unveil a plaque to Padraig Pearse in the town of Boyle. My grandfather did not seek the limelight but agreed to unveil the plaque outside the courthouse provided he did not have to address the crowd. He duly travelled to Boyle with my father and performed the ceremony. In July 2016 I was asked to unveil a new plaque to commemorate the centenary. Honoured to pick up where my grandfather left off, I travelled to Boyle

88 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

with my father, one of few witnesses to both symbolic events. History was repeating itself and we drew the cord together, replicating what, as my father calmly observed, his father did “fifty short years ago.” As the centenary draws to a close it can be safely said that the commemorative year has been a success. Events throughout the country were attended by huge crowds and public interest maintained a consistently high level. It has reawakened a sense of national identity and enlivened our curiosity about the past. That enthusiasm may fizzle out eventually, but the delivery of a copy of the Proclamation to every national school in the country at Easter fired children’s imagination in a way nobody quite anticipated. Amid these celebrations, nationalists in Northern Ireland have good reason to feel a little left behind. But while marking 2016 expresses pride in the achievement of Irish self-determination, it also serves to focus scrutiny on what exactly we have done with such hard-fought independence. Such reflection is frequently given to disappointment and anger that we have endured – and allowed – such careless stewardship of our own course. Maybe the centenary is just the time for self-interest to take a back seat. By learning to appreciate the sacrifices of those who selflessly brought us freedom, we have the perfect opportunity IA to show that we deserve it.

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:18 PM

IA.Crossword_IA Template 10/5/16 6:09 PM Page 90

crossword | ACROSS

1 First transatlantic flight landed at this West of Ireland airport recently (5) 5 (& 23 across) Domhnall Gleeson will play this children’s author in upcoming biopic (1,1) 7 Jesuit university in Washington (10) 8 Pierced, pricked or cut open, with a lancet or other sharp instrument (6) 11 Dorothy’s dog (4) 12 Ancient Irish (4) 14 Mountains located in south-east Limerick and north-east Cork (10) 15 (& 10 down) Beloved children’s author whose birth centenary fell on September 13 (5) 17 It’s “siopa” in Irish (4) 18 (& 9 down) Irish music competition, the final of which was held in Ennis, Co. Clare this year (6) 21 See 28 across (9) 23 See 2 across (5) 25 The fashionable drink du jour (3) 26 ______ Blanchett, actress (4) 28 (& 21 across) Second novel from A Girl Is a Halfformed Thing author Eimear

by Darina Molloy

McBride (6) 30 Formal or informal prohibition of something (3) 31 (& 33 down) Dublin’s answer to Central Park (7) 32 Dublin Area ______ Transit (5) 34 See 36 down (5) 35 Recent papal appointee Kevin J. Farrell was previously bishop of this state (6) 37 Pay attention or take note (4) 38 (& 39 down) Close encounters of the feathered kind at Ashford Castle, Co. Mayo (4) 41 (& 2 down) Co. Down born actor who stars in The Fall and Fifty Shades of Grey (5) 42 “The,” in Irish (2) 43 Laois town which hosts Electric Picnic musical festival annually (10) 44 Irish city which manages to make it onto both the Wild Atlantic Way and the Ancient East heritage trail (8)

DOWN

1 (& 20 down) Clinton VP nominee Tim Kaine has roots in these two Irish counties (8) 2 See 41 across (6) 3 Iconic Galway book shop, where

9 10 13 16

Roald Dahl appeared in ’87 (6) (& 19 down) Late Irish-American entrepreneur who loved west Kerry, particularly the Dingle Peninsula (3) New movie featuring first collaboration between 41 across and 29 down (10) 2005 movie starring Gywneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins (5) See 18 across (6) See 15 across (4) Salutation for a nun, in short (2) Surname of the

Win a subscription to Irish America magazine

Please send your completed crossword puzzle to Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001, to arrive no later than November 15, 2016. A winner will be drawn from among all correct entries. If there are no correct solutions, the prize will be awarded for the completed puzzle which comes closest in the opinion of our staff. Winner’s name will be published along with the solution in our next issue. Xerox copies are acceptable. Winner of the August/September crossword: Freida Sullivan, Waco, TX. 90 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

19 20 22 24 27

Skibbereen brothers who won a rowing silver at the Rio Olympics (1,7) See 4 down (6) See 1 down (8) 27 down got to lift this Cup (2, 6) See 29 down (6) Winners of this year’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final (9)

29 (& 24 down) Cork-born actor who stars in Peaky Blinders (7) 33 See 31 across (4) 36 (& 34 across) Classic film starring the late Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor (4) 39 See 38 across (4) 40 Car for hire (4) 41 Me Tarzan, you _____ (4)

August / September Solution

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 7:11 PM

IA.Chase.REV2_IA Template 10/3/16 11:25 PM Page 92

Harvey The Woman Behind

The story of playwright Mary Chase and how the classic comedy Harvey was influenced by her Irish heritage. By Marsha Sorotick

uring summertime in cities and towns across the U.S., movies are screened outdoors. Scheduled for showing during the summer of 2016 at New York City’s Bryant Park Film Festival was a 1950 Academy Award-winning comedy based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play – Harvey, starring James Stewart in what was said to be his favorite role. The film is popular on DVD and is often aired on cable’s Turner Classic Movies station. The play is one of the most frequently produced by amateurs and professional players in the history of the American theater. It has been published in nearly every language and performed in nearly every country. James Stewart himself, after subbing for the original Broadway star Frank Fay during Fay’s vacation break, appeared on Broadway in a revival in the 1970s, took the show to London, then did it on television. It was revived again on Broadway in 2012 with Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Harvey? That’s the silly show about that guy, Elwood P. Dowd with the big invisible rabbit friend, whose sister, Veta, tries to get him committed to a sanatorium? Yes. Harvey is part of the silly genre of American comedy like Arsenic and Old Lace and You Can’t Take It With You, two other old-school “sillies” that still draw laughs. Harvey has brought fun to audiences for over 70 years and is the product of the creative genius of an Irish American playwright named Mary Chase. The New York Times review of the original production in 1944 said, “Harvey is worth knowing.” So, I think you’ll find, is Mary Chase. Mary Chase was born Mary Coyle, the youngest of four children, in Denver, Colorado on February 25, 1907. Her parents were Irish immigrants who had both come to seek their fortune in the American West. They were not successful and Mary was raised in a working class neighborhood that was considered “the wrong side of the tracks.” Mary spoke about her childhood in an interview in Toronto with the CBC towards the end of her life and explained where the giant rabbit came from. “I was raised on Irish folk tales told to me by my uncles. I had four bachelor uncles. I think that’s always had an impact on my work. Harvey the pooka, and the changeling in Mrs. McThing… I have to say, I’m very grateful for that heritage.” The Pooka was Harvey’s original title. Pooka

92 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

comes from the old Irish púca, meaning “goblin” – a friendly spirit in animal form who loves to talk and can only be seen by those who believe in him. Mary also developed a lifelong love of reading as a child. In the same CBC interview, she says “I came across a book a few years ago in our house in Denver. In the flyleaf it said, ‘My name is Mary Coyle and I have just read this book. Don’t you think I’m smart?’ Eight years old! What a brat!” Mary graduated high school at 15 and went to the University of Denver for two years, but left to accept a position as a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News. Though her interests lay with a more serious type of journalism, she wound up writing “Society Notes.” Her interest in progressive politics led her to help found the Denver branch of the Newspaper Guild and to become an active supporter of unions and working class causes. She was legendary for joining picket lines wearing a fancy hat and a black satin dress. She met her husband, Robert Chase, a fellow reporter who eventually became managing editor at the News. They married in 1928 and had three sons. Mary left her active reporting career to focus on her family and became a freelance writer. She wrote for two news services between 1932 and 1936, wrote radio programs for the Teamsters Union, wrote a screenplay, Sorority House, based on her disappointing college social life and sold it to the movies, and did publicity for the National Youth Administration. As a teenager she used to hang out in Denver’s theater district. Now, it was her turn to join the wonderful world of footlights, applause and broken hearts. She wrote a play called Me, Third which opened in Denver in1936 and was a big hit. Alas, it opened on Broadway in 1937, retitled Now You’ve Done It, and was a big flop. As Mary said years later, “The reviews were brutal.” How did Mary come to write Harvey and set herself up to be judged again by the Broadway theatre

