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ANNE ENRIGHT • IRISH SCULPTORS OF THE CIVIL WAR • MARTIN SHEEN
IRISH AMERICA
DEC. 2011 / JAN. 2012 Canada $4.95 U.S. $3.95
WILLIAM FORD, JR. talks about the company, the future and his Irish heritage
“The ongoing success of Ford Motor Company is my life’s work. We want to have an even greater impact in our next 100 years than we did in our first 100.”
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THE 26th ANNUAL BUSINESS 100 PLUS: FOOD, WINE, FASHION AND PHILANTHROPY
0 74470 73334 DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 31, 2011
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CONTENTS
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December January 2012 FEATURES 22 ATHLETE ON WHEELS Amanda McGrory talks to Molly Ferns about winning the New York City Marathon and the sporting challenges that lie ahead.
34 BILL FORD The fourth generation to take the wheel at Ford Motors talks about history, heritage, and what he learned on his recent trip to Ireland.
40 THE 26TH ANNUAL BUSINESS ONE HUNDRED
The best and the brightest Irish Americans, who operate at a senior level in corporate America are honored.
72 AN AMERICAN FOOD STORY Susan Kelliher Ungaro left the publishing world to take over the James Beard Foundation and never looked back. By Kara Rota.
76 AN IRISH VINTAGE The Concannon Winery in Livermore, California, founded by an Irishman in 1883, is still going strong. By Patricia Harty
80 NANETTE LEPORE: AMERICAN
FASHION WITH AN IRISH TOUCH
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IRISH FILM TREASURES At the dawn of American cinema, Ireland became the backdrop and subject of pioneering silent films. By Sheila Langan
102 MARTIN SHEEN ON
THE WAY OF MIRACLES The veteran actor talks to Patricia Harty about how his latest film, The Way, was a life-altering experience.
108 WHAT ARE YOU LIKE? Irish Chamber Orchestra CEO John Kelly on his likes, dislikes and secret passion.
110 A REPORTER’S JOURNEY Pulitzer Prize-winning author Amy Nutt talks to Aliah O’Neill.
114 ONCE AND OTHER VOICES Tara Dougherty on the stage production of Once, and “Other Voices” – a showcase of Irish musicians, actors and authors.
120 IRISH CHRISTMAS TRADS Edythe Preet reflects on Irish Christmas traditions, such as putting a lighted candle in the window.
Husband and wife team Bob Savage and Nanette Lepore talk to Sheila Langan about getting started in the fashion business.
84 THE JOY OF GIVING BACK Hotelier John Fitzpatrick goes undercover to discover the neediest cases in Dundalk, Ireland. By Aliah O’Neill.
88 ANNE ENRIGHT REVEALED Bestselling Irish author Anne Enright talks about her latest book. By Sheila Langan.
92 CIVIL WAR MONUMENTS The sculptors, many of whom were Irish immigrants, who immortalized the American Civil War. By Michael Quinlin.
DEPARTMENTS 6 8 10 12 14 106 112 115 118 122
Contributors First Word Readers Forum News Hibernia Roots Book Reviews Music Reviews Crossword Photo Album
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DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 5
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Vol.27 No.1 • December / January 2012
contributors
IRISH AMERICA
Kara Rota
Mortas Cine Pride In Our Heritage
Founding Publisher: Niall O’Dowd
Kara is the lead editor and manages business development for Cookstr, a technology company based in Manhattan that focuses on the intersection between food, lifestyle and health. She does freelance food journalism and is an award-winning fiction writer.
Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief: Patricia Harty
Tara Dougherty
Vice President of Marketing: Kate Overbeck
Tara is a graduate of New York University. A musician, writer and second-generation Irish American, with roots in County Roscommon, she writes about the stage production of Once, and “Other Voices” – a showcase of Irish musicians, actors and authors.
Art Director: Marian Fairweather Deputy Editor: Sheila Langan
Edythe Preet
Copy Editor: John Anderson Advertising & Events Coordinator: Tara Dougherty Ad Design & Production Genevieve McCarthy Director of Special Projects: Turlough McConnell Financial Controller: Kevin M. Mangan Editoral Assistants: Molly Ferns Catherine Davis
Edythe has served as culinary historian for Irish America since 1994. Her continuing feature series “Sláinte! traces the histories of traditional Irish food, drink and celebration, liberally laced with a wealth of folklore, mythology and popular customs. Edythe owns The Heritage Kitchen, a specialty food business producing sweets and savories based on historical recipes. www.theheritagekitchen.com.
Sheila Langan Sheila, Irish America’s Deputy Editor, is a graduate of Bard College with an Irish passport and a love of Irish literature. In this issue she interviews author Anne Enright and writes about “The Fashionable Partnership” of Bob Savage and Nanette Lepore.
IRISH AMERICA 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: irishamag@aol.com www.irishamerica.com Irish America Magazine ISSN 08844240) © 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 Email: Irishamag@aol.com. Subscription rate is $21.95 for one year. Subscription orders: 1-800-582-6642. Subscription queries: 1-800-582-6642, (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.
6 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Michael Quinlin Michael, who writes about the sculptors who imortalized the Civil War, is founder and president of the Boston Irish Tourism Association, a membership group formed in 2000 to promote Irish-American culture, heritage and small businesses to the tourism industry. His company also publishes the MassJazz Travel Guide, which promotes the vibrant jazz scene in Massachusetts. He is author of Irish Boston (Globe Pequot Press) and editor of Classic Irish Stories (Lyons Press), and is a longstanding member of the Boston chapter of Comhaltas. Mike lives in Milton, Massachusetts with his wife Colette and son Devin.
Patricia Harty I enjoyed my visit to the Concannon Winery in Livermore California, and I encourage you all to visit. This photo of myself with John and Jim Concannon was taken by my sister in-law Wendy Harty.
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{the first word} By Patricia Harty
The Magic of the Diaspora ne Christmas was so much like another in those years, to quote Dylan Thomas. Looking back, it does seem as if all my childhood Christmases have fused into one glorious memory. I remember the crunch of frosty gravel as we walk to the car for our trip to town and midnight Mass. The stars are bright in the night sky – easy to believe in the Three Wise Men making their way to Bethlehem – and the tree is lighted in the front room window. We are told not to look just in case Santa is there having the bottle of Guinness we set out for him earlier. If we caught sight of him all our presents would disappear, or so I believed. The town is four miles away and we are silent and sleepy on the trip, bundled up in our winter woolens. Mother drives, father stays at home with the little ones. She always drives as if her entire focus is needed for the task, grasping the steering wheel with both hands, eyes on the road ahead. She prayed that way too, bringing intent and purpose to her responses at Mass – a little bit louder than anyone else. Mass itself is a heady experience – the soft incantation of the Latin casting a spell into which is woven the beauty of the stained glass windows (from the Harry Clarke school), the choir, the altar boys brandishing the censer and the incense rising to the heavens. (I was reminded of this when I watched the film The Way, which culminates with the actors attending benediction at the Cathedral of Santiago in Spain). My mother loved a celebration (no wonder she picked New Year’s Eve as her last day on earth!) Birthdays, feast days, Halloween, Shrove Tuesday were all given their due. But Christmas was special and took months of preparation and planning. Cakes were baked and plum puddings steamed, the turkey fattened and presents secreted away. Then there was the annual trip to Limerick City, far enough away to make it a day out, for the visit to Santa. I didn’t realize it at the time, but not all Christmases were created equal. We were lucky. We weren’t rich but we had a farm and my mother had a way of stretching a pound. “Save your
O
Christmas1955, me and the brothers at Todds Dept. Store in Limerick.
8 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves,” she used to say. And there were the Christmas packages from abroad – from the cousins in England and Aunt Nell in the Bronx who never let a Christmas go by without sending $50 – a lot of money back then. I remember watching out for the postman, anxious for the airmail stamps on cards and letters. My Aunt Breda in Hawaii always sent a photo of her family taken at the beach with a palm tree in the background. There were cards from relatives in Australia, from my mother’s school friend in South Africa, and from cousins in London and Birmingham. I grew up feeling that our farm had outposts in all these places. And I knew that we had family out there who cared about us. I didn’t yet know the word diaspora. A recent article in the Economist, “The Magic of Diasporas,” highlighted the growing economic importance of diasporas. Huguenots, Jews and Scots were mentioned but not the Irish. Yet, the contributions the Irish abroad have made and continue to make to Ireland – from dollars sent by those like my Aunt Nell, to the Business 100 honorees profiled in this issue – have been enormous. Sometimes, I feel that the American Irish love of Ireland is a one-sided affair. During the Celtic Tiger years the Irish in Ireland didn’t want anything to do with the diaspora, but now that times are bad again there is a push on to involve the diaspora in rebuilding the Irish economy. Yet, there has never been a representative of the Irish diaspora appointed to serve in the Irish Dail. The history of the diaspora is not taught in Irish schools, though many American, Australian and English universities have Irish Studies programs. Just as I grew up believing that all Irish Americans were rich, only to discover when I reached New York that Aunt Nell and her family existed on a bus driver’s salary, I believe that the Irish in Ireland need to have a better understanding of the sacrifices the Irish abroad have made over the years to help out at home. In terms of diaspora, Bill Ford represents a family that has had a huge impact both on America and on Ireland. Henry Ford, on his first trip to Ireland in 1912, was struck by the poverty and unemployment in the land that his father left in 1847, and he decided to do something about it. In 1917 he opened a Ford plant in Cork. Seven thousand workers were employed at that plant up until the 1980s, and the ripple effect brought many social and economic improvements not just to Cork, but to the rest of the country. Recently, Ford brightened these bleak economic times by announcing that it would create 12,000 new jobs in the U.S. in the next four years. The company that put America on wheels is again showing corporate America the way forward. “Built Ford Tough,” the ad for Ford trucks promises. It’s a slogan that reminds us of those ancestors who were tough. They went through hard times but they endured, and when they could they reached back a helping hand to those at home. Magic.
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YOU ASKED:
Did the Irish Brigade fight under an Irish flag?
Uncovering Irish History in Lowell, Massachusetts
Recently, there was a traveling Civil War Museum through the state of Pennsylvania. After walking through, I noticed nothing was mentioned about the Irish Brigade of PA, and I believe somewhere in the New England area, there was an all Irish Brigade. I understand they fought under an Irish flag and not the American flag because they were drawn into the war coming off the ships from a famine stricken country; but were willing to fight for freedom. If killed or wounded to look up and see the green flag and the harp on the flag. Can you tell me if this story is true?
Story by Harrison Post (Oct./Nov. issue). My grandfather worked in the Lowell mills in the early 1900s. He fought in World War One. His name is Patty McGeoghegan from Cherryville, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. Did anyone hear of him? My mother said he was a supervisor, which was rare in those days, to be Irish and obtain a position as a supervisor. –Posted by Eileen Murphy
James J. Haggerty Media, Pennsylvania WE ANSWERED
There were two all-Irish regiments in Massachusetts, the 9th and 28th. Each of them had their own flag, created for their specific regiment (this was a tradition at the time, not just for Irish, but for other ethnic groups, Harvard, towns, etc.) I’m not aware that any Irish regimental flag was flown in place of the American flag, and I would be very doubtful that could have happened, since the Irish immigrants were also patriotic to the American cause. It may be that the Irish flag took precedence over the state of Massachusetts flag in the formation...as suggested in this account of the 28th: http://www.28thmass.org/history.htm – Michael Quinlin, answering for IA, is the
Above: One of the artifacts found in the Lowell dig.
I don’t often agree with George Dillon, but he’s spot on this time. In the rush to become Europeans, the Irish have lost so much that made them unique, one of which is taking ownership of Halloween! – posted by mcdolan Not sure what generation George and mcdolan are talking about but every Irish person I know knows this history. We ate Colcannon and boiled bacon every Halloween, which is mashed potato and kale, not cabbage, and it had money, a stick and a ring in it. It’s a tradition I continue with my family. Halloween is an international festival if you choose to celebrate it. It does not require ownership. That is one trait of the Irish, to celebrate and share a good time with everyone. – posted by eiregirl
author of Irish Boston
YOUR COMMENTS
How an Irish Harvest feast became Halloween
So nice to see an article here by Edythe Preet. I have been reading her articles in IA for many years – they are well written and researched. – posted by Siobhan
Story by Edythe Preet (Oct./Nov. issue). While I would quibble with one or two things [Edythe Preet] writes, the sad fact is that this author knows more about the Irish roots of Halloween than do 99.9% of Irish people. The Irish are now totally ignorant of their folklore and traditions. They spend their time watching English soap operas or screaming and cursing at English soccer games on TV. – posted by GeorgeDillon
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I would say there is as much interest in Halloween today as in years gone by. For example, look at the Tlachtga Samhain Fire Festival: The ceremony on the hill of Tlachtga dates from approximately 200 AD and was the location of the Great Fire Festival begun on the eve of Samhain. Today, the old Celtic ceremony at Tlachtga has been revived with a reenactment of the Celtic celebration starting with a torchlit procession from the
Fair Green in Athboy to the top of the Hill of Tlachtga on October 31st each year. Of course, traditions such as barmbrack persist, as do Halloween games. Trick or Treating is as popular as ever etc. Every year, the papers discuss the origins of Halloween. The Irish Examiner did a piece on the “Spirit of our Celtic past” and the seanachaí Eddie Lenihan wrote an article about piseógs and folklore. Such matters are also the staple diet of national schools across the country. As in any country, in any time, the practice of traditions is not uniform among a population and those traditions are subject to change (the Irish that celebrated at the hill of Tlachgta 2000 years ago would not recognize all the traditions practiced in Ireland during the 16th century etc.). –posted by kinvara7 Very interesting. I always liked the idea that the space between the world of the living and the world of the dead “was thin” on All Hallow’s Eve. And evidently the Church did not fool anyone – the traditions survive. – Posted by Blackthorn62
The Stones of Culadee Poem by Timothy Walsh (Oct./Nov. issue). Beautiful! –Posted by eiriamach Lovely! Thanks for sharing. – Posted by mhichil
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{ hibernia }
PEOPLE
| HERITAGE | EVENTS | ARTS | ENTERTAINMENT
Kenny Addresses the Nation
F
or the first time in 25 years, the Irish Prime Minister gave a live, televised State of the Nation address. In anticipation of the 2012 budget plan issued on December 5, Enda Kenny spoke to the people of Ireland from his office in the Government Buildings, on the night of December 4, right after the opening headlines of the 9:00 pm news on RTE. Taoiseach Kenny devoted his speech to Ireland’s economic crisis, outlining the steps towards recovery that lie in the budget plan. He began his speech with words of reassurance for the citizens of Ireland. “Let me say this to you all: You are not responsible for the crisis, “ he stated. He went on to praise the Irish people for their continued support, telling them that “the steps the Government has taken merely reflect your courage, your character, and your sense of responsibility, for which I thank you.”