IA.Chase.REV2_IA Template 10/3/16 11:25 PM Page 93

critics? In her own words from more of the CBC interview: “I came to write Harvey after having a bad flop on Broadway in the ’30s. I decided at that point that the theater was probably not for me and I settled down to raise my three boys. I had come to terms with myself and my life and I was quite happy. I was married to a wonderful man and had three fine boys. Then, one day in the early years of World War II, something happened which changed my life. Across the street from our house was an apartment house. As I was leaving every morning at 8:15 with my boys, a woman would emerge from the door of the apartment house and go in the opposite direction, to the bus to go downtown to work. I didn’t know the woman, but I heard she was a widow with one son in the Naval Air arm who was a bombardier in the Pacific. One day, I heard that her son was lost. Things like that were happening to so many people then, it wasn’t what jolted me so much as the fact that in a week or ten days I saw this woman leaving the apartment house, going a little more slowly to catch the bus to go back to work. She began to haunt me. Could I ever think of anything to make that woman laugh again? I knew she wouldn’t laugh at a comedy about sex or money or politics. I kept looking for ideas and rejecting them. Then, one morning, I awoke at five o’clock and saw a psychiatrist walking across our bedroom floor followed by an enormous white rabbit and I knew I had it. I worked on it for a year and a half and sent it to my friend, Brock Pemberton, Antoinette Perry’s partner. Antoinette Perry is a Denver woman (she became the director for Harvey), and I knew them both. They had produced my first play – a flop, a bad one. So I sent them this play, and it opened to rave reviews and ran four and one-half years. I came back to Denver after the opening and the woman across the street had moved, and I didn’t know where she moved so I never met her. But I kept receiving letters from people who had cousins and brothers and sons in the war, saying ‘We’ve seen the show and we’ve had the first laugh since.’ So I felt then that somehow, I had done what I set out to do.” A smash hit. After almost two years and 50 rewrites, some of which Mary read to her cleaning woman, Harvey was on Broadway. Mary was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Denver, an award from the Colorado Authors League and, of course, the Pulitzer Prize. The movie rights were sold for $1 million. The movie was also a big hit. James Stewart and Josephine Hull, who played Veta, were both nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes. Hull won both. Sadly for Mary Chase, it all became a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” In a 1954 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine titled “Success

Almost Ruined Her,” she told the story of what happened when she returned to Denver. Many of the people in Denver society who had snubbed her in her youth and girl reporter days now showered her with attention. Portrayed by the press as a simple housewife, rumors started to circulate that she didn’t really write Harvey at all. The woman who said, “I didn’t write it for the money. I wanted to make people laugh” was besieged by people looking for a hand-out. “I became suspicious of everyone,” she said. The woman who loved practical jokes and had a great sense of fun became depressed and turned to drinking. She realized she needed help and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1955, she founded House of Hope, a Denver non-profit that provides help to female alcoholics. Though Harvey was her masterpiece, she did write other plays. After Harvey, The Next Half-Hour was a flop. She then decided she would write only for children. Happily, her next play, Mrs. McThing, was a hit and was the first children’s play to open on Broadway. Another play, Bernadine, about a group of teenagers based on her sons and their friends, was a modest success and sold to the movies. She also wrote several well-received children’s books. She always loved the creative process. “It’s only when I’m writing that I really feel complete. When I’m in one of my writing trances, I am cushioned against the sadness and grief of the world.” At the end of her life, she was working on a musical version of her great play called Say Hello to Harvey. She died of a heart attack on October 20, 1981. Bless you and thank you, Mary Chase, for having the talent, the ambition, the imagination, the patience, and yes, the serenity within yourself to work on Harvey for over a year, and in your interviews, when you were asked what was really important – the glittering prizes of fame and fortune, or the real prize of bestowing your audiences with the priceless gift of laughter, and receiving their love and gratitude back? You had the heart and the wisdom to know the difference. IA

ABOVE: James Stewart, depicted here in the original movie poster for Harvey, claimed Elwood P. Dowd to be the best role of his career. LEFT: Mary Chase. After Harvey, Chase continuously produced new creative works until her death in 1981.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 93

IA.Megan RootsREV_IA Template 10/3/16 11:10 PM Page 94

roots |

by Megan Smolenyak

What the

Family Tree of

Tim Kaine has in common with

Downton Abbey

94 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

WWW.HILLARYCLINTON.COM

o sooner had Hillary Clinton announced Tim Kaine as her running mate than articles on his roots began to appear – mostly about his inherent Irishness. There’s good reason for this, as he is of mostly Irish heritage – about 80 percent, with the balance being Scottish. And he’s been to Ireland a few times, even visiting the homestead of his Farrell line in County Longford. But what else was there to learn? I went digging and discovered striking parallels with Vice President Biden’s family history. Both are predominantly Irish (Biden coming in at roughly 63 percent), with maternal family trees that are entirely so and paternal ones that are slightly more mixed. Both families are also devoutly Catholic. I tripped across a number of references to Kaine’s ancestors as being among the earliest and/or longest parishioners of assorted Catholic churches, and at least two branches produced priests, including one who resides in Wichita today. Both are descendants of mostly Famine-era emigrants – though in Kaine’s case, it was his surname line that would bring up the rear when his Kaine great-grandfather arrived in the 1880s. In fact, on his father’s side of the family, all his great-grandparents were immigrants, while on his mother’s side, all his great-great-grandparents were immigrants. Surnames that appear in Kaine’s family tree include Buntin, Burns, Downey, Farrell, Finn, Fleming, Flynn, Gormley, Hanighan, Hannon, Hermiston, Jones, Kaine, King, Mackey, Mannion, McAnally, Milnamow, Phelan, Potts, and Sullivan, so particularly if yours overlap geography-wise, you could be cousins. And the geography in play? In the United States, it’s mostly Kansas and Missouri, with supporting roles played by Illinois and Iowa and a sprinkling of other states. Once you cross the pond to Ireland, he has roots in at least Cork (Wallstown/Castletownroche), Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny (Mullinakill, Tullogher), and Longford (Derryad,

CENTER: Hillary Clinton with Tim Kaine. BELOW: Bennett house where the Kaines married.

Killashee). In Scotland, it’s the vicinity of Glasgow that holds his past, my favorite being the charmingly-named Paisley. And while there are additional locations to be determined in Ireland, some of what has been claimed is either wrong (e.g. Donegal) or unsubstantiated (e.g. Waterford). So preliminaries aside, what’s his family’s story?

KAINE CHRONICLE

Many who delve into their roots fixate on ancestors who bore their surname. I’ve been known to bristle at this kind of genealogical myopia, but have to admit that in this instance, it was the Kaine branch that captured my attention – mainly because I saw in their lives a sort of American Downton Abbey. But, to be clear, they were the downstairs people. Alexander Kaine was born in Campsie, Scotland in 1863 to an Irish father and Scottish mother. He emigrated to America as a young man in his twenties and found his way to Topeka, Kansas where he went to work for Erasmus Bennett, a wealthy horse importer and breeder. But he was more than just another employee. Apparently, Alexander had a way with horses, so became Bennett’s foreman. You wouldn’t think that stable master for a rich fellow in Topeka would be an especially dangerous job, but it was. In 1890, Alexander was attacked – and viciously so – by a fellow who worked for him. If you’re interested in the gory details, I invite you to read the article to the left. For those who’d prefer to skip, suffice it to say that you can do a lot of damage with a pitchfork. One can’t help but wonder if his injuries didn’t arouse the sympathies of another Bennett worker, Isabelle Potts, because less than a year after the attack, she married him. Isabelle was also from Scotland, and the young couple married in their employer’s home. An announcement in the local paper noted that, “Both […] have been with the Bennett family for a number of years, have held responsible positions, and are highly respected by the whole family.” And this wasn’t just any ordinary house that hosted the Kaine wedding. So grand was it by the standards of the day that when Erasmus Bennett later fell on hard times, he sold it to the state of Kansas to be used as the governor’s mansion, a role it served until 1962. So Alexander and Isabelle, it seems, were the Carson and Mrs. Hughes of Topeka. Even after they moved on from the Bennett family, Alexander retained his interest in horses as can be seen from a 1910 record of Mongolien, a Percheron draft horse he owned.

IA.Megan RootsREV_IA Template 10/3/16 11:10 PM Page 95

Y.COM ANCESTR

REVERSE MIGRATION

All in all, not a bad start for an immigrant couple, but there was a bit more to the Kaine family tale. Alexander had a brother named Hugh who also came to Kansas where he worked as a blacksmith, but his story took a different turn. He also married a woman from Scotland and had four children, but in 1901, he died. His widow, perhaps over- LICABRTHOLIC PARISH REGISTER S, NATIONAL ARY OF IR ELAND whelmed at the prospect of raising her family in a foreign country, went back to Scotland. Life doesn’t seem to have been much easier there, though, as she worked as a charwoman to support her brood. But as most families do, they muddled through, so that one outcome of this peculiar detour is that Tim Kaine now has Scottish cousins with Kansas heritage via his unfortunate TOP: The widow makes her way back great-granduncle Hugh. Perhaps one day, he’ll have across the Atlantic with the opportunity to introduce them to their shared Potfour children age six tawatomie County roots just as the Irish welcomed and under. his family to their ancestral town of Killashee.

ANCESTRAL TIDBITS

During the course of my research, I came across random tidbits of interest in other parts of the family tree, so here’s a smattering clustered by branch:

ABOVE: 1833 tithe applotment.

Mannion

One of Kaine’s grandmothers had a mishap as a youngster where she accidentally cut off part of her thumb. This child’s father was involved in local Democratic politics, and wanted to be sure that every- NEWSPAPERS.COM one knew that he had “no blood relations who ever voted another ticket,” perhaps insinuating that he had some uncooperative in-laws (to the right). Galway-born John Mannion, a great-great-grandfather of Tim Kaine’s, was one of the first Catholics in this part of Kansas. According to a retrospective, “In August, 1870, the first Catholic services in Butler county, were held in a little log cabin on the farm of John Mannion, who had settled here three years previous.” He lived long enough to celebrate his 50th anniversary in this same place.

Hannon

Despite claims that he was born in Donegal, Kaine’s immigrant Hannon ancestor was born in Carriganaltig (in the Wallstown/Castletownroche area) of County Cork, which seems appropriate since Tim Kaine enjoys spending time in Cork and has been dubbed an “honorary Cork man.” Turns out he’s an actual Cork man. This same ancestor arrived in New York on

November 28, 1851 at the age of 11 on a ship called Florida. Given that there’s no one else called Hannon on the ship, it may be that the Jones listed two lines above him was his uncle, since his mother’s maiden name was Jones. This ship’s manifest includes a column for recording those who “died on the voyage.” Fortunately, only two of the 390 passengers on board died during this particular journey.

Fleming

Kaine’s immigrant Fleming ancestor was born in Mullinakill, Tullogher in County Kilkenny, and his family can be found there in the 1833 tithe applotment. This great-greatgrandfather would take the most meandering journey of all of his forebears. Starting in Ireland, he went to Canada (Bruce County, Ontario), then Illinois, then back to Canada, then to Kansas, and finally to Oklahoma. Given the timing involved, the Fleming family and Downey branch they married into may well have been among the so-called “coffin ship” arrivals to Canada during the Irish Famine.

Farrell

Immigrant John Mannion (left) and his son, T.P. Mannion (middle). Though it’s hard to see, the latter is sporting a monocle. What do you think? Is there a resemblance?

RootsIreland.ie has future immigrants and greatgreat-grandparents, Patrick Farrell and Mary Malnimow, marrying in Killashee, County Longford on September 4, 1834, but for whatever reason, the actual record isn’t found in the parish collection housed by the National Library of Ireland. Still, it seems to be accurate as it meshes with a detailpacked, multi-generational, local history profile of Patrick. It’s also the place that Tim Kaine visited with his family in 2006 based on his parents’ visit to the same place years earlier. Locals are excited about their famous son, with people already joking about a Tim Kaine Plaza like the Barack Obama NEWSPAPERS.COM Plaza in Moneygall.

REVISION AND REUNION

As with his running mate, Hillary Clinton, there are a number of errors to be found in the assorted online trees for Tim Kaine. The most common are incorrect places of origin in Ireland and the most pronounced is in the Burns line where I failed to find a single tree that has the right parents for Tim Kaine’s great-grandfather, Michael F. Burns. While it’s less severe than the case of Clinton (everyone had one of her grandmothers wrong), it still translates into oneeighth of his family tree being off. On the bright side, some of his overseas Kaine cousins have been contacted. Perhaps a family IA reunion isn’t far off the horizon! OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 95

IA.Roots_IA Template 10/5/16 5:53 PM Page 96

roots |

by Olivia O’Mahony

That Keegan Fire

FROM TOP: Sir Desmond John Patrick Keegan, Eddie Egan, Jennifer Egan, and Keegan-Michael Key.

he family name Keegan developed from McEgan, the Anglicized form of MacAodhagain (pronounced mack-HYOO-gan), meaning “son of Aodhagain.” When familial prefixes fell into disuse during the submergence of the Irish language, the “c” of “Mac” was occasionally retained, later becoming the initial “K.” Aodhagain is a diminutive of Aodh, the name of an ancient pagan god of the underworld that means “fire,” and so the name Keegan is often taken to mean “small, yet fiery.” This interpretation, when paired with the Keegan clan’s official motto, Fortitudine et Prudentia (“fortitude and prudence”), indicates that the flame of this family has burned with endurance throughout their history. The MacAodhagain name originated around 1000, and was initially used by a family of ollavs, hereditary lawyers responsible for upholding Brehon law, which governed the systems of everyday life in medieval Ireland. They resided in the ancient territory of Uí Maine, one of the largest kingdoms in Connacht, between mid-Galway and south Roscommon. In roughly 1350, they came into ownership of Redwood Castle, a County Tipperary property previously occupied by Norman settlers. There, a school of law was established and patronized by the family for hundreds of years. The family first acted as legal advisors to the Ó Conchobair Kings of Connacht, and later to the Burkes of Clanricarde. The oldest surviving compendium of ancient Irish laws, Senchus Mór (Grand Old Law), was written prior to 1350 at a school patronized by the MacAodghagains near Loughrea, Co. Galway. Another manuscript known as An Leabhar Breac (The Speckled Book), commonly nicknamed “Leabhar Breac Mic Aodhagain,” was completed by their students. Records show that among these students was Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh, a traditionally trained scribe and writer of Leabhar na nGenealach; literally “the book of genealogies,” it was printed in 2004 as The Great Book of Irish Genealogies by scholar Nollaig Ó Muraíle. MacFhirbhisigh studied under Flann MacAodhagain at Ballymacegan in Co. Tipperary until his mentor’s death in 1643. Over time, the MacAodhagain name produced many variations, due in large part to numerous geographically disparate attempts to Anglicize it. The Keegan England genealogical research group divides the septs into four geographic categories: the MacEgans, MacCaigans, and Egans of Redwood from counties Galway, Tipperary and Roscommon; the McKeegans and MacKeegans of counties Derry,