Getting down to business, he reminded the country that “at the end of last year, our economy was in deep crisis. And while steps to recover from the crisis have been taken, we remain in crisis today.” The main thrust of the address was to affirm that the then-pending budget plan would point the way out of crisis and into recovery. He described it as a two-part process that would take effect “firstly by putting our public finances back onto a sound footing; secondly, the budget will include a series of targeted measures specifically designed to create jobs and get people back to work.” Kenny expressed hope that by 2015, the budget will have led to job growth and deficit control. The plan calls for sacrifices to be made across the board. “We cut the pay and removed state cars and garda police drivers for ministers,” said Kenny, also citing
plans to withdraw staff allowances and free phones, and other senior public servant entitlements. He also took the opportunity to discuss Ireland’s role in and need for the European Union. “We cannot operate in isolation,” he said. “We are part of the European Union.” He projected that if the budget is successfully implemented, and if the country remains a part of the EU, Ireland might be “on a four-year path to recovery.” RTE reported that the broadcast received a peak audience of 1,231,320 at 9:39 pm. Further details of the budget plan released on the 5th outlined €1.4 billion in reduced expenditure. Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin announced that public sector salaries would decrease by €400 million, while tuition to Ireland’s universities would rise by €250. He also stated that the departments of health, social protection and education would face the largest cuts, because they currently rank as the highest-spending departments. – M.F.
HIGGINS INAUGURATED AS MCALEESE CONCLUDES FOURTEEN YEARS IN OFFICE ichael D. Higgins, the resounding victor of September’s M presidential election in Ireland, was inaugurated into office on November 12 in a ceremony at Dublin Castle. After receiving his seal of office from Ireland’s Chief Justice Sue Denham, Higgins signed his oath of office in the presence of his wife, the new First Lady Sabina Higgins, and their four children. In a 15-minute speech, he praised the accomplishments of his predecessors Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, and vowed to continue their legacies of promoting peace throughout the island of Ireland. He also called for a new chapter in Irish history – a turning away from the egotism and individualism of the Celtic Tiger and the pain it induced, and a turn towards “an older wisdom.” The former president of Ireland’s Labor Party declared that his presidency would be one of transformation. Since taking office, President Higgins has paid visits throughout Ireland and to Northern Ireland. He has also requested a pay cut of 23.5% from the €440,000 salary he is entitled to. After fourteen years as president, Mary McAleese marked her last day in office on November 10. In an opinion piece in the Irish Times, she thanked the people of Ireland for placing their trust in her and offered the incoming president her best 12 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Michael D. Higgins and Mary McAleese
wishes. She cited Queen Elizabeth’s “happy and healing” visit as one of the highlights of her presidency, and concluded by saying “I have come to know Ireland as intimately as any human being ever could. Ours is an exquisitely beautiful, welcoming country and you would be hard put to find finer people anywhere on this planet. They deserve to live in peace and prosperity and I will continue to pray that such a doubly blessed time will come and soon. It has been the most fulfilling experience to serve my country as president.” McAleese has stated that she plans to study Canon Law in Rome, and to eventually return to practicing as a lawyer in Ireland. –S.L.
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{news from ireland} IRISH TOWN-NAME DEEMED OFFENSIVE ccording to The Daily Mail, A Facebook, the social networking site, would not let Ann Marie Kennedy list Effin, Co. Limerick, as her hometown on her profile page. When Kennedy’s complaints to Facebook received no reply, she attempted to create the Facebook group “Please Get my Hometown Effin Recognized.” The group name was also rejected by Facebook, in an error message stating that it was “offensive.”
Kennedy is determined to have her hometown recognized, but she evidently maintains a sense of humor about the situation: “I’m a proud Effin woman,” she told The Daily Mail.“[Facebook] will recognise Limerick, but I’m not from Limerick City, I’m from Effin. I’m a proud Effin woman. And I always will be an Effin woman.” A Facebook spokesperson assured The Inquirer, a technology news website, that it has nothing against Effin. “From time to time we are alerted to oversights such as this in our mapping system. We will look to correct it to ensure places like Effin can be ‘liked’ on Facebook.” – S.L.
Dublin and Belfast Receive Quality of Life Rankings consultancy group’s annual Quality of Living Survey released at the IcitynendtotheofliveMercer November, Dublin has maintained its 2010 ranking as the world’s 26th best in. In spite of the economic hardships it had faced, its ranking has only decreased by one place since 2009, when it was 25th. Belfast came in at 63, five spots ahead of London, which ranked 68th. Vienna was once again named the best city to live in, followed by Zurich. Luxembourg was number one in the personal safety rankings, while Dublin came in at 16. Baghdad ranked least safe out of all the 221 cities considered. Mercer’s senior researcher Slagin Parakatil told the Irish Times that European cities do tend to dominate the upper rankings, but also commented that “economic turmoil, high levels of unemployment and lack of confidence in political institutions make their future positions hard to predict.” Mercer collects the majority of its data between September and November each year. Factors considered include “the political and social environment, the economic environment, the socio-cultural environment, health and sanitation, recreation, housing, public services, and schools and education.” –S.L.
THE GATHERING 2013 he Gathering, Ireland’s largest tourism event to date, is set to begin in 2013. Fáilte T Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority of the Republic of Ireland, is behind the initiative. Ireland’s Minister for Tourism, Leo Varadkar, described the event during October’s Global Irish Economic Forum as an “invitation to the world to come and join in Ireland’s renewal.” It is not, he claims, merely a marketing strategy. Rather, “It’s about getting communities, local authorities and sports clubs and families behind the whole concept, and getting actively involved and inviting people to come, and organizing specific events for that purpose.” The Gathering will be aimed primarily at the Irish diaspora, and to those in search of their Irish roots, though it is intended to appeal to anyone interested in Irish culture. It will officially be launched on Saint Patrick’s Day, and is to be organized around both existing festivals and new festivals created specifically for the event. Scotland’s “The Homecoming,” which took place in 2009, was a similar initiative. Ireland’s Government anticipates that the event will attract as many as 325,000 extra visitors to the country. Such a substantial increase in tourism would bring in approximately €220 million in revenue. – C.D.
Irish Citizens Appointed to Cabinet Roles in New Libyan Government s Libya works towards building its post-Colonel Gadaffi A government, two Libyans living in Ireland have been appointed to cabinet positions. Dr. Fatima Hamroush, a consultant ophthalmologist in Drogheda, Co. Meath, will be the new Minister for Health, and Dr. Fathi al-Akkari, who lectures in electronic engineering at Dublin’s Tallaght Institute of Technology, will be the Minister for Higher Education. Both had fled to Ireland during the Gadaffi regime and built lives there. Dr. Hamroush told the Irish Independent that she came to Ireland 15 years ago with her four children, and that she has not been back to Libya since 2006, when Gadaffi forces
became aware of her movement in and out of the country. She has maintained an active role from Ireland, however, serving as a director of the Irish Libyan Emergency Fund. Hamroush applied for the position by sending her résumé to the new Libyan authorities. Addressing the challenges that lie ahead, she said “No one going there will be feeling confident that they will be safe. We are building something new from everything around us that is a big mess…I couldn’t refuse it, it would be like a soldier refusing to go to the battlefield.” Hamroush and al-Alkkari traveled to Benghazi on November 26 to be sworn in and to assume their new roles in building Lybia’s future. – S.L. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 13
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{news from northern ireland}
2011 MTV EMA’s Come to Belfast
T
he 2011 MTV European Music Awards were held in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena, Northern Ireland’s largest indoor stadium, on Sunday, November 6. The event, hosted by 19-year-old Selena Gomez, opened with Coldplay performing their latest hit single, “Every Tear Drop is Waterfall,” from their new album Mylo Xyloto. Chris Martin’s ever-exuberant stage presence got the energy level soaring, setting the tone for the rest of the evening. Lady Gaga took home the most awards, winning for Best Female, Best Song and Best Video (both for “Born this Way”), and perhaps unsurprisingly, for Biggest Fans. Other notable winners include Justin Beiber, Bruno Mars, Thirty Seconds to Mars, and Katy Perry. Korean boy band Big Bang won the new award for Best Worldwide Act, beating out Britney Spears, Rena, Brazilian band Restart, and Egyptian singer Abdelfattah Grini. The win caused quite a stir, as the group received an astounding 58 million votes for the award—the largest number of votes collected by any act in EMA history. The total number of votes cast in all categories was just over 158 million, meaning that Big Bang took in 36% of votes for the entire program. As no live event seems to be complete without a streaker, MTV writers made the last minute decision to have a nude man run across stage while Hayden Panetierre presented the award for Best Song. Though Panetierre and a select few—presumably
ABOVE: Selena Gomez, host of the 2011 MTV EMAs. Lady Gaga in performance. LEFT: Adam Lambert on stage with legendary rock group Queen.
security—were alerted ahead of time to the stunt, those involved maintain that most members of MTV’s production team were as surprised by the disruption as was the audience. Belfast is the smallest city to host the awards show to date. But even more significant are the social and political changes which have taken place in Belfast, and which being selected for this honor demonstrate. After bearing the brunt of the three-decade-long “Troubles”—paramilitary violence between Northern Ireland’s nationalist Catholic and unionist Protestant communities—Belfast’s 1998 “Good Friday” Agreement marked a period of transition for the city. The Odyssey complex, located in the Titanic Quarter, was built just eleven years ago and is a product of this redevelopment. In 2005, the Pollstar Concert Industry Awards named the arena one of the top six major concert venues in the world. This marks the second time in the EMA’s 18-year history that Ireland has been chosen as host country for the festivities. In 1999, Dublin’s Point Theatre, now the O2 (Dublin), housed the event. – C.D.
Olympic Torch to Pass Through Northern Ireland
T
he London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) has confirmed that over 60 towns and villages in Northern Ireland will be included on the route for torchbearers carrying the 2012 Olympic flame.The flame will be lit in Olympia, Greece, in May, and will then be flown by way of British Airways to the UK.The torch is scheduled to arrive in Belfast on June 3. From there, it will be carried to such attractions as the Northern Ireland assembly at Stormont, Lough Neagh, the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, and the Giant’s Causeway. On June 4, it will be taken across the River Bann.The torch will briefly move into the South of Ireland for a tour of Dublin after symbolically crossing the border at Newry, before moving on into Scotland, where it will visit, among other attractions, the iconic Loch Ness.The torch’s journey through the UK will last for 70 days, and will go through 1,018 villages.
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{hibernia}
Certificate of Irish Heritage Now Available A
Clooney’s Irish Roots
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ith a name like Clooney, it isn’t surprising that George Clooney has Irish ancestry. Now, thanks to research done by Gabriel Murray, the man who first discovered President Obama’s Irish roots, and cardiologist Dr. Michael Conway, Clooney’s Irish heritage has been pinpointed.The village of Tullahought in Co. Kilkenny now claims the famous actor as one of their own. The picturesque village is celebrating the find that Clooney’s greatgreat-grandfather Nicholas Clooney was born in Tullahought in 1829. Records unearthed by family history expert Murray suggest that Nicholas Clooney left for America in 1847 during the Famine. No further records of the Clooneys in Tullahought were found beyond the 1850s. George Clooney has a motorbike tour of Ireland planned for April of next year, and residents of Tullahought are hoping that he will make a stop to visit the Clooney homestead. They plan to invite him to the village pub, E Power’s bar, which his greatgreat-grandfather may have frequented. Clooney’s newest film, aptly named The Descendants, was released on November 18 and there is already Oscar buzz surrounding the film. – M.F.
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s of October, the Certificate of Irish Heritage is now available to anyone who wishes to document and commemorate their Irish ancestry. Run by Irish outsourcing group FEXCO on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the certificate program is open to all members of the Irish diaspora. This will be especially meaningful for those whose Irish roots go too far back to permit them to apply for citizenship. Applicants must prove their link to Ireland by providing the name of an ancestor born in Ireland, along with some form of supporting documentation. In cases where a document cannot be found, a sworn affidavit signed by a notary public or other oath commissioner will be acceptable. The first certificate was issued on September 20 at the firehouse of Squad 288 in Maspeth, Queens. Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore presented the certificate to the family of Joseph Hunter, a firefighter who
died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Joseph’s mother, Bridget, from Co. Galway, received the certificate (above). She reflected that “Joseph was very proud of his Irish roots and in continuing the brave and selfless tradition of service given by the Irish to the FDNY. He would have been very honored to receive the first Certificate.” The Tánaiste spoke of the impact of the Irish community around the world and of the Irish government’s hopes for the certificate, stating, “The collective efforts of the Irish diaspora across the globe have ensured the continued respect and admiration in which Irish people and our culture are held worldwide. Engagement with the global Irish community is central to government policy and we are encouraging and facilitating people in giving expression to their Irish ancestry.” Visit www.heritagecertificate.ie for more information. – S.L.
Fionnula Flanagan Receives Maureen O’Hara Award
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elebrated Irish actor Fionnula Flanagan received the 2011 Maureen O’Hara Award at the Kerry Film Festival in Tralee, Co. Kerry on November 5. The award is presented annually to a woman who has followed in Maureen O’Hara’s footsteps and risen to the top of the film industry. Over the course of her career, Flanagan has proven to be an incredibly versatile actor, giving powerful performances on stage and screen, in projects as diverse as James Joyce’s Ulysses and Star Trek. She has played key roles in the films Waking Ned Devine, Final Verdict, In the Region of Ice, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Some Mother’s Son. She most recently appeared in The Guard, playing Brendan Gleeson’s ailing mother, and in the TV show Lost, as Eloise Hawking. Flanagan said that she was “delighted and very honored to receive the award,” and commented that she is “proud to be able to support the Kerry Film Festival since in these troubling economic times, not just for Ireland, but for the whole world, I believe it is important to keep the arts alive. It is the painters, the poets, the storytellers, the film makers who give us all a different way of looking at life, who remind us of our frailty, our longing, and our potential. However, of all the arts, film is unique. Through the lens of the camera we get to see the power contained in the mere raising of an eyebrow, the averting of the gaze, the smile suppressed, and we realize we are all members of the human family.” Maureen O’Hara herself presented Flanagan with the award on the closing day of the Festival. Past recipients include Juliette Binoche, Rebecca Miller and Brenda Fricker. – S.L.
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{ irish eye on hollywood} A round-up of upcoming movies by Tom Deignan The idea has only been floating for a few weeks and not a word of a script has been written. But already, the Whitey Bulger movie soon to be made by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck is getting mixed reviews. Bulger, of course, is the long-time Irish Godfather of South Boston who had been on the run for nearly two decades. He was finally nabbed in California over the summer. Since then, Damon and Affleck, who shot to fame with the Irish Boston flick Good Will Hunting, announced that they would be making a movie about Bulger, who double-crossed the FBI and was also the basis for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed. But some folks in South Boston are not so sure it’s such a great idea for Affleck and Damon to team up for a Bulger biopic. Anthony Cardinale, the attorney who represented former New England mafia boss Francis Salemme in a case that helped expose Bulger’s ties with the FBI, told the Hollywood Reporter: “If it’s done honestly, [Damon] will Ben Affleck and Matt Damon look like an idiot, a treacherous piece of junk. It’ll be a bad career move for him. [If not done accurately], it’s a worse career move.” Added Tommy Donahue, whose father’s murder was allegedly arranged by Bulger: “I definitely have mixed emotions about this. Hopefully they can depict Whitey Bulger for what he is. They’ll need to do their homework, though.” No word on when the Bulger flick will begin shooting. Current reports suggest Affleck will direct, while Damon will play Bulger. Not surprisingly, this is not the only Bulger-related flick in the Hollywood pipeline. The Departed producer Graham King is developing a flick about John Martorano, an infamous soldier in Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang. Martorano eventually became a government informer. Chuck Hogan, the author who wrote the novel on which The Town is based, is working on the Martorano script. Every now and then the stars align for a big-time Irish movie which has Oscar nominations written all over it. In the Name of the Father was one such flick. So were Michael Collins and Gangs of New York. This December, it’s Albert Nobbs. Glenn Close will star alongside Irish talent such as Brenda Fricker, Brendan Gleeson, Mary Doyle Kennedy and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. 18 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs
Close, who wrote the movie along with Irish Booker Prize winning author John Banville (The Sea), plays the title character, a woman who lives as a man to get a job as a servant in the 1890’s. Close has been attempting to bring this story (based on a book by Irish writer George Moore) to the big screen since she performed the title role on stage in the early 1980s. Shot in Dublin this past winter, the film was directed by Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives) and will hit select theaters on December 21 before a wider January release. Irish movie lovers may not be so happy a week before the Albert Nobbs release. Meryl Streep is slated to star in Iron Lady, a bio-pic of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose policies in Northern Ireland and general relationship with the Irish community were often tense, to say the least. John Dundalk native Moore must be saying yippee
ki-yay. The Max Payne director has just signed on to direct the fifth installment of the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis, who famously yelled the cowboy catch-phrase, followed by a notorious swear word. Moore has directed numerous action films for 20th Century Fox, including Behind John Moore Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen, along with Max Payne. The working title for the latest chronicle of beat-upon cop John McClane is A Good Day to Die Hard.
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Kenneth Branagh remains busy. The Northern Ireland thespian was seen not too long ago playing Laurence Olivier in the Marilyn Monroe film My Week With Marilyn. Branagh will be on the other side of the camera for his next few films. After directing the blockbuster comic book film Thor, Branagh has decided to direct a slightly more modest film. He will helm the screen adaptation of the best-selling book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The book, by coauthors Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, is set in post-war London, and explores the life of a writer who falls in with an eccentric circle of book-loving friends. Variety reports that Branagh is developing an adaptation of Swedish author Henning Mankell’s novel Italian Shoes. He is also attached to an adaptation entitled The Boys in the Boat.
Moving over to TV, the Irish immigrant experience plays a crucial role in the new AMC series Hell on Wheels although the network may want to be a little more careful when it comes to outlining its research. Hell on Wheels follows the monumental efforts to build the Union Pacific Railroad. Not only are two main characters Irish immigrants, but the series’ main character is played by the always-reliable Colm Meaney. Meaney stars as the ruthless railroad visionary Thomas Durant. Ben Esler, meanwhile, stars as a young Irish immigrant named Sean McGinnes, who has come to the American West with his brother. While Ben Esler was born and raised in Australia, Phil Burke (who plays the other McGinnes brother) was born in Toronto to Irish immigrant parents. As the Hell on Wheels historical background website notes: “Every backbreaking task — laying ties, making the grade, spiking in rails — was all done by hand. And the Union Pacific found their primary muscle in the form of Irish immigrants. The Union Pacific sought out and signed up thousands of Irish workers through agents in New York and Boston and shipped them west at terrific expense.” But then the network provides what some Irish Americans might feel is a bit TOP: Jeff McDermott and too much information. Shadia Amen on their wed“Despite some drunken- ding day. ABOVE: Colm ness, strikes, and slowdowns, Meaney as railroad tycoon Thomas Durant in Hell on the imported Irish workers Wheels proved a necessary answer to the renowned Chinese work ethic driving the [rival] Central Pacific’s construction. If it were not for these Irish boots on the ground, toiling, bleeding, and sweating day in and day out, Thomas Durant’s vision for a transcontinental railroad may never have come to fruition.” Did there really need to be a reference to “drunkenness” here? Either way, the Irish played a key role in opening the West, as Hell on Wheels makes clear.
An American immigrant story of a very different sort unfolds on the new TLC reality series All-American Muslim. In this intimate look at the Muslim enclave of Dearborn, Michigan, an Irish American named Jeff McDermott converts to Islam for his wife. Raised Catholic, McDermott met Shadia Amen in 2009 and converted shortly afterwards. “I did it out of respect for the family, so I could marry Shadia the right way in the eyes of the family,” he has been quoted as saying. Highlights of the show thus far include an Arab ceremony at which Jeff’s wife, in a nod to his own background, performs an Irish jig. Finally, in a business dominated by megawatt stars such as Charlie Sheen and Ashton Kutcher, it is heartening to read about J. North Conway. The 61-year-old Irish American journalist, author and English professor at Bristol Community College, has recently become something of a show biz mogul himself. Conway’s book The Big Policeman: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Most Ruthless and Greatest Detective, tells the story of Thomas Byrnes, an Irish immigrant who survived the harsh Irish ghettoes of 19th century America and became the top official in the New York City Police Department. CBS television has optioned Conway’s book for a series, which will explore how Byrnes essentially invented modern police work. Even the phrase “the third degree” comes from Byrnes. “He was the father of forensics, and with CSI and things like that being popular, you can see where it’s going,” Conway was recently quoted as saying. Another of Conway’s books, King of Heists, has been optioned for a movie set to feature Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner, acclaimed for his work in The Hurt Locker. IA
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Celebrating THE WALL STREET
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n September 22nd, a crowd of nearly 250 honorees, guests and supporters gathered at the New York Yacht Club to toast the 2011 Wall Street 50. Guests of honor included Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, Irish Ambassador Michael Collins, Consul General Noel Kilkenny, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the 2011 Keynote Speaker Brian Ruane, CEO of BNY Mellon Alternative and Broker-Dealer Services. In his thought-provoking and informative address, Ruane provided crucial information about the history of the alternatives industry, before delving into the important role Ireland has come to play. He concluded that “It is clear that Ireland is a strong location to do business in Europe and an excellent place for the investment funds industry to recruit talented employees and to grow. It is supported by a solid regulatory framework and an equitable tax environment. It is also clear that the hedge fund market is getting larger. Going forward (in my opinion), Ireland will remain a centerpiece to an ever-changing global financial services environment (albeit one that offers new opportunities), particularly within the growing hedge fund and private equity servicing world. As it relates to this industry, the outlook is quite bright.” Tánaiste Gilmore also addressed the crowd, citing the great strength of the Irish-American community, saying “What characterizes the story of Irish America is, I think, the tenacity, the courage, the enterprise, the ‘never say die’ in the face of adversity, and that’s what’s characterizing the story of Ireland’s road to economic recovery.”
Clockwise from top: The Wall Street 50 honorees with Editor-in-Chief Patricia Harty and Publisher Niall O’Dowd. Consul General Noel Kilkenny, Loretta Brennan Glucksman and Ed Kenny. Honoree Declan O’Beirne and his wife, Leighanne O’Beirne.
Clockwise from above: Tánaiste Gilmore and his wife, Carol Hanney, join Patricia Harty in presenting Brian Ruane and his wife, Anna Lynch with the House of Waterford Crystal King’s Bowl. Honoree Barbara Koster and her guests, six of whom had flown over from Letterkenny. Governor Martin O’Malley.
PHOTOS: SADE JOSEPH & MARGARET PURCELL-RODDY
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore addressing the crowd.
AMERICA Honoree Des MacIntyre, Ciaran O’hOgartaigh, Tony Condon Tom Arnold and honoree Anita Sands.20 IRISH
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Pushing Through to Champion wheelchair racer Amanda McGrory tells Molly Ferns about her record-setting year and her plans for the 2012 London Paralympics.
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ew people begin a career at five years old. But Amanda McGrory, 25, the women’s winner of the wheelchair circuit in the New York City Marathon, can make that very claim. “I was five. I knew nothing, so my dad told me to go to the finish line and stop. So about a half inch before I crossed the finish line, I stopped. I just sat there. Everyone was screaming and telling me to go and cheering, but I just turned around and waved to them thinking that I had finished the race. It took a little bit of coaxing from the sidelines and I finally realized I needed to actually cross the finish line and not just go to it,” she says. Just prior to that first ever wheelchair race, Amanda had completed rehab at A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware. At the young age of five, her life had changed significantly. She contracted transverse myelitis, a rare virus that affects only 1 in 6 million people. In Amanda’s case, her spinal nerve cells are still alive but fail to transfer any signals. This causes her limited feeling and muscle control below her hips, very similar to a spinal cord injury. Having to overcome this was no easy task for a child. “It was tough for me because I went from being a regular kid to not being able to walk. It was difficult to understand why or how that happened. It’s a little bit different if there’s an injury or something related, like you get into a car crash or you fall out a window. For me, it was like
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any other day but I got up and my legs just didn’t work anymore.” Amanda’s family, whom she describes as “incredibly” supportive, found out about a camp in the Philadelphia area for kids with disabilities that “was all about learning how to do things by yourself, being independent and meeting other people.” Through this camp, Amanda was able to discover different Philadelphia sports programs, like wheelchair basketball and wheelchair racing. Fast forward twenty years later and Amanda is one of the top competitors in wheelchair marathons, which she describes as “this crazy hybrid of running, speed skating and cycling.” She is crossing finish lines and breaking records around the world. She finished this year’s New York City Marathon, held on November 6, in a course-record time of 1:50:24. “At about four miles from the finish I looked down, because I keep a running clock with my time, speed and distance. As I was looking at it, I did some quick calcu-
lations in my head and figured out that even if I dropped off from the pace that I was holding, I’d still come in at about a minute under the current record. I couldn’t even believe it.” And it’s not just New York. Amanda also won and broke records at this year’s Paris and London marathons. “It’s definitely been my best year on the road so far,” she says. “I’ve never been more successful.” Along with her three major wins, Amanda also set a new record at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, came in first in England’s Port of Tyne Tunnel 2K and came in second in Oita, Japan just a week before winning New York. Amanda has been racing all over the world for years now but she has yet to find the time to visit Ireland – the birthplace of her paternal grandparents, who emigrated from Donegal and Kilkenny. “I want to go so badly! Unfortunately, as an athlete you want to make sure you have
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Victory time to adjust to different time zones and make sure your sleep schedule is back on track. So I generally fly in a few days before the race, and I’m pretty limited with what I can do with my time. I don’t want to do too much traveling; I don’t want to stay up too late. But I’m hoping that after the London Paralympics I can take a trip over,” says Amanda. In anticipation of the London Paralympics (to be held in conjunction with the 2012 London Olympics), one might naturally expect Amanda to be the frontrunner on the U.S. Paralympic marathon team. Yet, like any other sport, wheelchair racing has its variable elements and challenges. This year’s Chicago Marathon played host to the 2012 London Paralympic qualifier, and was also the scene of an upset for Amanda. “I was last year’s [Chicago Marathon] champion and I was feeling really good coming into the race. But during the warm-up, my steering cracked. I thought that maybe it would last but through all the twists and turns, I only made it to about five miles. I went to go around a turn and the whole front of the chair just came off in my hands. Unfortunately, that was the end of the race for me.” Despite the mechanical malfunction, odds are in her favor that she will qualify for the Paralympic marathon team based on her record times. And one can still expect to see Amanda at this summer’s Paralympics, racing in the 800m and the 5000m events. As the current world champion in both events, she has high hopes of winning the gold. Looking further into the future, Amanda “definitely” has plans for the 2016 Rio Paralympics. “I’m really fortunate thus far to make a career out of wheelchair racing, which is something I never dreamed of. I’m trying to get some sponsors right now, because I’ve been living mostly off of prize money for the past few years, which is fantastic.” Amanda is happy to be taking advantage of her prize money earnings thus far. “I’m a little bit of a shopaholic,” she explains. “I established a ten percent rule, where I’m allowed to spend ten percent of
my prize money on anything that I want.” Amanda’s career as a professional athlete could last a while. In wheelchair marathoning, careers can span several years. The men’s winner of the NYC Marathon, Masazumi Soejima of Japan, is 41 years old. “Wheelchair racers peak a little bit later than able-bodied runners, because wheelchair racing just works completely different,” explains Amanda. “Most women wheelchair racers peak in their early thirties, and men a little bit closer to their mid-thirties. I could potentially stretch my career out for almost another twenty years. There might be a point in my life where I decide that I’ve accomplished the things that I want to in racing, but at this point, at least for the next five years I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.” Amanda knows that although wheelchair racing is her first choice, she has many other options open to her. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she certainly has other career paths she could take. “Potentially, I may go back to grad school after the Paralympics in London [but] if I go back, I’d go into library and information sciences.” Amanda’s training process has definitely played a huge role in her success. After attending the University of Illinois on a wheelchair basketball scholarship, she found herself more drawn to marathons and began training with the men’s team. “They’re some of the fastest men in the world – former world record holders and Paralympic gold medalists. So there’s always someone ahead of me, always
ABOVE: Amanda with Masazumi Soejima of Japan, the champion in the men’s wheelchair race at the 2011 New York City Marathon. OPPOSITE PAGE: Amanda crossing the finish line at the NYC Marathon, in a record-setting victory.
someone faster than me to chase and I think that it’s frustrating for me at practice.” But Amanda believes that this vigorous training program has helped her. “My biggest strength in marathoning is just being able to push longer and harder than anyone else and I think that comes from the program.” During marathons, Amanda often finds herself competing against fellow teammate Tatyana McFadden. “She’s similar to me because she trains the same way I do. She’s a hard worker and she’s tough. In the end, it comes down to every person for themselves but I think that we’re both team players on the way up. Sometimes working together we can break away from everyone else.” As for what’s next, Amanda says that she will be looking forward to this April’s London Marathon. She also has smaller races coming up throughout the winter, a half marathon in the Cayman Islands at the end of this month and some races in Southeast Asia. But she plans on focusing most of her training in preparation for London. “For me, I always want to be faster and always want to be better, so if I could come back in and break the record in London again that’d be fantastic. The biggest goal right now is getting on the Paralympic IA team and bringing home the gold.” DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 23
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Mark Boylan Goes Stateside
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ark Boylan, 14, of Banagher, County Offaly, has combined his love of horse racing with his passion for music, and has captured the attention of the racing community in the process. After a growth spurt dashed his dreams of becoming a jockey, Boylan committed himself to playing his guitar. At 13, he recorded himself singing a song he wrote about attending England’s Cheltenham Fetival, and posted it to YouTube. This caught the attention of Britain’s The Racing Post, which released a version of the song on its website to benefit the Injured Jockeys Fund. Boylan followed this up by writing “Stateside,” a song about the Breeders’ Cup. After receiving positive feedback on YouTube, he sent the video to organizers of the Breeders’ Cup, hoping they might post it on their website. Instead, they invited him to Churchill Downs to perform the song on the day of the Classic races.
Showered with attention from the Louisville media, Boylan became a local celebrity for the week leading up to November 5. He was approached for autographs and photos from race fans, including celebrity jockey Pat Day, and film star Bo Derek.“If someone offered me a week in the Caribbean or a day at the Breeders’ Cup, I’d take the day at the Breeders’ Cup every time,” Boylan told the New York Times in anticipation of the event. “Stateside” is available for download from iTunes for $1.29. All proceeds go to the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund. – C.D.
The Irish Chamber Orchestra Concludes U.S. Tour
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or nearly two weeks this autumn, the Irish Chamber Orchestra toured the United States, traveling from Boulder, CO to Chicago, from New York City’s Lincoln Center to the University of Maine. The University of Limerickbased orchestra was joined by South African conductor Gérard Korsten and the prodigious pianist Leon Fleisher. Fleisher, who emerged into the music world at the age of 8 and had played with the New York Philharmonic by 16, lost the use of his right hand in the 1960s due to a neurological disorder. He re-gained movement of his hand in the early 2000s, thanks to Botox and physical therapy, but partnered with the ICO on their tour to play the left-handed Piano Concerto No. 4 by Sergei Prokofiev, who lost his right hand in WWI. In addition, the tour saw the U.S. debut of “Termon,” a specially commissioned work by Micheál Ó Suilleabháin, Professor of Music at the University of Limerick. A hauntingly beautiful work for uilleann pipes and strings, “Termon” commemorates all those who were affected by the September 11th attacks. Its name is derived from the Irish “An tearmann,” which means “place of sanctuary.” The ICO also played Haydn’s Symphony No, 96 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.