96 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Antrim and Down; the McKeighans, Keighens and Keigeens the Isles, who hail from Scotland and the Isle of Man; and finally, the Keegans, Kegans and Keggins of counties Louth, Meath, Westmeath and Dublin. The first “Keegan” spelling was recorded in 1620, when Murtagh, Robert, Dudly, Henry, William, and Walter Keegan were born in the Dublin and Westmeath areas. Discovered by genealogists to be the sons of Murtagh MacAodhagain (1590 – 1660), the chief Brehon of the Mageoghegan clan, these men are thought to be the ancestors of all Keegans. Following the collapse of the old Gaelic order, represented in its finality by the Flight of the Earls in 1607, the Keegans held high office with the Catholic Church. From 1845 to 1852, countless Irish immigrated to North America to escape the Great Hunger, among them Gerald Keegan, who journeyed from Co. Sligo to Grosse Ile, Quebec. His published diary, Summer of Sorrow, detailed the struggles of the voyage and was published in 1895. In 1982, author James J. Mangan wrote a fictionalized account of the publication, titled The Voyage of Naparima, later renamed Famine Diary: Journey to a New World. The Keegans have made an impact on countless professional disciplines. Claire Keegan (b. 1968), an Irish writer who attended school in New Orleans, has published two award-winning short story collections entitled Antarctica and Walk the Blue Fields. Sir Desmond John Patrick Keegan (1932 – 2012) was a British military historian and lecturer, who won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for his writings on the nature of combat and psychology of battle between the 14th and 21st centuries. Notable figures also include Eddie Egan (1930 – 1995), the NYPD police officer whose exploits inspired the book and film The French Connection, and American novelist Jennifer Egan (b. 1962), who won a Pulitzer prize for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and was featured in Irish America’s Top 50 Power Women line-up in June. Ever-faithful to its history of revampment and change, the name Keegan has also gained popularity as a unisex given name, first appearing in the 1970s and currently sitting at an all-time high. One wellknown example of this trend is Keegan-Michael Key (b. 1971), the American actor, writer and comedian behind one half of the Comedy Central sketch series Key and Peele. Most recently, he produced and starred in the 2016 cop-comedy Keanu alongside Jordan Peele. A little closer to home, Irish America’s Wall Street 50 keynote speaker, Daniel Keegan, is cohead of Global Equities at Citigroup. There, he maintains the fire and fortitude synonymous with IA this name.

IA.TheaterFINAL_IA Template 10/6/16 10:41 AM Page 97

backstage | Origin’s 1st Irish

The Festival

Origin 1st Irish is a Triumph

TOP: Origin’s founder, George Heslin, with Bears in Space performers Jack Gleeson and Eoghan Quinn, and actress Carey Van Driest. ABOVE: Jane McCarter, director of Arts and Culture at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City, who received the Bairbre Dowling Spirit of the Festival Award. RIGHT: The cast of Crackskull Row. Playwright Honor Molloy (left in red dress) is hugged by the play’s director Kira Simring.

overs of the smash HBO series Game of Thrones had the chance to see the infamous young King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) in person over a couple of weeks off Broadway this fall. Gleason was just one of an incredible troupe of actors, writers, directors, and set designers to descend on New York in September for the ninth annual celebration of Irish drama known as Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival. Origin, founded in 2002 by George Heslin, a native of Limerick, is dedicated to producing the plays of contemporary Irish playwrights from around the world, balancing work by well-known writers and seasoned actors with the work of emerging artists. The festival’s awards ceremony was hosted on October 3 by the actress Carey Van Driest at the American Irish Historical Society on Fifth Avenue. Honor Molloy’s Crackskull Row, a painful play about incest and murder in poverty-ridden Dublin (produced in New York by the Cell Theatre), picked up the awards for Best Direction (Kira Simring) and Best Production. Eoghan Quinn’s Bears in Space, a surreal puppet comedy with serious undertones about dictatorship (produced by Dublin’s Collapsing Horse theater company), captured three awards. Quinn won for Best Playwright, and the production’s design team won the Best Design prize. Bears in Space also captured the hearts of the jury, which bestowed its Special Jury Prize on its ensemble cast, which included Quinn, Aaron Heffernan,

PHOTOS BY JAMES HIGGINS

Cameron Macauley, and Jack Gleeson. Sonya Kelly was recognized as Best Actress for her outstanding performance in How to Keep an Alien, a play she wrote about finding love and then having to prove it to the government. Dermot Crowley took home the Best Actor award for his performance in Brian Friel’s Afterplay, which revisits characters in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters. The play, showing at the Irish Repertory Theatre through November 3, is directed by Joe Dowling and, in addition to Crowley, stars veteran actress Dearbhla Molloy. Also handed out at this year’s ceremony was the new Festival Fringe Award, which went to the cast and crew of Wilde at Home, the highly praised immersive staging of scenes from Oscar Wilde, which was brought in from Northern Ireland by Queens University Belfast and the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. David Grant of Queens University restaged the production in the landmark home of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on Madison Avenue, with a cast consisting recent graduates from the academy’s premier acting ensembles. The festival’s Origin Award, for noteworthy and often unsung contributions to the Festival, was renamed this year in honor of the recently deceased Irish actress Bairbre Dowling, and went to Jane McCarter, the director of Arts and Culture at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City, which staged multiple film and theater events. The Audience Choice Award, based on online ballots submitted by attendees, went to Thomas Burns Scully, author of Dorothy of Nowhere, the story of a teenager who discovers love, poetry, and tragedy all at once. For more information on Origin Theatre Company, visit origintheatre.org.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 97

The magic of

IA.SlainteREV_Layout 1 10/5/16 5:46 PM Page 98

Mushrooms

From fairy rings to the perfect Thanksgiving side dish, mushrooms have fascinated people since antiquity. By Edythe Preet

WWW.DESIGNZZZ.COM

lert! Savvy insider grocery tip I’ve kept secret for several decades ahead! One crisp November afternoon while shopping for my Thanksgiving feast ingredients, I was selecting perfect mushrooms one by one from an overflowing display for my yummy wild rice side dish. I was so engrossed in the task that a gentleman standing beside

ABOVE: A fairy perched on a mushroom. TOP RIGHT: A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle. Since ancient times, naturally occurring rings of mushrooms were taken as a sign of otherworldly presences.

me went unnoticed until he commented in a low, conspiratorial tone, “Always take your mushrooms from the very bottom of the bin.” Startled, I turned and saw a tall, elderly fellow in a tweed jacket with a loden green newsboy cap pulled down low on his brow. He leaned in a bit so no one else would hear his advice and spoke softly again: “Mushrooms grow in the dark, so the ones on the bot-

98 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

tom never see the light and stay freshest longest.” It was then that I noticed his Irish accent. We chatted for a bit, with him telling me how he used to go mushroom hunting in Ireland (where they are abundantly found in autumn) while he filled our bags with several pounds of firm, plump, ghostly white, perfect specimens that had been hiding beneath all the others. Ever since, I have thought of him and silently thanked him whenever I buy mushrooms. When I was a child, mushrooms didn’t appear on our dinner table very often. My Italian mom was terrified of them, remembering that her mother put a silver coin in the pan whenever she cooked those that my grandfather brought home from his forest foragings. According to Nana, if the coin turned black, it meant that one of the mushrooms was poisonous. Turns out that’s just an old folk tale, which made my mom even more leery. My Irish dad, on the other hand, loved mushrooms and always sautéed a batch with lots of butter, salt, and pepper on the rare times he took over in the kitchen. Mind you, he had to settle for canned sliced mushrooms because Mom trusted Del Monte and refused to let even one fresh mushroom through her front door – ever! Of all the world’s foods, those musky things known as mushrooms are the strangest. Some are a nutritious food; others are deadly poisons. Some are free for the taking; the truffle variety are worth their weight in gold. You’ll find mushrooms in a supermarket’s produce section, but they’re not vegetables. And while leafy plants contain chlorophyll that enables them to photosynthesize nutrition from sunlight, mushrooms completely lack this green pigment and quite contentedly grow in the dark. There is some controversy, in fact, as to whether mushrooms are plants at all. What we call a mushroom is really part of a complex fungus that propagates itself when moisture and temperature are right by developing fruits which release millions of reproductive spores to be carried by the wind to new locations. As the spores germinate, they become branching threads that form meters-wide webs that absorb growth nutrients from the host material. Every spore has the ability to produce its own mushroom; fortunately most do not. If each of the 1.5 trillion spores contained in a single medium-sized half-pound puffball produced an equally large offspring, the combined mass would be approximately 800 times the size of Earth! Though emerald green is not a fungi color, mushroom hues range through the rest of the spec-