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Founded in 1963, the ICO was the first Irish chamber orchestra to be established outside of Dublin. It performs both internationally and throughout Ireland, and has collaborated with an array of renowned composers, conductors and artists – Bill Whelan and John Kinsella, Alison Balsom, Steve Mackey and Jörg Widmann, and Nigel Kennedy, Maxim Vengerov and Sinead O Connor. The ICO has also demonstrated a strong commitment to its Limerick base
over the years, operating a variety of programs for children in disadvantaged areas of the city. The eight–concert tour marked the third time the ICO has toured the U.S. John Kelly, chief executive of the orchestra said, “This was our most successful tour to date performing to enthusiastic audiences across the US. We received standing ovations at every venue and made many new friends.” Turn to page 108 for an interview with Kelly. – S.L.
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Providence Gives Regards to Cohan
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eorge M. Cohan will always be remembered on Boradway. A statue of the late composer and performer, who penned such influential songs as “Over There,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” stands proudly in Times Square, saluting all those who pass by. But long before Cohan was a star of the stage and screen, he was a son of Providence, RI. Cohan was born there on July 3 (though the legend that it was July 4 persists) and was raised by his Irish immigrant family in a cold-water flat at 536 Wickendon Street, in the Fox Point neighborhood. He got his start performing in the family vaudeville act, and then went on to conquer Broadway and define American patriotism through song. Though the family had changed their name to Cohan from the Irish Keohane, Cohan frequently paid tribute to his Irish roots, with such hit songs as “H-A-Double R-I-G-A-N (Spells Harrigan)” and shows like The Merry Malones and Little Nelly Kelly. When he learned that Cohan had been born in Providence, Sy Dill, a New Yorker who moved to Providence in 2003, was astounded that the city had no real memorial to Cohan. Dill, who is now 80, decided to change this by founding the George M. Cohan Committee of Providence, RI and set out to have a proper statue erected in Cohan’s honor. After receiving the OK from the city, he approached
Massachusetts-based sculptor Robert Shure, who, appropriately, had designed Providence’s Irish Famine Memorial a few years prior. Unveiled in the summer of 2009, Shure’s bust of Cohan is a livelier counterpart to the more staid statue of him in New York. The bronze Cohan, located at the intersection of Governor and Wickendon Streets, raises his hat in a dapper manner, as though he is about to take a bow. To further the legacy of Cohan within Providence and to draw much needed support, the committee created an annual George M. Cohan Award for Excellence in Art & Culture. The inaugural 2009 recipient was Curt Columbus, the Artistic Director of Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company. The 2010 recipient was Michael Fink, Professor of English at the Rhode Island School of Design. Dill and the Committee also hope that the city of Providence will benefit from some Cohan-related tourism and interest. Said Dill, “Cohan represented America, but he was born here in Providence. You can’t deny the importance of that.” – S.L.
New Discoveries at Duffy’s Cut
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he recently exhumed remains of Irish railroad workers at Duffy’s Cut are expected to shed new light on how the young laborers lived and died near Malvern, Pennsylvania in 1832. Hired by railroad contractor Philip Duffy, many of them had come from Ireland to assist in laying the tracks that would eventually become a part of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Mail Line. The majority of the Irish workers perished soon after beginning work; the primary cause is believed to have been a cholera pandemic. Led by Reverend Dr. Frank Watson, his twin brother, Bill, and a team from Immaculata University, digs began in 2009 after a young woman’s remains were found at the site. Shortly after, the mass grave of about fifty railroad workers was discovered. Remains belonging to a man
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Pipe remnants found at Duffy’s Cut
were found in 2009 under a tree, but diggers could not reach the body under the weight of the 80-foot-tall poplar tree. A $10,000 state grant greatly aided the project and as of September 2011, most of the poplar tree has been removed. Researchers found a grisly sight. Roots
from the tree had broken through and dismantled the man’s coffin, growing through the victim’s skull and jaw. Luckily, however, the roots also prevented the man’s remains from washing away. Perhaps the most valuable of the exhumed remains are the man’s full set of teeth. So far the teeth have proven that the man was about 26 and a railroad worker because the wear on his teeth is consistent with a man who did manual labor, according to Lancaster dentist Dr. Matt Patterson. The man’s remains have yet to be identified. The primary goal of the Immaculata University Duffy’s Cut Project is to identify as many bodies as possible. An $18,000 Irish Cross, paid for by the university, will soon mark the site. – M.F.
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Out About &
events around the country
Photos (rows 1-3) by James Higgins
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Top row from left: Michael Dowling, president & CEO of the North Shore LIJ Health System, who received the Gold Medal from the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS) at its annual dinner in the NY Waldorf Astoria in November; Former AIHS honorees, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Father Joseph O’Hare, Mary Higgins Clark and Tom Donaghue . Second row: Dr. Kevin Cahill, president of AIHS and Donald Keough; Des MacIntyre (left), president & CEO of Standish BNY Mellon was honored by the UCD Smurfit Business School dinner in New York in November;Dean Ciaran OhOgarliagh presents Des with his Tiffany Award. Third row: Pictured at the UCD Smurfit dinner, John Fitzpatrick, Honora Kilkenny, Kieran McLoughlin and Noel Kilkenny; Tony Condon. Fourth row: Pictured at the Annual Stars of the South dinner in Atlanta in October, Mary Pat Kelly, Michael Kelly, Martha Kelly and Michael, Jr. Bottom row::Una Fannon, Mary Hunt and Tom Hunt. Tom was honored by the Connaught Athletic and Social Club in San Francisco in November; At the Concern Seeds of Hope dinner in New York in December, Tom Arnold, honoree Robert Arning of KPMG and Tom Moran.
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Titanic Staircase Makes a Grand Entrance
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s construction of the impressive and modern Titanic Belfast building speeds ahead, the past mingled nicely with the future on November 12 when a nearly exact replica of the grand staircase that sank with the doomed ocean liner was installed in the building’s Titanic Suite, which is set to become a 1,000-seat banqueting hall. The original grand staircase, built with the rest of the Titanic in Belfast’s Harland & Wolff Shipyard in 1911, rose an impressive five decks through the ship’s first-class accommodations and was topped by an iconic glass dome. James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic featured a smaller replica of the stairs,
which set the scene for many grand entrances, chases and dramatic escapes. The 10,000-piece staircase has been hand-crafted by Oldstown Joinery, a family firm from the town of Bellaghy. At 23 ft high and 24 ft wide, the staircase is constructed from the wood of a red oak tree—the same material used in the original. The joiners have also been careful to use techniques similar to those that builders would have used in 1911. Sean Diamond, owner of the Oldtown Joinery, said that it was “the most challenging job we’ve undertaken in our 20year history, but it’s also the most rewarding and something which I hope will wow the public for years to come.”
The bulk of the staircase was delivered through the roof of Titanic Belfast. Sections of the stairs were lifted 100 ft into the air by a crane, in a process that took several hours and required 20 builders to then carry and position the sections in the banquet hall. Workers from the Oldtown Joinery will complete the staircase on location, adding the finishing touches in the coming weeks. It is estimated that upon completion the staircase will weigh 4.5 tons and will have demanded 1,500 hours of work. Titanic Belfast is set to open in spring 2012, in time to commemorate the Titanic’s maiden voyage. – S.L.
Conlisk Scholarship Brings Irish Business Students to U.S.
D
uring a time of economic hardship for Ireland, Brian Kelly, a Dublin-born 22-year-old and a graduate of University of Limerick, has been given the opportunity to further his finance studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT. The Rev. John M. Conlisk Irish Scholarship has been awarded each year for the past 20 years to an MBA or MS in finance candidate from Ireland. Established by a group of Irish Americans and Fairfield trustee Kevin M. Conlisk, ’66, the scholarship was named for his late brother and former priest Rev. John M. Conlisk of the Archdiocese of Bridgeport. When the Irish economy was first struggling almost 20 years ago, before the Celtic Tiger, the group believed that the scholarship could help an Irish student make crucial business contacts. This year, full tuition, room and board, and medical insurance expenses have been covered for the next 18 months while Kelly completes his graduate degree at Fairfield’s Dolan School of Business. The scholarship amounts to about $50,000.
Kelly is taking full advantage of the opportunity. He has his eye set on mastering the Bloomberg Terminals and becoming Bloomberg-certified. “I think it will set me apart,” he says. Kelly is taking two courses in the Business Education Simulation and Trading Classroom at Fairfield. He also plans on a finance internship in the area and is considering taking courses that will allow him to become a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He hopes to one day be working in New York City, yet at the moment Kelly has found a home at Fairfield. “Everyone is so warm and friendly at Fairfield,” he says. “They hear the Irish accent and start talking. So many people are Irish. It’s great.” – M.F
DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 29
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Those We Lost John Calley 1930-2011
John Calley, former chief executive at Warner Brothers, United Artists and Sony Pictures, died September 13 at 81 in Los Angeles. Just a few credits include A Clockwork Orange, Jerry Maguire and The Da Vinci Code. He was born July 8, 1930 in Jersey City. He attended Columbia and joined the army before getting his start at NBC as a mail clerk, eventually becoming director of nighttime programming. He went on to become executive vice president of Warner Brothers in 1969 and president in 1975, helping produce such hits as The Exorcist, Chariots of Fire, and many more. He was quite different from typical Hollywood executives, described as witty and fun. After quitting in 1980, he returned to film after accepting an offer to become president of United Artists in 1993. He helped UA turn around with films such as GoldenEye and Leaving Las Vegas. In 1996 he was named president of Sony, and stepped down in 2003. Calley’s survivors include daughter Sabrina Calley and stepchildren Emily Zinneman, David Zinneman and Will Firth. – M.F.
Robert Finigan 1943-2011
Robert Finigan, a wellrespected wine critic famous for his newsletter, Robert Finigan’s Private Guide to Wines, passed away in San Francisco on October 1. The cause is yet to be determined. He was 68 years old. Finigan established his newsletter in 1972, catering to Bay Area wine lovers. In 1977, the newsletter went national. Finigan traveled to Bordeaux, France to critique the 1982 Bordeaux wine. After expressing a low opinion of the wine in opposition to several critics and consumers, Finigan lost readership. The Private Guide to Wines newsletter went out of business in 1990. However, Finigan continued to write successful books such as Corks and 30 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Forks: Thirty Years of Wine and Food (2006), his most recent publication. Born to Mary and James Finigan on September 22, 1943 in Richmond, Va., Finigan attended Harvard University, where his interest in wine was first sparked. He graduated in 1965 and received his master’s degree in 1968. He is survived by his wife, Suzanne, and his sister, Jane Rakip. – M.F.
Father Philip Hannan 1913-2011
Former Archbishop of New Orleans, Father Philip Hannan died September 29 at the age of 98. A strong leader in the church and a close friend of President John F. Kennedy, he is best remembered for giving Kennedy’s eulogy in 1963. He also presided over the funeral services for Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994. Hannan was born May 20, 1913 to Patrick and Lillian Hannan. He was ordained in 1939 after receiving degrees from the Gregorian University in Rome and Catholic University of America. In 1942, he volunteered as a paratroops chaplain and earned the nickname “The Jumping Padre.” An advocate for conservative politics, he pushed for church support of nuclear armament and strongly opposed abortion. Yet, he also stood for liberal social policies , guiding the church’s establishment of an AIDs hospice and creating the largest housing complex for the elderly and poor. Hannan is survived by his brother. – M.F.
Andy Rooney 1919-2011
The curmudgeonly yet beloved voice of the 60 Minutes segment “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” for 33 years, Rooney died on November 4th in a New York hospital, following complications from a minor surgery. He was 92, and had delivered his last broadcast on October 2. Born on January 14 in Albany, NY to Walter and Ellinor Rooney, he demonstrat-
ed an interest in writing and journalism from a young age – working as a copy boy at The Knickerbocker News before enrolling at Colgate University, where he wrote for the college newspaper. He was drafted into the Army in 1941 and eventually became a Sergeant, also working as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. His time in the war provided him with material for My War, one of the 12 books he would go on to publish. After the war, Rooney did freelance work, before convincing Arthur Godfrey at CBS to hire him as a writer. Though he wrote for a slew of other celebrities and was a frequent contributor to national magazines and newspapers, Rooney became best known for his weekly television essays on 60 Minutes, the topics of which ranged from seemingly mundane things such as doors and cereal boxes to discussions of baseball, college tuition and, occasionally, current affairs. Rooney also garnered attention for various insulting remarks, some of which resulted in his suspension from the airwaves for brief periods of time. Of his Irish roots, he once said “I’m proud of my Irish heritage, but I’m not Irish. I’m not even Irish-American. I am American, period.” In his last broadcast, he gave a perfect summation of his spirit and his legacy, stating, “I’ve done a lot of complaining here…but of all the things I’ve complained about, I can’t complain about my life.” Rooney is survived by his four children with his wife of 62 years, Marguerite Howard, who predeceased him. He also leaves behind five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. – S.L. IA
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Quote Unquote A selection of quotes – some poignant, some hilarious – from Ireland and Irish America.
“The brilliant thing about Edna is that she was never embittered by the terrible experience she had of being rejected, of being castigated and spoken down to from the pulpit. She was always somebody with this extraordinary dignity about her, and that was really attractive, and she remains an incredibly attractive person,”
“Mel and I have the same lawyer, same publicist and same shrink. I couldn’t get hired and he cast me. He said if I accepted responsibility – he called it hugging the cactus – long enough, my life would take meaning. And if he helped me, I would help the next guy. But it was not reasonable to assume the next guy would be him…Unless you are without sin – and if you are, you are in the wrong [expletive] industry, you should forgive him and let him work.” – Robert Downey, Jr. about friend and fellow actor Mel Gibson, who presented him with the American Cinematheque award at a star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles on October 14th.
– Writer and theater director Peter Sheridan at the opening night of a new production of Edna O’Brien’s groundbreaking 1960 book, The Country Girls, on November 8th at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre
“This revival is unlikely to supplant memories of the Tony Award-winning 1991 production, which had its premiere at the Abbey Theater in Dublin the year before. But to audiences who know the play only from the flat 1998 movie with Meryl Streep or not at all, its theatrical spell will be revealed. When a blast of Celtic music comes over the radio in the play’s most indelible scene, possessing the Mundy sisters one by one as they stomp and yelp and whirl in individual states of rapturous release, it’s impossible not to be transported along with them.” – New York Times theater critic David Rooney on the Irish Repertory Theater’s production of Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa.
“We feel we would never be able to give our children an opportunity in Ireland. We’re going to work hard out there, and earn a decent living.” – Deirdre Cronin, an accountant from Cork, on her family’s plans to move to Australia. From a recent New York Times article entitled “Ireland’s Austerity Hailed as Example of Financial Survival,” which explored the effects of the austerity measures on the everyday lives of Irish people. 32 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
“I do not believe it was made for purely economic reasons,” said Bishop Murphy. “Compare the estimated savings of about € 700,000 to what some RTÉ stars were paid. The Holy See worked quietly behind the scenes and is a hugely important force. Ireland operates a mission to Ramallah in the West Bank, which is not a state, and closing the embassy just does not make sense.” – Bishop Murphy of Kerry, speaking on Kerry Radio, criticizing the Irish government’s recent decision to close its embassy to the Vatican.
“We always like being the best kid in the class, even when it doesn’t get us very much,” David McWilliams told CNBC.com. “This doesn’t change that we have a debt crisis, a political crisis and an economic crisis all at once.” – David McWilliams, the Irish economist, author and broadcaster, as quoted in a November 21st article on CNBC.com, discussing recent claims that Ireland is a role model for European countries facing economic bailouts.
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BUSINESS 100 KEYNOTE SPEAKER WILLIAM CLAY FORD
Bill Ford
THE MAN BEHIND THE TRADEMARK “Our name is on every product that we sell, and that really gave us the determination to see this through.” INTERVIEW BY PATRICIA HARTY
F
ounded in 1903, Ford Motor Company, is one of the top corporations in the world, and one of a handful of American companies still owned by family. “The company’s determination to survive is, in part, a reflection of the tenacity of the Ford family, which has rallied behind its appointed leader, William C. Ford, Jr. The current generation – with 13 cousins, including Bill Ford – has brought its children into the fold, and the family’s quarterly meetings now attract as many as 35 family members,” a writer for the New York Times reported when the auto industry was on the brink of destruction in 2006. “I think if they see Ford as a company trying to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, and making it on its own and pulling the right levers, I think that could be a positive for us,” Bill Ford said at the time. In retrospect, the family’s decision to borrow $23.6 billion, and put most of its assets, including the “blue oval,” up as collateral, proved to be a good one. In October 2011, Ford announced its tenth consecutive profitable quarter. (Nearly all its profits – $1.65 billion – came from North America.) The company’s position was
34 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
also strengthened in October, when it reached an agreement with the United Automobile Workers union, agreeing to invest $6.2 billion in its U.S. plants – total investment through 2015 would be $16 billion – and create 12,000 jobs over the next four years, in part by insourcing positions from other countries. “As the nation’s economy remains stalled and uncertain, and its employment rate stagnates, we were able to win an agreement with Ford that will bring auto manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China, Mexico and Japan,” said UAW President Bob King Economists see Ford’s plan as having a positive ripple effect on the broader economy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hailed the news, saying “Let’s make this kind of balanced agreement in Detroit a foundation for moving forward toward bipartisan, job-creating policies in Washington.” Ford’s leadership is hardly surprising when you look at the history of the company and its founder. Henry Ford revolutionized how people physically move around the country – and world. He revolutionized the workplace, particularly altering the way workers are paid and how much they earn. He also forever changed the oil and gas industries, organized labor and even the pace of road and highway construction.
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Henry, whose father was an Irish immigrant from Cork, also had a major impact on social and economic conditions in Ireland, when he opened a plant in Cork in 1917, bringing 7,000 jobs to the area. The Ford family connection to Ireland remains strong. Edsel Ford II and his family visited in 2004. Executive Chairman Bill Ford, the fourth generation to have a commanding role at the company, visited in August. Bill was born in 1957 (his father, William Clay Ford Sr., in a fitting match, married Martha Parke Firestone of the famous tire family). He graduated from Princeton in 1979 having majored in history, where he wrote a senior thesis for which he had particularly personal insight: “Henry Ford and Labor: A Reappraisal.� In 1979, in his early twenties, he began working for the Ford company. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Bill worked a number of mid-level executive positions at the company, both in the U.S. and
William Clay Ford, Jr., is Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company. He is Vice Chairman of the Detroit Lions football team, Chairman of the Detroit Economic Club, and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of The Henry Ford Museum. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of both the Business Leaders for Michigan and eBay Inc. In 2009, Ford was featured in the docudrama Death or Canada, offering insights into the trials his family faced when they fled Ireland in 1847 at the height of the Famine, making their way to the United States through Canada, as many Irish immigrants of the time did. In 2011, he visited Ireland for the first time.
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Europe, when breakthroughs such as the S.U.V. sent Ford profits soaring. By this time it was not even clear Bill Ford would spend his life working for his great-grandfather’s company. He dedicated much time and energy to the Detroit Lions football team, who made the NFL playoffs six times in the 1990s. In 1999, however, Alex Trotman stepped down as Ford’s chairman of the board and Bill was elected to replace him. Then following the departure of CEO Jacques Nasser in 2001, Ford stepped in to rebuild and restore faith in the automaker. “I certainly never sought this job,” Ford told USA Today back in 2001. “But when I saw what was happening to our company, I thought I could help us.”
industry analysts agree that the company is on the road to high productivity and profitability. Ford just announced a 13 percent increase in [November] sales over 2010. Henry Ford left a good deal of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, which is no longer part of the Ford Company. The company does still support numerous charities through its Ford Fund, which invests in the arts, education and culture. The company has also raised $110 million for breast cancer research. Bill Ford doesn’t talk much about the charities he personally supports. It is, however, public knowledge that he established the William C. Ford, Jr. Scholarship Program – which provides scholarships for chil-
PHOTO: DENIS BOYLE
launch a community outreach campaign, “Ford Driving Food Home for the Holidays and Beyond,” which will run through the end of February to support Michigan hungry families through the holidays and winter months. “Our economy has gone through a rough period going back several years. And while there are encouraging signs that we’re coming back, many families are still struggling,” said Ford. “Thanksgiving, the parade and the Detroit Lions have been such a big part of our family tradition throughout the years,” said Ford. “The parade really showcases our city in a great way, and Lisa and I are proud to be part of it.” Also on Thanksgiving Day, the Detroit Lions played a gritty game against the unbeaten Green Bay Packers but lost 2715. Still, the Lions right now are headed for their best season in a decade. Similarly, after Ford Motor Company hit a number of bumps in the road, things are looking up for the company’s executive chairman who remains committed to both a profitable company and a strong environmental policy. When I caught up with Bill Ford at the end of August, he had just retuned from his first trip to Ireland.
Tell me about your trip to Ireland.
Bill Ford unveils a plaque in Ballinascarty, Co. Cork in August, 2011.
As CEO, Bill Ford introduced a series of environmentally friendly cars, and in 2005, he hired William McDonough to redevelop the once-decaying River Rouge manufacturing facility and turn it into a sustainable operation with the largest green roof in the world. It’s the mark of a good leader when he knows to move aside, and after five years as CEO, Ford decided that he needed someone to take over the company’s Way Forward restructuring plans. He found that person in Alan Mulally, Boeing’s senior executive officer, who took over as CEO on September 6, 2006. Mulally, for his part, said he would not have accepted the job unless Bill Ford “made an absolute commitment to stay on as chairman.” Since then, Ford and Mulally have faced their share of tough times, but 36 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
dren of Ford workers in the U.S. He has donated millions of his compensation to this scholarship program since 2005. He also is very supportive and takes an active role in children’s charities in the Detroit area. This past November, Bill and his wife, Lisa, the mother of their four children, served as Grand Marshals of the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Detroit. As the official vehicle of the parade, more than 40 Ford cars and trucks (including the F-Series Super Duty, Mustang and all-new Ford Focus Electric) participated in the festivities, pulling floats and carrying celebrities. Bill and Lisa rode in a blue Mustang convertible. Earlier that month, Ford Motor Company and Ford Motor Company Fund partnered with the Parade Company to
It was a great trip. I took my whole family and we had a superb time. We started off in Dublin, my son is a huge soccer fan and we went to one of the Shamrock Rovers game. We did all the touristy things around Dublin. Then we went down to Cork, which is where the Ford offices are. I met with all the Ford Ireland employees and then I went to a dealer reception. But probably the highlight of the trip was when we went to Ballinascarty which is where Henry Ford’s father, William Ford, emigrated from in 1847. We had lunch at the farm of our closest Irish relatives who we’d never met before and they are wonderful people. And then we went into town. There’s not a lot there but the whole town turned out and they put on some music and some dancing. There’s a sculpture of a stainless steel Ford Model T in the town square and so we unveiled a plaque next to the Model T. The people couldn’t have been nicer. We also went to Galway because my kids wanted to go to a university town. We went to some pubs at night to listen to Irish music, and visit-
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ed the Cliffs of Moher. I loved the Ring of Kerry. Overall it was just a great trip and the sense of history we experienced was really pretty neat.
Do you mean the history in general or the history of the Fords?
PHOTO: DENIS BOYLE
Well, both actually. I was a history major at university and I read pretty much nothing but historical books and novels. So I’ve always been fascinated in Irish history. I mean, coming from a country where we have about slightly over 200 years of history, to see things like the Book of Kells, that’s pretty special.
Did you drive? The whole way.
What did you drive? Well, because there was a bunch of us we were in a Galaxy. If I had been there by myself I would have taken a Focus RX, which is one of our high-performance cars, but we took the Galaxy and it was fun. You know, one of the things I noticed is that there’s no suburban sprawl like we have here. You have the cities and then you immediately have the countryside. You don’t have any of the strip malls or the endless sprawl, which is really refreshing.
Would you go back again? Tomorrow! Actually my family is already planning our next trip. It was wonderful. The people were so great.
How much had you known about the Ford family history before your trip? Quite a bit because we have the Henry Ford Museum here in Michigan, which is one of the largest, most visited historical sites in the country. Henry Ford himself started this along with something called the Greenfield Village, which brought in a lot of birthplaces of important Americans at that time. He brought in the workshops of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, Harvey Firestone’s farm and the birthplaces of Noel Webster (who did the dictionary) and George Washington Carver’s birthplace. Henry Ford himself was really tuned into history, including his own history. And so I am very well steeped in the family history.
In Ireland, you talked about people sticking together and the strength in Irish families.
Bill Ford pictured with some Irish Fords, Henry Dan Ford and Hannah Ford O’Brien, 5, who turned out to meet him when he visited Ballinascarty, Co. Cork, birthplace of his great-great-grandfather William Ford.
When GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and we [Ford] fought our way through without [taking the bailout], I said over there that I think it was the Irish in us that kept us going. Because obviously the resilience of the Irish is legendary.
Your family as a unit stuck together and made that decision. We absolutely did. We mortgaged everything to do that. Including the blue oval itself – our trademark. We even mortgaged that In retrospect, it was absolutely the right decision. But, yes, there were many sleepless nights.
Why was it important? Well, for us the company was always much more than just a financial investment. It was and is an emotional and historical one as well. We take tremendous pride in what Ford has meant to people around the world over the last hundred years and what we continue to mean to people. That makes us a different kind of company and maybe even made us tougher and more resilient than others as we went through the tough times, because we never looked at Ford as just a financial instrument. It’s our heritage. It’s our name; our name is on every product that we sell and that gave us the determination to see this through.
Speaking of family, how are the Detroit Lions doing? We’re going to have a good year this year. Talking about Irish Americans and
football, we’ve got the Detroit Lions and Dan Rooney, who’s actually the ambassador to Ireland, now owns the Pittsburgh Steelers. Dan’s a very good guy.
Of course everybody is hoping you’ll invest in Ireland. Ireland has a great, highly educated population and obviously has had a tech boom in its very recent history and that’s something to look at.
What’s the best career advice you were ever given? I’m not sure and I don’t really like to give any, but probably what my father told me when I was just leaving university. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to go work at Ford. He told me to make sure my heart is in it because if I was doing it just for him, or anyone else, I wouldn’t be doing myself or the company any good.
And obviously it worked out. Well yes, but those first few years I still checked in with myself to see if it really what I wanted to do, and if I wanted to continue. But yes, over time absolutely.
Do you think your education in the humanities was useful in your business career? I think it was incredibly useful. There’s a great need for technical training particularly in the U.S. as well, but even engineers have to have exposure to the humanities. First of all, being able to express yourself verbally and in writing is incredibly imporDECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 37
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tant as you enter the business world. You could have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it, it’s never going to be accepted. And I also think that whether it’s history or languages, they are all very useful no matter what field one ultimately goes into.
And in terms of knowledge of our history? I think there’s two ways to look at it. One is the old adage that those who choose to ignore history are condemned to repeat it, and I think there’s a certain truth to that. Also, it really defines who we are today. It’s impossible to look at the issues of today – just look at the riots in London – if one doesn’t understand the sociological underpinnings of that, then there’s no way to understand what drove it and also what might solve it in the future. So understanding history really sets the table for understanding complex issues today. Look at the Middle East – how could you possibly begin to attempt to solve today’s issues in the Middle East without understanding the history there?
I do find that a lot of reporting is very superficial and doesn’t begin to explain the history. We live in a two-minute society. We live in information overload. Most people don’t take the time to digest a thoughtful article, they read the headlines and move on. I look at my own children and find that they get all their news online. My kids will come down to breakfast and I’ll say, do you want to see the paper and they’ll say no I already know all that, that
Bill Ford meeting with Ford Company employees.
all happened twelve hours ago, I logged on last night. And that’s how they get their news. In some respects, they’re much more current, but in other respects, they don’t read a lot of analysis.
I read you were a bit of a musician. Wikipedia?
Yes. Wikipedia. Here’s what happened. I have a guitar
and I’m horrible at playing and the kids always groan whenever I play. So about four years ago, my daughter and her friend thought it’d be funny to make up all this stuff about me and put it on Wikipedia. And they did, including “he’s a great musician and has composed all these songs,” and next thing you know people were using it in biographies. My kids think it’s hilarious because I was a trustee at Princeton and when I stepped down they gave me this very formal
TIMELINE In 1847, John Ford, his wife Tomasina and seven children, and widowed mother Rececca left Ballinacarthy, Co. Cork on a ship bound for Grosse Ile, Cananda. Tomasina did not survive the grueling journey. From there the Fords traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, where John's three brothers had emigrated in the 1830s. John bought an 8-acre farm from Henry Maybury, an old acquaintance from West Cork. Patrick Ahern from Fair Lane off Shandon Street in Cork City, had an adjacent farm. John’s son William met and fell in love with Patrick’s foster daughter, Mary Litogot. The two married on April 21, 1861, and it was agreed that William Ford, who the newlyweds would live at Fair left Ireland in 1847. 38 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Lane with Patrick and his wife, Margaret Ahern. On July 30, 1863, Mary gave birth to the Fords’ first son, Henry. In 1914, the then hugely successful Henry Ford chose to build a 56-room mansion on a 1,300-acre tract of land two miles from his Dearborn birthplace. He named the estate “Fair Lane” after Patrick Ahern’s birthplace. In the summer of 1912, Henry Ford made an important trip to reconnect with his Irish roots. On another trip to Ireland in 1917, Henry Ford established Henry Ford & Son Ltd. It began as a private venture Henry Ford with his and later became a Model T.
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recognition in which they cited my musical prowess, which they had gotten off a Wikipedia page. The short answer is, I have no musical ability or talent. Having said that, I do like to listen to music, and I particularly have always loved Irish music. At home I would make the kids listen to The Dubliners and The Irish Rovers and a lot of the old traditional songs. I actually like bluegrass, which has been heavily influenced by Irish music. So yes I loved the music when I was there.