IA.SlainteREV_Layout 1 10/5/16 5:46 PM Page 99

sláinte | good cheer WWW.ANCIENTORIGINS.NET

RECIPES Wild Rice with Mushrooms

trum. Grocery store offerings are invariably white or brown, but the exotics come in shades of golden yellow, violet, blue, red, orange, and black. Some varieties even have gaudy polka dots. Mushrooms may look fragile, but appearances can be deceiving. With water comprising more than 90 percent of its composition, a growing mushroom is a powerhouse of strength. Such rapid absorption of water can turn a lowly mushroom into a hydraulic jack able to displace weight much greater than its own. Colonies that have popped up after a heavy rain have cracked solid cement floors! Their ability to flourish in the dark, their rainbow hues, their amazing strength, and their rapid growth patterns fascinated our early ancestors. Since mushrooms have neither leaves nor flowers, their sudden appearance was baffling. One particular phenomena further convinced our forebears that mushrooms were magical. In Ireland, where the northern latitude makes for short days and long nights from fall to spring and where rain is a frequent occurrence, a perfect circle of mushrooms frequently appears after a heavy downpour. With the long-held and widespread Irish belief in the Little Folk, these mushroom circles are called fairy rings and attributed to a gathering of sprites who had gaily danced on the spot from midnight to dawn. And woe betide the unwary mortal who wandered into one of the enchanted rings and would be forced to dance until exhausted or, even worse, dead. Actually, the formations are created by underlying fibrous networks that take a circular shape when necessary nutrients are dispersed evenly through soil. If the net is not disturbed, the rings continue to enlarge unchecked. In Kansas, a fairy ring 600 feet in diameter has been growing since before the arrival of Columbus. Every year, people perish from eating poisonous wild mushrooms. There is no standard for distinguishing the good from the bad. Some are harmful if eaten raw, but harmless when cooked. Others bring on digestive ills when consumed with alcohol. Aroma gives no clue, nor does color, shape, or location. The only safe bet is to always go foraging with a skilled mycologist who can accurately identify whatever you find. Not all toxic mushrooms are deadly. Some are hallucinogenic. The most famous variety found throughout Europe and its offshore islands is the white-dotted red-capped fly agaric. These picture-pretty mushrooms symbolized luck and happiness on many Christmas cards during the Victorian era. An ancient Eurasian cult that flourished in the region where the Celts originated is said to have consumed this mind-altering fungi as part of its winter solstice rituals. A few anthropologists theorize that druid shamans may have done likewise, especially during Samhain (November) and Bealtaine (May) full moon cycles, the months when the veil between this world and the fairy world was thought to be thinnest. Irish folklore is filled with reports of people who swore they saw the Little Folk at those times. Some even claimed to have only narrowly escaped being carried off to live forever in the ancient mysterious mounds that dot the island. Fortunately, for all who love mushrooms and are rightly wary of hunting for wild varieties, even the exotic chanterelles, morels, and porcinis, are now being cultivated and can be found in markets alongside their common white cousins. Just remember, the best selections will be at the bottom of IA the bin! And keep the secret to yourself. Sláinte!

4 tbsp butter 2 tbsp finely diced peeled carrots 2 tbsp finely diced celery 2 tbsp finely chopped onions 1 cup wild rice 1 tsp salt 2 cups chicken stock 1 ⁄2 lb coarsely chopped mushrooms 2 tbsp minced fresh parsley 1 ⁄3 cup finely chopped pecans

Over medium heat, melt 2 tbsp of butter in a heavy enamel or stainless steel 2-quart saucepan. When the foam subsides, add the carrots, celery and onions. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are soft but not brown. Stir in the cup of wild rice and salt and cook for 2-3 minutes uncovered, stirring to coat the rice with the butter. Pour in the stock, bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat to minimal. Cook undisturbed for 25-30 minutes, or until the wild rice is tender and has absorbed all the stock. While the wild rice and vegetables are cooking, melt the remaining 2 tbsp of butter in a skillet. Add the mushrooms and parsley. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Add the pecans and cook for 2-3 minutes more. Stir the contents of the skillet into the fully cooked wild rice mixture. Serves 4-6. NOTE: To make this a vegetarian dish, vegetable stock can be substituted for the chicken stock, and olive oil can be substituted for the butter.

(Personal recipe)

Beacon gaol chlogad

Mushrooms Under A Cloche

This recipe dates from the 1700s. Served with a salad, it makes a great light meal. 1 lb small button mushrooms 1 stick butter salt and freshly ground pepper 4 thick slices of hearty bread, crusts optional

Preheat oven to 425 F. Butter four small baking dishes. Place one slice of bread in the bottom of each dish. Arrange the mushrooms in layers on the bread, buttering each layer and sprinkling each layer with salt and pepper. Place a dot of butter on top. Tightly cover each dish with aluminum foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Serves 4.

(Irish Traditional Food by Theodora Fitzgibbon)

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 99

IA.Books.Music.REV_IA Template 10/5/16 5:42 PM Page 100

review of books | recently published books From Elsewhere By Ciaran Carson

n a new collection of translations, Belfast poet Ciaran Carson tackles the late modern poetry of Jean Follain, a poet/lawyer of whom Carson refreshingly admits in the introduction he was unaware until the age of Internet, where he had to look him up. That two poets whose lives overlapped for a generation and who are preoccupied with similar problems of linguistic malleability and concision, memory formation, and, eventually for Carson, post-war reconciliation, should be bound together seems inevitable, if ironic, now that it has been done. Follain believed in speaking no other language than his native French and that translation was impossible; Carson has translated from French, Irish, Italian, and more. But “translation” has always been a loose word for him – he’s an easy target for reviewers, absent Italian, who want to know what Dante said, rather than how he could have said it now. As if to anticipate these attacks, Carson presents two versions of Follain’s poems in translation in From Elsewhere – the “original” translation on the left, and on the facing page, his responsive, explicating “translation.” From Elsewhere doesn’t purport to be a book of literal translations, and it shouldn’t be taken as one. Instead, understand it as a unique associative web of meanings, culminating in a comprehensive meditation on loss and recovery. What Carson does best in this collection is explicate Follain’s short weighty poems (all of them hover around a dozen lines) like a flautist (which Carson also is) bringing the emotional depth of a theme to the surface. A poem about a hotel key becomes a short story of a tragic insomniac; a line about the town butcher becomes a meditation on the reality of butchery; a boy startling at a sudden rumble becomes a man unable to recall when a specific terrorist attack occurred, or how many died. In each pair something vanishes – such is the deficit of translation – between the “original” and the “translation,” whether a literal hotel key disappearing from one version to another or a figurative loss of innocence that braids the two versions together. Each pair together, and together all the pairs, formulate a surprising and evocative look at two poets whose trains passed in the night.

– Adam Farley (Wake Forest UP / 192 pages / $15.95)

100 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

The Wonder

By Emma O’Donoghue

f all of the praise garnered by Emma O’Donoghue’s 2010 novel Room, perhaps the most emphatic was that of the touching realism with which she created the voice of Jack, a five-year-old boy held prisoner with his mother in the very room where he was born. Her uncanny ability to capture the ways of a child shines again in The Wonder, which tells the story of Anna O’Donnell, a devout 11-year-old who claims to have lived without food for four months, causing religious pilgrims to flock to her mid-19th century village in the Irish midlands. Also pulled to her side is Lib Wright, the novel’s narrator and skeptical English nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale, sent across the Irish Sea with orders to keep Anna under strict surveillance and discover the “elaborate trick” at the heart of her fast. If the mystery behind the girl’s apparent ability to subsist only on drops of water and “manna from heaven” is the initial hook of The Wonder, its backbone is formed of the shift in emotional dynamic between the watcher and the watched. In a town where “everybody was a repository of secrets,” upright Lib and serene Anna guard their own carefully, but as the observation continues and Anna’s health begins to deteriorate, the nurse quickly becomes entangled in the unseen histories of the O’Donnell family. Set only a handful of years after the end of the Great Hunger, the novel and its characters teem with the richness of old country life: Anna comes from a farming home and is watched closely by members of the clergy, the village doctor, and William Byrne, an urbane Irish Times journalist sent from Dublin to report on the “magical girl who lives on air.” Lib, a lapsed member of the Church of England, finds Irish Catholic traditions as alien and uncomfortable as the local rumors of fairy folk living off the beaten track. However, as her friendship with Anna blooms through riddles and guessing games, her determination to uncover the truth only grows. “Better to drown in the surf than stand idly on the shore,” Nurse Nightingale once advised Lib. “So tell me, are you ready for this good fight? Can you throw your whole self into the breach?” In this, our heroine (and The Wonder itself) does not hesitate.

– Olivia O’Mahony (Little, Brown and Company / 291 pages / $27)

IA.Books.Music.REV_IA Template 10/5/16 5:42 PM Page 101

review of books | 9-11 Ashes of Fiery Weather By Kathleen Donohoe

he Irish tradition in the New York City Fire Department is undeniably rich. But it also must be said that stories of the FDNY inevitably tilt towards the male perspective, since the department has only been hiring females since the early 1980s, following a contentious court battle. But in her absorbing and compelling first novel, Ashes of Fiery Weather, Kathleen Donohoe manages to tell a decades-spanning story of firefighters that also puts female characters at the forefront. There are wives and widows, yes, but also an Irish-born female firefighter. As much an Irish immigrant novel as it is an FDNY story, Ashes of a Fiery Weather – the title comes from the mournful Wallace Stevens poem “Our Stars Come from Ireland” – opens in 1983 at a Brooklyn funeral. Galway-born Norah O’Reilly is mourning the loss of her firefighter husband Sean, who was killed in the line of duty. “Norah scanned the faces of the assembled firemen, three deep from the curb to the street, skipping the mustached, the older guys, the not-tall, the dark-haired, the obviously non-Irish, the ones in white caps, who were the officers. She didn’t see Sean. She saw Sean a hundred times,” writes Donohoe, who herself hails from a New York family with a rich firefighting tradition. Donohoe’s opening section is an emotional tour-de-force, exploring beautifully this most harrowing moment of Norah’s life, as well as the circumstances that led to her emigration. From there Donohoe – having already made the ambitious decision to tell a story stretching back to the 19th century – steps back in time, though not chronologically. Instead, Ashes of Fiery Weather zigs and zags into and out of the decades, introducing us to the extended Keegan-O’Reilly clan. There’s Sean’s mother, Delia, growing up in Brooklyn on the eve of World War II. Foremost in Delia’s mind, however, is not the global situation but instead the intense emotions she is feeling for her friend Claire. (What a playful touch to have Delia, at one point, reading the classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.) Then there’s Annie-Rose Devlin, at the turn of the century, who lives through the consolidation

of the five boroughs of New York City in 1898, and liked that her name “was a flower, but even more that it was a verb.” Childhood wordplay, however, yields to an adulthood scarred by the infamous Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Then there is Ellen O’Reilly. She was born Eilis in Ireland and adopted by Delia, who was unable to have more children. Eileen, of course, already lost her brother Sean to a fire back in 1983. Nevertheless, Eileen is determined – to put it mildly – to continue the family tradition. She is part of the first group of female firefighters to get on the job and must endure ruthless abuse. (Indeed, Donohoe is also to be commended for even-handedness. The bravery and sacrifice of firefighters is clear in this book but these men are far from flawless.) It is Eileen who brings the reader inside the FDNY’s darkest day, as well as the culmination of Donohoe’s novel, September 11, 2001. “The moon was edgeless, with air like fog just solid enough to breath,” writes Donohoe. “The moon was on fire. The moon was filled with firefighters wandering its rock surface.” Eileen’s disorientation at “the pile” just after the collapse of the twin towers gives way to a realization that her nephew, Sean’s son Aidan, was also among the first responders. She must find out if he is among the survivors or victims. Donohoe also explores past and, in some cases, forgotten tragedies the FDNY endured and even manages to use some of them to foreshadow 9/11. There was the infamous day in 1960 when two planes collided over New York City and fell from the sky, scattering debris across Staten Island as well as Park Slope, Brooklyn. Meanwhile, AnnieRose witnesses a horrific turn-of-the-century hotel fire which was so intense, the “hotel guests began to jump. The thump, thump, thump of bodies hitting the sidewalk sounded like the drum in the pipe band.” For all of this harrowing material, however, Ashes of Fiery Weather also manages to capture the poetry of daily Irish Catholic life, which includes Mass and prayer, but also same-sex romance and debates over abortion. This only makes Donohoe’s debut all the more extraordinary. Ashes of a Fiery Weather somehow manages to be part Alice McDermott, part Denis Leary, and ultimately a worthy addition to the canon of great New York ethnic novels.

– Tom Deignan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / 416 pages / $26) OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 101

IA.Books.Music.REV_IA Template 10/5/16 5:42 PM Page 102

music reviews |

by Kristin McGowan

Legacy, Volume 2

hornpipes is bright and uplifting, a fitting reflection of his road to recovery and time spent with the people he loves. John Redmond has created a gorgeous collection of tunes – all original; all worth repeated play.

Box Sets • John Redmond

This latest solo album from accordionist Mick McAuley bursts open with two dynamic sets of reels and slides before slowing down with a sweet rendition of the traditional air “As I Roved Out.” It is a beautiful fusion of Mick’s voice and legendary Kilkenny guitarist Colm O Caoimh, who accompanies Mick on this acoustic collection of traditional music and song. Mick is a one-man-Irish-band of sorts, playing the accordion, concertina, whistles, guitar, and melodeon; the last most recently in Sting’s Broadway production, The Last Ship. He is also a singer, songwriter, and composer, with six original tunes on this album including “The Ballycotton Jigs” (“The Pinemarten / Road to Costa Rica / The Ballycotton Jig”) and the very pretty “Doireann’s Waltz.” The arrangement of “The Sparrow” polkas (“John Walsh’s / The Sparrow / The Continental”) is delightful, as is “The Fairy Set,” which includes the traditional “The Fairy Jig,” Liz Carroll’s “Liam Child’s,” and Mick’s own composition, the quite sunny and happy “Penney’s Favourite.” A lightening-round of reels, “The Bird’s Nest / The Moving Cloud,” closes the album with a thunderous incentive to get up and dance… and to play the entire album again.

Celtic Thunder

his familiar, favored collection of incredible talent begins with an extraordinary rendition of the otherworldly “Now We Are Free” featuring Keith Harkin, who later in the album sings his original “Lauren & I,” a beautiful song made more interesting when learned it was written at the request of a female fan whom he had never met. The second track, the traditional “Isle of Innisfree” is sung by Emmett O’Hanlon, the Irish-American, Julliard-trained vocal stand-out of this album. The exquisiteness of old standards is revived when delivered by such incredible talent as O’Hanlon. He also sings a gorgeous rendition of Phil Coulter’s “Remember Me” in English and Spanish. Returning from his stint on the television series Glee, original member Damian McGinty is back singing pop favorites “Home” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” As a group, the triumph of this album is the Cape Breton folk song, “Song for the Mira,” which showcases the impeccable harmonizing for which Celtic Thunder is famous. For fans of Celtic Thunder, this album is a must.