You are a committed environmentalist and I read that Henry Ford said that his first memory was of his father slowly and deliberately turning the plough around in order to avoid disturbing a bird’s nest. He was a great naturalist and environmentalist, though the term wasn’t invented yet. He felt that in the production process you shouldn’t waste anything. For instance, we call it recycling, but what he did was he used all the wooden shipping crates and made them into frames for the vehicles or running boards for the cars, and what was left over he had compressed into charcoal and started his own charcoal company. Nothing was wasted. We call it being environmentally responsible; in his day he just felt he was being non-wasteful.
Maybe it came out of his father’s experience of the famine. I suspect that’s right. Just like here my
grandparents’ generation was heavily influenced by the Great Depression.
Can you talk a little bit about Fontinalis Partners. It seems interesting in terms of the future? It’s an investment firm that I co-founded which is focused on providing transportation solutions for the future. It’s about helping ease the pressure of overpopulation and extreme urbanization around the globe. Because when you have that you have some unique personal mobility issues. Fontinalis Partners is Tom and his trying to find young companies that are wife Joan. working to help solve that problem.
That sounds like an investment in America’s future. Well, it’s not just America. We’re interested in a global approach because the issues are not unique to America.
and found that someone in Alan. At the time everybody said, who is this guy, and why would you hire someone from an aircraft company? But I knew he was the right guy and he’s proven to be terrific. And yes he is another Irish American and I couldn’t wait to tell him about my trip there.
Ford Motor Company, to me, is a shining example of what a family and company can do. Well, thank you so much. It is going well right now and those dark days are starting to fade a little bit, thankfully. It’s been a heck of a roller coaster. But we did things the right way. We did it ourselves, and now we’re back on the mend and it feels good.
Thank you, Mr. Ford.
Was it a difficult decision to step down and bring in Alan Mulally, another Irishman? It’s been great. I took over in 2001 when we had been awash in red ink and I got us back to three years of profitability, but as I looked ahead I didn’t like what I saw coming at us. So I thought we’d have to do major restructuring, and culturally I would’ve been the wrong person to do it because of the relationship I have with the workers. But I looked for someone
division of Ford Motor Company. As Ford historian Bob Kreipke explains: “Henry Ford's family roots drew him to Ireland. He knew what he was able to do socially and economically in the United States, and he figured he could apply that model to the depressed area of Cork.” Ford employed 7,000 there until the assembly operations were Edsel Ford, son of closed in 1984. Henry Ford. For many of the Ford family descendants, the interest in their Irish roots remains strong. Edsel Ford II and his family visited the old homestead in Cork in 2004. This past summer, William Clay Ford, Jr. and his family made a visit.
Bill Ford Executive Chairman Ford Motor Company (rt) with Ford CEO Alan Mulally.
Bill Ford pictured with his father on his first day at work at Ford Co. in 1979.
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IRISH AMERICA
BUSINESS The Business 100 celebrates the great success of the Irish in corporate America. The executives profiled in the following pages represent some of the most influential and innovative corporations in the world, in sectors ranging from technology to cosmetics, from publishing to insurance, from advertising to automobiles. From those who were born in Ireland to those who feel strongly connected to an ancestor who immigrated generations ago, all of the honorees hold their Irish heritage in the highest regard. Their achievements are a testament to the incredible scope, power and accomplishments of the Irish diaspora. Irish America is proud to recognize this remarkable group of men and women. Congratulations to all of the honorees.
Beir Bua!
100
“The McGraws brought from Ireland a great love of learning and a belief that honesty and hard work are fundamental to strong societies.” – Harold (Terry) McGraw, III, The McGraw Hill Companies
“For me, being Irish is about perseverance, resilience and gratitude, and I am proud to embody those traits in everything I do.” – Alan Ennis, Revlon
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“My Irishness is an absolutely integral part of my sense of self. From the facts around my greatgrandparents’ immigration to this country to the stories of their life in 19th century Lowell, Massachusetts and specifically their life in the very home where my father lived all his life, I have felt connected to Ireland and the struggles of the Irish immigrants to this country all my life.” – Tim Sullivan, Ancestry.com
“It’s just so easy being there, because Ireland is a country you can get your arms around pretty easily. It’s like going to the next parish. ” – Jim Quinn, Tiffany & Co.
“When I think of my Irish heritage, I think of laughter – laughing with my aunts and uncles, my brothers and my friends in Dublin. Being Irish means being able to find the beauty and humor in almost anything.”
“Our Irish heritage grounded our family in tradition, and taught us from an early age to be respectful and curious about our family history.”
– Brian Monahan, MAGNA Global
– Patricia Farrell, Aetna
Most Mentioned Colleges and Universities: Harvard • University College Dublin • Northwestern • Trinity College Dublin • Georgetown Most Popular Counties of Origin: Cork • Kerry • Dublin Tipperary • Mayo • Roscommon Ancestral Links: 1st Generation 5th Generation
Irish Born
14%
22%
3%
4th Generation
18%
2nd Generation
20% 3rd Generation
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BUSINESS 100
CHARLENE BEGLEY
TOM BRADLEY
CONRAD BURKE
General Electric
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
DuPont Innovalight
Charlene Begley is president and CEO of GE Home & Business Solutions and a senior vice president and CIO for GE. Charlene joined GE in 1988 and progressed through leadership roles including vice president, GE Corporate Audit Staff and president and CEO for several GE businesses including GE FANUC Automation, Transportation, Plastics, and Enterprise Solutions. At 32, she became the company’s youngest ever corporate officer, and she also set the record as the first woman to lead one of GE’s major business units and the first female senior vice president. Her accomplishments have been recognized on lists in Fortune, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Charlene is a member of GE’s Corporate Executive Council and the boards of Morpho Detection, Inc. and the National Association of Manufacturers. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. A fifth-generation Irish American, Charlene graduated from the University of Vermont.
Tom Bradley is chief financial officer at Dorsey & Whitney, LLP, a leading international law firm with a home base in Minneapolis. He most recently served as executive vice president and CFO of Fair Isaac Corporation. Previously, he headed North America Operations for Zurich Financial Services, a firm he joined in 2004 as CFO for North America. Before that, he was executive vice president and CFO for The St. Paul Companies. Tom joined St. Paul in 1998 when that company acquired USF&G, where he was serving as vice president of finance and corporate controller. A graduate of the University of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in accounting, Tom also holds an MBA from Loyola College of Maryland, and is a certified public accountant. He resides in St. Paul, MN with his wife Michelle and son Andrew. Tom is a third-generation Irish American. His great-grandfather, Thomas Bradley, came to Newtown, CT from the west coast of County Clare, fought in the Civil War, raised seven sons, and rose from a factory worker to become the town's selectman and postmaster.
Conrad Burke founded Innovalight in 2005 and served as the president and CEO until August 2011, when DuPont acquired the company. He now serves as general manager of DuPont Innovalight. Conrad’s career has provided him with extensive experience in research and development, product management, marketing, and sales. He has worked with leading global organizations like NEC and AT&T, and abroad, with operations in Germany, U.K., and Japan. Before founding Innovalight, Conrad was the SVP of Worldwide Sales for Oclaro and was a venture partner at Sevin Rosen Funds. He has been recognized for his work, receiving the Technology Pioneer Award for cleantech innovations from the World Economic Forum. In 2010, the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese presented him with The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Conrad, who was born in Dublin and raised in Co. Wicklow, is “very proud to have been born in Ireland.” He received his MS in physics from Trinity College Dublin and his BS in physics from University College Dublin. Conrad also attended The London Business School.
STEVE CAHILLANE
JOAN CARROLL
LIAM CASEY
The Coca-Cola Company
PwC
PCH International
With twenty years of experience in the bevererage industry, Steve Cahillane is president of the North American Group for Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE). Steve is one of four children of a New York firefighter with roots in Co. Kerry and a mother who was born and raised in Donegal and immigrated to New York City at the age of 18. He holds a BA degree in political science from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard University. Prior to joining Coca-Cola, Steve, who began his career as a sales representative for E&J Gallo Winery, held senior management positions with Coors Distribution Company, InBev, and Labatt USA. He entered the European beverage industry in 2003, working for two years as chief executive of Interbrew UK and Ireland. Following that, he moved to Brussels and served as chief commercial officer for InBev. In 2007, Steve was appointed president of the Europe Group for CCE, and in 2008, he was named president of CCE’s North American Group. He and his wife, Tracy, reside in Atlanta with their four children.
Joan Carroll is a director in the Personal Finance Services Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. For over 24 years, she has provided comprehensive tax and financial planning services to high net worth individuals, managers and investors of hedge funds and private equity funds, senior corporate executives, and owners of closely held businesses. Joan holds a BBA in accounting from Adelphi University, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Concern Worldwide US. She grew up in Wantagh, New York and now resides in nearby Long Beach. Her grandfather, Patrick McHugh, was born in County Leitrim, while the Carroll name hails from Westport, County Mayo. Joan is very proud to be of Irish descent, and is “grateful for the strong faith that was passed down to me.”
Liam Casey is the founder and CEO of PCH International, a supply chain management company focused on consumer electronics, personal computers, medical devices, telecommunication industries, and clean technologies. Liam identified the enormous potential and opportunities for growth in China in the mid1990s. PCH was founded in 1996 in Cork, Ireland, where the company is headquartered, and where Liam was born. Its operational headquarters are in Shenzhen, China. Over 1000 employees work in PCH offices in Ireland, China, USA, with a software development team in South Africa. PCH’s clients are primarily multinationals based in North America including three of the top five personal computer companies, three of the top five telecom and networking companies, and three of the top five consumer electronics companies worldwide. Liam was awarded Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year-Ireland accolade in 2007. In June 2011, he was admitted as a fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Directors.
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CHERYL CAVANAUGH
KIERAN CLAFFEY
Pernod-Ricard
PwC
AODAN COBURN Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Cheryl Cavanaugh began her career in the spirits industry in 2005, as a member of the Absolut Vodka marketing team. Following the acquisition of Absolut by Pernod Ricard in 2008, Cheryl joined the Jameson Irish Whiskey brand team. As brand manager of Jameson for the U.S., Cheryl has continually played a key role in driving the tremendous growth of Jameson. According to the Beverage Information Group’s 2011 report, the brand now claims 73% market share contributing to 89% of growth on the Irish Whiskey category. Jameson surpassed its one-millionth case sales milestone in 2010 . The current scope of Cheryl’s responsibilities includes Digital Strategy and Activation, PR & Events, Bartender Outreach and Category Management. Cheryl is a graduate of Boston University with a degree in mass communication, and resides in Westchester, NY with her husband. With a paternal grandmother from Co. Longford, Cheryl is a second-generation Irish American who also traces her roots to Co. Cork on her mother’s side of the family.
Kieran Claffey is a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP. After joining PwC in 1985, he spent over ten years in the Assurance practice before transfering to the national office to focus on litigation and regulatory related issues. He represents PwC on the Technical Standards Committee of the American Institute of CPAs. Kieran was a founding member and director of the Ireland Chamber of Commerce in the U.S. and a director of the European-American Chamber of Commerce. He is the national treasurer and board member of the Ireland-U.S. Council of Commerce & Industry. He is chairman of the finance committee, member of the executive committee and on the Board of Trustees of The Gateway Schools, and is a director of Legal Information for Families Today Born in Dublin, Kieran is an avid sportsman and has won several all Ireland dancing medals. A graduate of University College Dublin, he is fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. Kieran lives in Manhattan with his wife, Michelle, and three sons, Ryan, CJ and Steven.
With 25 years of experience in the home entertainment industry, Aodan Coburn is the executive vice president of Worldwide Operations, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE). He helps supervise the global operations, sales and marketing of all packaged media (Blu-ray Disc™, DVD, UMD and VHS.) Prior to his current position, Aodan was senior vice president of International Operations and oversaw the merger of SPHE and MGM Home Entertainment. He began working at SPHE (then Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment) in 1988 after working at Rank Video Services in the U.K. His accomplishments include launching the DVD format in 24 countries around the world. He was named one of the “Top 30 Irish Overseas Executives” by the Sunday Independent. Born in Ireland, with roots in Dundalk, Aodan holds a BA and MA in economics and business studies from Trinity College Dublin. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two children and he says, “the biggest thing about me is being Irish. The more I travel, the more I realize just how Irish I am.”
THOMAS W. CODD
DONALD E. COLLERAN
FRANK COMERFORD
PwC
Federal Express
NBC Owned Television Stations
Thomas W. Codd is PwC’s North Texas managing partner. He was a two-term elected member of PwC’s Board of Partners. He has spent his entire career serving manufacturing and distribution companies, ranging from private companies to multinational corporations. Tom is a director of the American Ireland Fund, a member of the North American Advisory Board of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and a member of the New York City Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. He earned a BSc in management from Purdue University. He also serves on many civic boards in Dallas, including The Catholic Foundation, World Affairs Council of Dallas-Ft. Worth and Circle 10 Council/Boy Scouts of America Tom is a second-generation Irish American whose paternal grandparents were born in counties Carlow and Sligo. On his Irish heritage he remarks, “I attribute my fundamental values of work ethic, loyalty, fortitude, charity, humor, and grace in large part to my ancestry. ” He and his wife, Shelly, live in Dallas, Texas with their four children: Tommy, Kevin, Mike and Kaitlin.
Since 2006, Don Colleran has been executive vice president of Global Sales & Solutions for FedEx Services, leading a global organization of more than 7,000. Don started with FedEx in 1989 as an International Sales manager. In 1992, he moved to Tokyo and began a 12-year career in international sales and operations management. There, Don became managing director of Sales, North Pacific Region and in 1997 was named vice president, Sales, for the Asia Pacific region. In 2000, he was promoted to president, FedEx Canada. Three years later he was named senior vice president, International Sales and moved to Memphis, Tenn. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Don is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Galway and Cork. He earned a BS in business administration from the University of New Hampshire. Don is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Indy Festival Foundation children’s charities, a member of the American Chamber of Commerce and a member of the US-ASEAN Business Council. He also serves on the Board of the InMotion Orthopaedic Research Center.
Francis X. Comerford is the chief revenue officer & president of commercial operations for NBC Owned Television Stations. Frank joined NBC in 1994. Before being promoted to his current role in 2008, he was president and general manager of NBC’s flagship station, WNBC. His career in the television industry spans over 30 years. Frank is very active in the community, serving on many charitable boards including the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, the Association for a Better New York and The Television Bureau of Advertising. He has been honored by several organizations, including: the Child Abuse Prevention Program, the Diocese of Brooklyn, and Friends of AHRC Nassau Autism Program. He was Chief Brehon of Brooklyn’s Great Irish Fair in 2003 and has been named a “Favorite Son of Brooklyn.” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz declared Nov. 26, 2002 Frank Comerford Day. Frank, his wife, Maura, and their son Francis Jr., live in Brooklyn and Long Island. He has roots in Co. Kilkenny and was recently named Grand Marshal of the 2012 NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 43
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BUSINESS 100
DEIRDRE CONNELLY
ADELE COOPER
CATHERINE COUGHLIN
GlaxoSmithKline
AT&T
Deirdre Connelly is president, North America Pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline. She is a member of the global Corporate Executive Team and co-chairs, along with the Chairman, Research and Development, the Portfolio Management Board. Prior to joining GSK, Deirdre served as president of U.S. operations at Eli Lilly and Company. Deirdre has been consistently recognized by Fortune as one of the 50 most powerful women in business. In 2008, she was appointed to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. In 2010, she was named Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. Deirdre was born in San Juan to an Irish father and a Puerto Rican mother. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and marketing from Lycoming College in Pennsylvania in 1983. In 2000, she graduated from Harvard University’s Advanced Management Program.
Adele Cooper is director of Global Customer Marketing & Communications at Facebook and is based in the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California. She oversees all outbound marketing and communications to Facebook’s advertising clients and agency partners globally. Prior to joining Facebook, Adele spent six years at Google, where she was director of Global Customer Marketing. Previously, she was Google’s director of Online Sales & Operations for the UK, Irish and Benelux markets, based at the company’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin. As the first local manager hire for Google in Dublin, she played an instrumental role in the development of the Dublin office. Prior to joining Google, Adele spent several years in business development at a number of different technology ventures in Dublin. She began her career at Disney Interactive (the multi-media division of The Walt Disney Company), based in both the US and France. Born and raised in Dublin, Adele has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard.
Catherine Coughlin oversees AT&T brand strategy, advertising, corporate communications, events and sponsorships worldwide. Cathy began her communications career in 1979 when she joined Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in her hometown of St. Louis. During her over 30 year career, she has held officer roles in sales, marketing, operations and advertising for AT&T. Prior to her current role, Cathy was president and chief executive officer of AT&T Midwest. Throughout her career, Cathy has been committed to serving the community. She serves on the board of directors of several organizations including Northwestern University, the Girl Scouts of the USA and the Dallas Women’s Museum. She also serves on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. Cathy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Northwestern University and a Master of Science in Finance degree from St. Louis University.
DENNIS CROWLEY
PAMELA DALEY
BILL DALY
Foursquare
General Electric
Warner Bros.
Dennis Crowley is the co-founder of Foursquare, a service that mixes social, locative and gaming elements to encourage people to explore the cities in which they live. Previously, Dennis founded dodgeball.com, one of the first mobile social services in the US, which was acquired by Google in 2005. In 2005 Dennis was named one of the “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. In 2009 he won the “Fast Money” bonus round on the TV game show Family Feud. His work has featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time, Newsweek, MTV, Slashdot and NBC. Dennis is currently an adjunct professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). A fourth-generation Irish American, Dennis holds a master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a bachelor’s degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. His great-great-grandparents emigrated from Sneem, County Kerry.
Pamela Daley is senior vice president at General Electric. She earned her AB degree from Princeton University and graduated first in her class from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Before joining GE, Pamela was a tax partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and an adjunct professor at the UPenn Law School. Pamela joined GE in 1989 as tax counsel and was VP and senior counsel for transactions from 1991 to 2004. In 2004, she became VP-corporate business development and was promoted to her current position in 2005. She is responsible for GE’s mergers, acquisitions and divestiture activities worldwide. Pamela serves on the boards of General Electric Capital Corporation, GE Capital Services, Inc., and the GE Foundation. She is a member of the boards of UPenn, the UPenn Law School and The Juilliard School. She is a past director of the World Wildlife Fund and is a member of its National Council. She is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Meath on her father’s side.
Bill Daly has served as the senior vice president of Warner Bros. Pictures Post Production since 2006. Previously, he held the position of director and became vice president in 2003. Bill has supervised such films as Ocean’s 11, Happy Feet, The Dark Knight, all of the Harry Potter films, and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Prior to his work at Warner Bros., Bill began his career at ABC. He was the unit manager for several news programs, including 20/20, Good Morning America, and ABC World News Tonight. He made the move to Lorimar-Telepictures before Warner Communications absorbed the company. Bill graduated magna cum laude from Temple University School of Communications and Theater in 1977. He has served on the Board of Temple University School of Communications and Theater since 1999. A second-generation Irish American, he says, “Almost literally, I grew up with one foot in Philly and one foot in West Limerick. It was just the way we lived. I never thought about it very much. Isn’t everybody Irish?” Bill and his wife, Patricia Yamate, have a son, Ian.
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BUSINESS 100
MICHAEL E. DANIELS
A. JAMES DEHAYES
MICHAEL J. DOLAN
IBM
DeHayes Consulting Group
ExxonMobil
Mike Daniels has worldwide responsibility for IBM Services, which includes outsourcing, consulting and systems integration, application management, integrated technology services, maintenance and technical services, and global delivery. These businesses account for more than half of IBM revenue. Previously, Mike was general manager of IBM’s Sales and Distribution operations in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Before that, he led Global Services in the Asia Pacific region. Since joining IBM in 1976, he has held a number of leadership positions in sales, marketing, and services, and was general manager of several services businesses, including Product Support Services, Availability Services, and Systems Solutions. He sits on the Board of Directors for Tyco International and serves as IBM’s Senior State Executive for Connecticut. Mike is a graduate of The College of the Holy Cross with a degree in political science, and serves as a trustee at Holy Cross. Mike traces his Irish roots to his father’s ancestors, the Hogans, who emigrated from Co. Clare. He and his wife, Patty, have three children.
A. James DeHayes is an authority on strategy development and implementation in marketing, distribution, and M&A support for the financial services industry. He has successfully guided clients through the complex process of designing and developing distribution systems tailored for new products, enhancing productivity and profitability of existing distribution, and adjusting legacy distribution to new competitive realities. Prior to founding DeHayes Consulting Group, Jim served as CMO for a major diversified financial services company. He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, a graduate of Leadership in Professional Services, a chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant from the American College, and holds an MBA from Pepperdine University. Jim is a member of the North American Advisory Board for the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin. A secondgeneration Irish American whose mother’s family has roots in Belfast, Jim is married with six children.
Michael J. Dolan has worked in the oil and petrochemical business for 36 years. He began his career in research and development, and proceeded through a variety of research, engineering, manufacturing and business management positions. Michael has worked in all parts of ExxonMobil’s business both domestically and abroad. Today he is senior vice president and a member of the management committee of ExxonMobil Corporation in Dallas, TX. Michael is a director of the U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, the U.S.-China Business Council, and a former director of the American Petroleum Institute. He is also trustee of his alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he received a BS in chemical engineering. Michael holds an MBA from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Ballincollig, Co Cork. He says, “My great-grandfather came to America, served in the army and bought a small farm. His descendants have been living the American dream as a result.” Michael and his wife, Debora, have four children.
PATRICK W. DOLAN
JOHN DONAHOE
CRAIG S. DONOHUE
KPMG LLP
eBay Marketplace
CME Group
Patrick W. Dolan has over 30 years of experience in consumer markets and wholesale industries. As the national managing partner of Market Development at KPMG, Pat has successfully led cross-functional teams to develop new clients, while retaining already existing clients. He also oversees KPMG’s 12 industry sectors, the company’s Channel Initiatives, and its Marketing Group. Pat is a member of both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Illinois Society of Certified Public Accountants. He serves as a board member for the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, and is also on the Board of Trustees and the treasurer for the Chicago History Museum. Pat earned his BBA in accounting from the University of Notre Dame. A fourth-generation Irish American with ancestral links to Co. Galway, Pat says, “Whether it is touring Ireland to trace my family roots or watching my daughter at an Irish dance recital, I am very proud of my Irish heritage.” He and his wife, Nancy, have three children, Kevin, Patrick and Erin.
John Donahoe became president and CEO of eBay Inc. in 2008. He has global responsibility for growing each of the company’s business units, which include eBay Marketplaces, PayPal and Skype. John joined eBay in February 2005 as president of eBay Marketplaces. He focused on expanding eBay’s core business and also oversaw a number of strategic acquisitions, including Shopping.com, StubHub and classifieds sites, such as Gumtree and LoQUo. Prior to eBay, John spent over 20 years at Bain & Co., a worldwide consulting firm. Starting as an associate consultant, John became the firm’s CEO and oversaw Bain’s 30 offices and 3,000 employees. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for eBay Inc. and Intel Corp., John is also on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College. John received a BA from Dartmouth and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. A fifth-generation Irish American, John’s roots are in Tipperary. He is married to Eileen Chamberlain and they have four children.
Craig S. Donohue has served as CEO of CME Group and its predecessor company, CME Holdings Inc. since 2004. In 2010, Craig was selected as one of the 50 best-performing CEOs in the world by the Harvard Business Review. In 2009, Craig was named to Institutional Investor’s Power 50 list of the World’s Most Influential People in Finance. He is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s CEO council and serves on the steering committee for its Future of Finance Initiative. He is chairman of the board of directors of the Council for Economic Education and chairman of the Executives’ Club of Chicago. Craig serves on CME Group’s Board of Directors, as well as the boards of BM&FBOVESPA and the World Federation of Exchanges. A third-generation Irish American with roots in Co. Cork, he earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, a JD from John Marshall Law School, his ML in financial services regulation from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and a BA in political science and history from Drake University. He lives in Northbrook, IL, with his wife and their three children.
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BUSINESS 100
LISA DONOHUE
BRENDAN DOUGHER
MICHAEL J. DOWLING
Starcom USA
PwC
North Shore-LIJ Health Systems
Lisa Donohue is CEO of Chicago-based Starcom, whose clients include Bank of America, General Motors, Kellogg’s and Mars/Wrigley. Prior to tackling the top job at Starcom, Lisa served as president of the Truth and Design group at SMG sister agency MediaVest. Since beginning her career in 1987, Lisa has exhibited strong strategic thinking on a variety of accounts including Kellogg’s, General Motors, Miller, NYSE, Samsonite and Sony. Lisa is active on the SMG network’s Leadership Board and Global Product Committee, and a board member of SMGx. She delivered the keynote address at the iMedia Connection Agency Summit, and the Chicago CMO Summit in both 2010 and 2011. Her other career accolades include Chicago Advertising Federation’s 2011 Advertising Woman of the Year honor, Adweek’s 2011 Executive of the Year award, two Mediaweek “Plan of the Year” honors, and two Cannes Media Lion victories for her work on Nintendo. Lisa is a third-generation Irish American on her father’s side and fourth-generation on her mother’s. Both families are from Cork.
Brendan Dougher is a managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP with the New York Metro region of the firm. Brendan has 28 years of experience with PwC and prior to his current position he was Managing Partner of the Firm’s New Jersey practice. He heads the firm’s involvement with the Partnership for New York City and serves as Senior Relationship Partner for several of clients, including New York Life and Con Edison, Inc. Brendan is a certified public accountant and a member of both the New York State and New Jersey State Societies of Certified Public Accountants. He is also a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Brendan serves as a board member of the Foreign Policy Association, for which he won the Corporate Social Responsibility Award. Brendan graduated with a bachelor’s in accounting from King’s College. He is a third-generation Irish American who can trace his family back to Co. Mayo. He says, “I am proud to say I am Irish everyday.”
Michael J. Dowling is president and CEO of the North Shore-LIJ Health System. Prior to becoming president and CEO in 2002, Michael was the health system’s executive vice president and COO. Before joining North Shore-LIJ in 1995, he was a senior vice president at Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He served in New York State government for 12 years, including seven years as state director of health, education and human services and deputy secretary to the Governor. He was also commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services. Before his public service career, he was a professor and dean at Fordham University. Michael is chairman of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership and chairman of the North American Board of the Smurfit School of Business at UCD. He grew up in Limerick and earned his undergraduate degree from University College Cork and his MA from Fordham. He has honorary doctorates from Hofstra University and Dowling College. He recently received the 2011 Health Information Management Systems Society CEO IT Achievement Award.
PATRICK T. DOYLE
BILL DUFFY
MIKE DUFFY
DirecTV
Bobcats Sports & Entertainment
Cardinal Health
As the executive vice president and chief financial officer of DirecTV, Pat Doyle is in charge of all internal and external financial affairs. These include accounting, financial planning, treasury, business management, investor relations, and audit and tax. Before becoming executive vice president and chief financial officer, Pat held the position of controller and chief accounting officer. He is a certified public accountant, having first worked for Deloitte and Touche accounting firm. He then worked for Baker Hughes, an oilfield services company. Pat joined DirecTV in 1992 as director of Taxes and was appointed vice president of Taxes in 1996, having the added responsibility of Corporate Development in 1997. As a fourth-generation Irish American, tracing his family back to Tipperary, Pat believes his Irish heritage is important because it influences his behavior, values, morals and attitudes. He and his wife, Marla, have two sons, Brendan and Ryan.
A 23-year veteran of the sports industry, Bill Duffy was named executive vice president, chief financial and administrative officer for Bobcats Sports & Entertainment in August 2010. He oversees the finance, human resources, legal, IT and arena administration departments for the Charlotte Bobcats and Time Warner Cable Arena. A graduate of Princeton University and NYU, where he earned his master’s in Accounting, Bill’s work history includes executive positions with the San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins, Atlanta Hawks and Thrashers and the NFL. A dual US-Irish citizen, Bill’s roots run deep, including service on the Executive Committee of ICCUSA, Atlanta Chapter, the Executive Committee of the Atlanta St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and accompanying Georgia Governor Perdue on a trade mission to Ireland in 2007. A strong advocate for improving the lives of children, Bill spent six years on the Board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta. A certified public accountant, Bill has been married to his wife, Cathy, for 30 years, and raised two daughters, Erin and Caitlin.
Mike Duffy is executive vice president of Global Manufacturing and Supply Chain for Cardinal Health. Prior to Cardinal Health, Duffy served as vice president, Global Value Chain at The Gillette Co. Mike is president of the Corporate Advisory Council at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business Master of Supply Chain Management Program and a former board member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). Mike earned both his bachelor’s degree (operations research) and master’s degree (transportation) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a fourth-generation Irish American with roots in Dublin on both sides of the family, and ancestors from Kilkenny on his mother’s side. He remarks, “my family is from Boston, where the Irish community is still very active. I am proud to be a descendant of the Irish community that both built the city infrastructure and shaped its local culture. It is that work ethic and sense of purpose that I carry with me every day.”
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BUSINESS 100
TERRENCE A. DUFFY
ALAN T. ENNIS
MARY CALLAHAN ERDOES
CME Group Inc.
Revlon, Inc.
Terrence A. Duffy has been executive chairman of CME Group since 2007. Previously, he was chairman of the board of CME and CME Holdings since 2002 and executive chairman since 2006. He serves on the board of directors of World Business Chicago, the board of trustees of Saint Xavier University, and the regional advisory board of The American Ireland Fund. He is also co-chair of the Mayo Clinic Greater Chicago Leadership Council. In 2002, Duffy was appointed by President Bush to serve on a National Saver Summit on Retirement Savings and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2003 to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. A third-generation Irish American, Terrence attended the University of WisconsinWhitewater. In 2007, he received a Doctor of Humane Letters from DePaul University.
Alan T. Ennis has served as Revlon’s president and CEO since May 2009 and has been a director on the Company’s board since March 2009. He was named a “Top 40 financial executive under 40” by Treasury & Risk magazine in 2008. Prior to joining Revlon, Alan held several senior positions with Ingersoll-Rand Company. He began his career in 1991 with Arthur Andersen in Dublin. A chartered accountant and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, Alan is on the Board of Directors of the Ireland U.S. Council. Alan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University College Dublin, Ireland, and a Master of Business Administration degree from NYU Stern. This past summer, he returned to NYU as commencement speaker for the 2011 Executive MBA graduation ceremony. Born in Dublin to Michael Ennis of Tipperary and Maggie Ennis of Cork, Alan believes that “being Irish is about perseverance, resilience, and gratitude.” He currently resides in New Jersey with his wife, Michelle, and three young children.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management
JOSEPH F. FALLON
JAMES FARLEY
BRENDAN P. FARRELL, JR.