(SMG / $11.49)

ccordionist John Redmond’s Box Sets is a tribute to his beloved family and homeland of Ballindaggin, County Wexford, as well as friends and favorite places in the U.S. During a trip back to Ireland to convalesce after a cycling accident, John’s many walks and childhood memories inspired this original collection of jigs, reels, waltzes, slow airs, polkas, and hornpipes. Many of the tune names were spur-of-the-moment suggestions of friends, such as “Trig Jig,” in the opening set, and “McGurk’s Wall,” after a photo gallery of famed Irish musicians. Other tunes are pulled from his past – his memory of extracting honey from his father’s bee hives for the jig “The Bee Frame” and the smell of his mother’s brown bread baking in the polka “Mother’s Brown Bread.” The first trio of jigs, “From Hook Head to Iona / Trig Jig / The Moats of Craan,” springs from time spent walking around wind turbines and breezy hikes up Mount Leinster. Lively originals, they are a bright start to the album. The two waltzes – “Kathy’s Waltz” and “The Horseshoe Waltz” – are a contrast in tone; the first a light and lovely tribute and the second a deeper, more meditative sound. His flawless execution of his reel sets and

102 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

Highs and Bellows • Mick McAuley

(John Redmond / $15)

Doolin • Doolin

(GAF Studios / $15)

ccomplished musicians, all from Toulouse, France, individually entranced by the lure of Irish music, now combine their talents into an upbeat mix of traditional instrumentals, favorite ballads, and original compositions. The theme of Doolin’s self-titled album is the Great Hunger, and the selections are thoughtful, intelligent, lively, and introspective. “Chanson Pour John” tells the emigrants’ story; “Reel Africa,” “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” and “Famine” examine the more contemporary effects of poverty, weaving the music and rhythms of Africa, American country, and French electronic rap with a traditional Irish sound. Doolin blends the French and Irish sounds, sometimes leaning more to one than the other, but always with a beautiful balance, especially in “Le Jupon Blanc” (the white petticoat), a traditional Irish jig introduced to Paris and Amsterdam, an original French song backed by fiddle, tin whistle, and bodhrán. This is a fascinating, intriguing, and expertly crafted album.

(Compass Records / $15)

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 10:37 AM

IA.PhotoAlbumREV3_IA Template 10/5/16 5:37 PM Page 104

photo album |

Rebel Irish Girl

Nora Brosnan’s role in the fight for Irish independence is remembered by her granddaughter, Kathleen Lenehan Nastri.

anora “Nora” Brosnan was born on September 17, 1905, the youngest of 10 children, to Mary Flynn Brosnan and John Brosnan, in Castlegregory, County Kerry. Nora’s father was a farmer and the owner and operator of a successful local forge. The Brosnan home was a comfortable place with a large kitchen where the family would gather, and a loft bedroom over the kitchen that Nora shared with her sister Lil. Every family member had chores, and Nora was no exception. When she was just eight or nine years old, she was responsible for controlling the cat population. Her job was to take the kittens, put them in a bag and drown them. At the time, it was just part of life on the farm, never striking her as an odd or unpleasant task. She was also taught to kill and clean the chickens and ducks for family dinners.

WAR WITH ENGLAND

The daily routine of farm life was cut short by the Easter Rebellion on April 24, 1916. On May 1, Nora’s brothers Tadg and Sean were ousted from their beds and arrested for plotting to attack the British Army headquarters in Tralee. As commandant of the West Kerry Irish Volunteers, Tadg accepted responsibility. The six others involved were set free. Tadg was sentenced to life in prison, later commuted to 20 years. Fortunately, after serving one year in Dartmoor Prison in England, he was released following the armistice of 1917. Around this time, three of Nora’s brothers, Mike, Jim, and Maurice, immigrated to America. Sean and Tadg stayed at home and remained active in the IRA, the successor to the Volunteers. For the next six years, Nora saw them only when they managed to sneak home for a quick visit. The effect of the war on the family was hard; the forge all but closed and the soldiers made frequent raids on the Brosnan home – sometimes more than twice in one week. Nora’s father was often arrested simply because the soldiers were frustrated in their attempts to apprehend Tadg and Sean. It was during this time that Nora also began actively aiding the IRA cause, making bundles of clean socks and shirts and taking them to the rebels on the run. One November night in 1920, the British Army irregulars known as the Black and Tans (for the uniforms they wore), made one of their usual raids at the Brosnan home. Nora’s memories of the night, passed down through the generations, was that the family was relieved to have the raid over early. By 9:00 p.m., they were in bed. But during the night they were awoken. The soldiers had burglarized the local pub 104 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

and were drunk. They kicked in the front door and announced to the Brosnans that they were there to burn their house down. They stole the family’s valuables and fine china, and what they couldn’t carry, they smashed. Nora’s prized possession was a doll her brother Mike had sent from America. One of the soldiers, taking the butt of his rifle, smashed the doll’s porcelain face in front of Nora before throwing her out of the house. In the yard, Nora saw her mother wearing only a nightgown. She fought her way through the soldiers, who were busy dousing the house with gasoline, and made her way to her parents’ room to get her mother a pair of shoes and a shawl. After the soldiers had stolen all of the valuables and doused the feather beds with gasoline, they lit the house on fire. Good friends and neighbors gave the family shelter. In the weeks following the fire, Nora’s parents returned to the house to try to repair what they could until the house was habitable again. Even after they were able to move back into the house, life was not the same. The windows, which had shattered in the fire, were now boarded up, and all but a few pieces of furniture had been destroyed. Nora and Lil had managed to save only the dresser and a pitcher and bowl from their bedroom.

THE CIVIL WAR AND NORA’S ARREST

In December 1921, following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that divided Ireland into what would become the Free State and the six northern counties, the Brosnans, like many Kerry families, rejected partition and began supporting the anti-treaty forces. One November morning in 1922, Nora, who was then 17 years old, was having breakfast with her brother Sean. Someone came to the house to tell them that the pro-treaty forces known as the Free State Army were landing in Tralee Bay. Sean told Nora to go up to the “station,” which was the headquarters for the IRA, to alert them to what was happening. Nora took her friend Liza O’Donnell, and the two were on their way back home from the station when they decided to move the explosives that the IRA had hidden in the village so “the staters” wouldn’t get them. But as they were crossing the station grounds, they were spotted by soldiers who fired shots to halt them. They ordered the girls to “advance forward.” Nora refused to budge, and shouted, “If you want us, here we are!” Nora and Liza were captured and taken to the local school house where they stayed until nightfall. Then they were taken to the Helga, a ship anchored in the bay that served as a temporary prison. As the soldiers marched Nora past her home, she refused to go any further until they allowed her to see her mother. After some discussion with the stubborn young woman, the soldiers agreed. Mary and John were sitting by the

IA.PhotoAlbumREV3_IA Template 10/5/16 5:37 PM Page 105

fire. “Glory be, what are you doing with these two little girls?” Nora’s mother asked. Nora told her parents to stay calm, took her coat from her room and continued with the soldiers to the ship. The ship’s captain was a kind Englishman who was shocked to see two young girls on his boat, which was not equipped to hold prisoners. He gave Nora and Liza his “day room” until arrangements could be made. Two days later they docked. They were taken by armored car to Tralee Jail. The girls stayed in Tralee for two weeks with 21 other girls who had also been arrested. Then they were then placed on a cattle boat, which Nora recalled as “a filthy, lice-infected, smelly old wreck,” and sent to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin where they were incarcerated without trial. The girls were billeted in a room with dozens of other female prisoners. They were given a bed and food rations. However, the beds were taken away as punishment following an escape attempt by two other girls. In February, 1923, Nora and Liza were transferred to Kilmainham Gaol where Nora shared a cell with Grace Gifford Plunkett. Six years earlier, Grace had married Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, in the chapel at Kilmainham. The morning after their marriage, Plunkett was executed. At 90, Nora’s memories of her time in prison were still vivid. In 1995, she told Patrick J. O’Leary, a reporter for a local newspaper: “I can still see that awful exercise yard where the sun never shone over the 40-foot walls. I often walked with Grace in that yard. She worried about me because I was the youngest of the female prisoners. She was a very beautiful, very talented but a very private person. She painted a beautiful mural of the Blessed Mother on the white-washed wall of the cell. ” One Saturday, a year after their arrest, Nora and Liza were released with no money, directions, or means of contacting their families. Pauline Hassett, a friend and a fellow prisoner, managed to slip a piece of paper to Nora as she was leaving. On it, she had written the address of her brother Roland “Rollie” Hassett, who lived in Dublin. The girls were able to find Rollie, with the help of some friendly Dubliners. He bought them dinner on Sunday and put them on the train home to Kerry on Monday morning. Castlegregory was a very different place when Nora returned home in November 1923. The forge was all but closed and the family was poor. All of the young people were leaving or had already left for America. It was not long before Nora began to think of going, but it would be another three years before she made the trip. Tadg, Lil, and Tadg’s friend Patrick McKenna left for New York in 1924, and Nora moved to

England to train as a nurse. Patrick McKenna had been very active in the fight for Irish freedom. Arrested and imprisoned in 1922, he escaped, and made his way back to Kerry a year later. His daring sparked Nora’s interest, and the two stayed in touch after he moved to the U.S. As Nora would later tell it, she worried that Pat was having too much fun in America without her, so she made the decision to join him and her family in New York. Pat sent her the money for the fare.

THE UNITED STATES

Nora arrived to New York on March 17, 1926. She went to a dance with Pat that night and the two began going steady. Pat had become an accountant and had a good job at Pan American Oil Co. Nora soon found work as an assistant nurse at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan, earning the grand sum of $60 a month. Nora and Pat were married on April 28, 1928, at St. Joseph’s Church on 125th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. They eventually settled in Hartford, Connecticut where they lived for 16 years, before moving to Queens Village, New York. A rebel to the end, Nora, told the reporter O’Leary in 1995: “We got the British out of Ireland in 1922, but we were left with six counties in the north. We must get the British out of that area.” Asked if she was ever afraid, she replied: “Never! I knew the good Lord and the Blessed Mother would see to it that I was taken care of.” Nora passed away on January 12, 1996, but I will always be thankful that I, and my children, had the chance to know her. She passed her love for Ireland, her strong sense of family, and her unique outlook on life down to her children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, and we still have that connection to Ireland. Nora’s brother Sean was the only Brosnan to remain in Ireland. He ran the family farm, which is today owned by his son Sean. On September 16, 2016, Nora’s great-grandson Patrick Wolfgang McKenna was born in Manchester, Connecticut, one day before what would have been her 111th birthday. He will grow up knowing that his IA great-grandmother was a rebel Irish girl.

TOP LEFT: A page from autograph book of a friend of Nora’s, Fanny O'Connor. TOP RIGHT: Nora’s obituary. FAR LEFT: Nora as a young girl. This photograph, and the page from the autograph book, pictured above, were sent to the family by Aoife Torpey, an archivist at Kilmainham Gaol.

DO YOU HAVE A FAMILY STORY TO TELL? Please send photographs and story to: The Editor, Irish America magazine, 875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 210, NY, NY 10001. You can submit your story by email to: submit@irishamerica.com.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 IRISH AMERICA 105

IA.LastWordREV2_IA Template 10/5/16 5:19 PM Page 106

last word |

by Robert Schmuhl

Continuity and Change:

The Irish Role in American Politics

106 IRISH AMERICA OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

In 2012, before he became Speaker, Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate, pitting him against incumbent vice president Joe Biden, a Democrat. Four years earlier, Biden, who grew up in a working-class Irish family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was elected as the first Catholic to serve a heartbeat away from the presidency. Actually and symbolically, having Ryan and Biden as competitors on the national tickets offered an undeniable message. Both major political institutions now welcomed the participation of Irish Catholics at the highest ranks of government. Remarkably, the circumstances this year are identical in certain respects – but also different as well as more complex. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s sidekick on the Democratic ballot, proudly told the Senator John American Ireland Fund’s dinner last A. Danaher, March, “I am pure black-Irish.” Indeed, Republican of Connecticut, Kaine’s four grandparents were all born to in 1939. Irish immigrants who’d come to the U.S. In terms of religion, he received a Jesuit education and later worked with Catholic missionaries in Honduras for a year. The Virginia senator (and that state’s former governor) once remarked, “My faith is central to everything I do.” Mike Pence, the Indiana governor tapped by Donald Trump to be his Republican running mate, is a curious yet instructive case of change and assimilation in contemporary America. “The family’s Irish Catholic roots run deep,” the New York Times reported about Pence shortly after his nomination. “Mr. Pence’s maternal grandfather, with whom he was especially close, came to America in 1923 from Ireland and settled in Chicago, where he eventually became a bus driver.” Pence’s parents and five siblings idolized John Kennedy, and young Mike’s devotion to Democrats continued through his early 20s. But he, unlike other members of his family, started to move away from Catholicism and Democratic allegiance after he had a religious experience in college. He now considers himself an evangelical Robert Schmuhl is Christian. the Walter H. Whatever the outcome of this year’s Annenberg-Edmund election, Pence’s life story provides P. Joyce Chair in evidence of another dimension of the American Studies and religious and political dispersion Journalism at the within Irish America over time. University of Notre Homogeneity of a community lasts Dame and the author just so many generations before other of Ireland’s Exiled forces challenge established practices Children: America and create change. Heritage is imporand the Easter Rising tant, but it doesn’t necessarily deter(Oxford University IA mine one’s future path. Press). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

or the second straight White House election, the Democratic and Republican candidates for vice president grew up in strong Irish American and Catholic families. Eyebrow-arching in itself, the fact that these four figures share a similar heritage helps illustrate what you might call the Irish political diaspora within the U.S. From the time of the Great Hunger through the early decades of the 20th century, the American Irish tended to be nearly as faithful to the Democratic Party as to the Catholic Church. Big-city political organizations worked with machine-like efficiency, delivering goods, services and jobs to recent immigrants from Ireland and elsewhere. These new Americans said thank you with their Democratic votes on Election Day. The parish and the precinct – along with the neighborhood pub – were institutions that contributed to shaping the identity and community of Irish Americans. Before long, the hurly-burly of electoral politics seduced second- and third-generation O’Briens and Brennans to run themselves for city and state offices. A few months before the Easter Rising in 1916, Cecil Spring Rice, the British ambassador to the U.S., wrote back to the Foreign Office in London: “The best politicians in the country are Irish, and the professional Irish politician is against us.” At that time, almost all “the best politicians” operated out of Democratic headquarters. However, as Irish Americans moved away from their tight-knit precincts and expanded their involvement in the professions, business and other realms, they cast their eyes beyond a single party. Beginning in the 1930s, the Irish became more visible in the ranks of Republicans. That migration to a political affiliation more in tune with white-collar status and an economically conservative orientation didn’t occur without disrupting decades-old loyalties. In his still-stimulating and insightful study, The American Irish (1963), William V. Shannon reports that John Danaher was the first Irish American to become a U.S. senator as a Republican, winning the 1938 election in Connecticut. Danaher’s father was responsible for changing “the family’s allegiance to the GOP,” according to Shannon. Discussing the switch, Shannon provides anecdotal explication: “. . . the story used to be told of the old Irish Catholic lady who said to her friend, ‘Have you heard the news? John Danaher has become a Republican!’ The other replied: ‘It can’t be true. I saw him at Mass just last Sunday.’” Since Danaher’s days, Irish Catholics have entered the Republican fold with increasing regularity. Today Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Congressman Peter King (New York) and Senator Susan Collins (Maine) are three prominent Irish Catholic politicians in the GOP.

Untitled-11 1

10/6/16 10:31 AM

Untitled-9 1

10/4/16 5:16 PM