The Fallon Company
Ford Motor Company
XSP
As CEO and president of The Fallon Company, Joseph F. Fallon oversees the development and investment operations of the company’s real estate portfolio, which includes some of the most sought after residential, hotel and commercial properties in Boston. Fan Pier Boston – a three billion dollar mixed-use development considered by many to be the “Crown Jewel” of Boston Harbor – also the largest privately funded construction job currently underway in the country – has benefited greatly from his strong sense of vision and leadership qualities. His ability to work with Boston’s agencies and community groups has been lauded by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which honored him with the prestigious “Developer of the Year” award. Joseph has served on numerous non-profit boards and currently serves on the boards of The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, and WGBH. Recently named one of seven “Bostonians of the Year” by the Boston Globe, Joseph is a Boston-area native and a third-generation Irish American who resides in Boston with his wife, Susan, and their two children.
James Farley is Ford Motor Company’s group vice president, Global Marketing, Sales and Service and is the company’s most senior marketing leader. Before being appointed to his current position in August 2010, Jim was group vice president, global marketing and Canada, Mexico and South America. Before joining Ford, he was group vice president and general manager of Lexus. James joined Toyota in 1990 and had a distinguished career there, a highlight being his responsibility for the successful launch and rollout of Toyota’s new Scion brand. James was later promoted to vice president of Scion and was responsible for all Scion activities. A cousin of the late comedian Chris Farley, James Farley earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science from Georgetown University and has an MBA from UCLA. His grandfather was a longtime Ford worker who eventually ran a Lincoln-Mercury dealership near Detroit. James and his wife, Lia, have three children.
Brendan P. Farrell, Jr. is CEO of XSP, the global leader in automated end-to-end Corporate Actions solutions for the financial industry. Brendan, a Founder of XSP, has over 27 years of experience in financial services, including six years at Financial Information, Inc. as VP of Sales and Marketing. In 2009, Brendan created IMMRAM, an informal network for the Irish diaspora, which now has hundreds of members. Brendan is also very connected to the Irish-American community and serves on various committees. He most recently was cochair of the 2011 UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School Dinner Committee. Brendan was a finalist for the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Born in the U.S. to Brendan, Sr. from Ballinalee, Co. Longford and Rita from Knockbrack, Knockagoshel, Co. Kerry, Brendan was raised in Longford Town, where his family ran O’Farrell’s Bar and Grocery. A graduate of the Athlone Institute of Technology, he is a director to the Board of the American Friends of AIT. Brendan lives in Denville, NJ with his wife of 20 years, Christine, and their children, Dylan and Brianna.
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Mary Callahan Erdoes is CEO of J.P. Morgan’s Asset Management division, a global leader in investment management and private banking with more than $1.9 trillion in assets under supervision. Prior to being named CEO in 2009, she held a number of senior management positions, including CEO of the Private Bank, and chairman and CEO of Global Wealth Management. She joined J.P. Morgan in 1996 from Meredith, Martin & Kaye. A graduate of Georgetown University (B.S.) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A.), Mary was recognized by Forbes and Fortune magazines for their “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” lists, respectively. An Illinois native, she is a fourth-generation Irish American. Her great-grandparents emigrated from Co. Cork on her father’s side and Co. Tipperary on her mother’s. She lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters.
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BUSINESS 100
JOHN MICHAEL FARRELL
PATRICIA A. FARRELL
IRIAL FINAN
KPMG
Aetna
Coca-Cola Company
John Michael Farrell is a consulting partner in KPMG’s New York office, with over 20 years of risk management and risk control experience. Before joining KPMG, John served as the director of internal audit for Mineral Technologies, Inc. A graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, John received his bachelor’s of science degree in accounting and an MBA in finance from Long Island University. He is also a certified public accountant in New York State and belongs to the New York State Society of CPAs. John is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Monaghan on his father’s side. His grandmother was one of eleven children born at the turn of the century in New York. John’s great-grandparents came to America from Ireland in the 1880s.
Patricia A. Farrell is senior vice president of National, Government and Specialty Products for Aetna, Inc. In this role, Patricia has oversight and responsibility for National Accounts; Public & Labor, Medicaid and the Federal Employee Benefits Program (FEHBP); and Aetna’s Specialty offerings. Prior to her current position, she was the senior vice president of National and International Business Solutions. She was vice president for Aetna’s Capitol Region until 2001. Patricia holds a BS in accounting from Quinnipiac University, and is a certified public accountant. She is a member of Quinnipiac University’s Board of Trustees, and of the American Institute CPAs. A third-generation Irish American, Patricia was born in Rhode Island to William and Shirley Daly. She says that her Irish heritage “grounded our family in tradition, and taught us from an early age to be respectful, and curious about our family history.” She and her husband, David, have two sons.
Irial Finan is executive vice president, The CocaCola Company and president of Bottling Investments and Supply Chain. He is responsible for managing a multi-billion-dollar internal bottling business, Bottling Investments Group (BIG), which has operations in 5 continents. Irial has 29 years experience in The Coca-Cola system. From 2001 to 2003, he served as chief executive officer of Coca-Cola HBC. Irial joined the Coca-Cola Company in 2004 as president, Bottling Investments and Supply Chain, and was named executive vice president of the company in 2004. Irial serves on the boards of directors of CocaCola FEMSA, Coca-Cola HBC, and the Supervisory Board of CCE AG. He also serves as a non-executive director for Co-operation Ireland and NUI Galway Foundation. He holds a BC from National University of Ireland in Galway and is an Associate (later Fellow) of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants. Irial and his wife, Deirdre, have two daughters, Ciara and Roisin.
ANNE M. FINUCANE
DAVE FITZGERALD
MARY ANN FITZMAURICE REILLY
Bank of America
Fitzgerald & Co.
American Express OPEN
Anne M. Finucane is global strategy and marketing officer at Bank of America, and is also a member of the company’s executive management team. Finucane oversees the largest community development and investment goal ever established by a U.S. financial institution ($1.5 trillion over ten years). In addition, she oversees a 10-year, $2 billion philanthropic giving goal through the Bank of America Charitable Foundation. Anne was listed on the U.S. Banker’s 2011 list of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking, and was named “New Englander of the Year” by the New England Council in 2006. She serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, The American Ireland Fund and the Special Olympics International Board of Trustees. A second-generation Irish American, Anne has roots in County Cork on both sides of her family, most notably through her grandfather, Michael Finucane, who came to the United States as a young boy.
In 1983, Dave Fitzgerald founded Fitzgerald & Co, an advertising agency. He remains president and CEO. His company was named the Best Agency in the Southeast by Adweek and named one of the 10 best companies in Atlanta to work for by the Atlanta Business Chronicle for five straight years. A second-generation Irish American, Dave ran the Order of the Green Jacket of Ireland, which helped raise funds for Irish athletes in the 1996 Olympics. A member of the AOH, the Metropolitan Atlanta Police Emerald Society, and the Hibernian Benevolent Society, he has twice been Grand Marshal of the Atlanta St. Patrick’s Day Parade. He is chairman of the 2011 Atlanta St Patrick’s Day Parade and was a participant in the 2011 Global Irish Economic Forum. Dave received his BS and MBA from the University of Dayton, where he was honored with the Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He traces his family to the western counties of Kerry and Sligo, has visited Ireland forty times and became an Irish citizen three years ago. He calls his Irish heritage “a source of great pride.”
As the senior vice president and general manager of Customer Marketing & Engagement of American Express OPEN, Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly leads OPEN’s brand, digital and marketing strategies. Her responsibilities also include leading the OPEN client management organization. Mary Ann began her career at American Express in 1990. She was previously the SVP of Partnerships & Business Development for OPEN. Before joining OPEN, Mary Ann ran customer acquisition and engagement for consumer card services and formerly served as Vice President of Business Alliances. She developed partnerships for the Membership Rewards program, signing deals with companies such as Home Depot and Staples, and was instrumental in the launch of the Costco cobrand relationship. She is a CPA and a graduate of St. Bonaventure University with a BA in business administration. As a second-generation Irish American with roots in Galway and Louth, she believes her heritage has given her “strength and a little dose of ‘Irish guilt.’”
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BUSINESS 100
WILLIAM J. FLYNN
J. TIMOTHY GANNON
JACK HAIRE
Mutual of America
OSI Restaurant Partners, Inc.
PARADE Publications
During his 34 years with Mutual of America, Bill Flynn established himself as a great leader whose business skills were reflected in Mutual of America’s performance and recognized throughout the life insurance industry. Now Mutual’s chairman emeritus, Bill’s commitment to social justice continues to be felt in the success of the Irish peace process and the work of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP). As the first Irish-American chairman of the NCAFP, it was Flynn who invited all of Northern Ireland’s political leaders, including Gerry Adams, to the U.S., a move that propelled Northern Ireland into the peace process. A graduate of Fordham University, Bill is a first-generation Irish American with roots in Counties Mayo and Down. In 1996, he was Grand Marshal of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Bill was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame in 2011.
Tim Gannon is co-founder of Outback Steakhouse, Inc. In 1994, Inc. Magazine named Tim Entrepreneur of the Year. In the year 2000, Tim received an honorary doctorate degree in business administration and food service management from Johnson & Wales University. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame along with his partners Chris Sullivan and Bob Basham. He is also a supporter of the Tampa Chapter of Junior Achievement and helped with many of their charity events. Tim graduated from Florida State University with a degree in art history. It was working in Florence, Italy, which initially sparked in him a passion for food and cooking. Since 1992, he has been an active polo player and a great sponsor of the game. In 1999, he received the USPA Sponsor of the Year award for his contribution to polo. Tim's other passion is his family – his wife, Christie, and their five children.
Jack Haire is president and CEO of Parade Publications, publishers of PARADE, the most widely read magazine in America. Under his leadership, Parade has expanded to include Parade Digital Partners, a unique content distribution network with over 48 million monthly visitors across 500+ newspaper web sites, and the new monthly food magazine and web business, dash, which includes branded content from Bon Appétit, Epicurious.com and Gourmet. Before joining Parade, Jack spent 28 years at Time Warner Inc. He was publisher of TIME, president of the Fortune/Money Group, and chairman of the Time Warner Advertising Council. On his watch, both Time and Fortune were chosen as Adweek’s Hottest Magazine. Jack serves on the board of Concern Worldwide and as a director of LodgeNet Interactive and Tech Media Network. Jack lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children. His great-grandparents came from Cork and Donegal to NYC via Ellis Island during the Famine. Jack’s brother and sister have homes in Glen, Donegal.
JOHN HAYES
JAMES HEEKIN
F. MICHAEL HEFFERNAN III
American Express
Grey Group
Heffernan Insurance Brokers
For the past 17 years, John Hayes has led global marketing at American Express, helping shape both the company and its brand. In addition to overseeing marketing strategies and product development, John leads the company’s global advertising, digital marketing strategy, market research, corporate sponsorships, brand management and publishing organizations. He has been the force behind the business strategies that have resulted in iconic campaigns such as “My life. My card.,” and leading edge marketing programs such as Members Project. Additionally, under John’s leadership American Express has created over 200 new product launches, including the coveted Centurion black card, Blue and more recently ZYNC from American Express. Prior to joining American Express, John was the president of Lowe and Partners, and held senior positions at Geer DuBois, Ammirati & Puris and Saatchi & Saatchi Compton. John is currently a member of the Save the Children – Newborn and Child Survival campaign council.
James R. Heekin III became chairman and CEO of Grey Group in January 2007, after leading Grey, the company’s global advertising arm, since 2005. Under his leadership, Grey has enjoyed the most successful years in its history, adding over $1 billion in new business and producing such award-winning campaigns as the ETrade baby and Ellen DeGeneres for CoverGirl. Ad Age named Grey to its prestigious A-List of the world’s best agencies and Fast Company named Grey to its “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.” Earlier in his career, Jim served as chairman and CEO of EuroRSCG Worldwide, McCann-Erickson WorldGroup and McCannErickson Worldwide. A graduate of Williams College, Jim served previously on the Board of Directors for JWT, the Interpublic Group of Companies, The American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Ad Council. A fourth-generation Irish American whose father’s family came from Co. Donegal, Jim says that he has been “proud to witness and be a small part of the rise of the Irish in America and the transformation of Ireland.”
Michael Heffernan III is the CEO of Heffernan Insurance Brokers, one of the Top Mid-Sized Brokers in the United States, as named by Business Insurance Magazine. Mike holds a BA from Santa Clara University. As CEO, he oversees many aspects of company operations, including sales and client management. Mike began his career in insurance at the age of 22, interning for Lloyds and then working as an underwriter for Aetna. Shortly after, he became a producer with a national insurance brokerage, where he ranked in the top 10 for sales. At the age of 29, Heffernan purchased a small insurance company with just 10 employees, and helped rebuild it. Now Heffernan Insurance Brokers, the company employs 400 and has 9 branches. Mike has been named a 2011 ‘Most Admired CEO’ in the San Francisco Business Times. Born in San Francisco to Francis Michael Heffernan, Jr. and Lenore Bertagna, Mike can trace his paternal Irish roots back to Tipperary and Meath. He is a fourth-generation Irish American He has two children, Braeda and Michael.
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BUSINESS 100
DONAGH HERLIHY
PJ HOUGH
THOMAS HUNT
Avon Products
Microsoft
Ranger Pipelines
Donagh Herlihy is senior vice president and CIO at Avon Products, Inc. He leads an Information Technology organization of 1500 IT professionals and is responsible for IT strategy and operations globally. He reports to the chairman and CEO and is a member of the Executive Committee. His team provides the business systems and technology infrastructure supporting Avon’s business operations in more than 60 countries. Herlihy joined Avon in March 2008 from the Wrigley Company where he also was CIO. Over his 7 years there, Donagh also served successively as vice president of Human Resources and VP of Supply Chain Strategy and Planning. Donagh holds a BS in industrial engineering from Dublin Institute of Technology & Trinity College, Dublin, and has completed the Executive Program at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He is a board member of The American Red Cross, Westchester, NY. Donagh was born in Dublin and raised in Wexford. He reflects, “My Irish upbringing left me very comfortable moving around the world, living and working in different environments.”
PJ Hough is the corporate vice president for Program Management for the Microsoft Office Division. His responsibilities involve product planning, design, research and program management. Having joined Microsoft in 1994, PJ has worked his way through the company. After working seven years in programmability and program management, Hough joined the Office product planning team, based in Ireland. Then, in 2004, he returned to Redmond, Washington as group program manager for the SharePoint Services team. Born in Manchester, England, Paul’s mother and father both hail from Co. Tipperary. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer applications from Dublin City University. PJ lives in North Bend, Washington, with his wife, Mar Lydon and his daughter, Aoife.
Tom Hunt is founder and president of Ranger Pipelines, a heavy civil engineering company located in San Francisco. He graduated from University College Dublin with a degree in civil engineering, and founded Ranger Pipelines in 1982 after having worked as a surveyor on the Alyeska Pipeline project, an 800 mile long pipeline across Alaska. Ranger Pipelines constructs projects involving deep excavations and large-diameter welded steel pipelines. The company’s most significant projects to date include upgrades to the Hetch Hetchy Water System, which provides drinking water to San Francisco and several other Northern California communities. Tom played football with the Co. Roscommon team in Ireland and continued to play in New York and San Francisco. He is still involved with the GAA and was a member of the committee that built GAA playing fields and a clubhouse in San Francisco. He is a board member of the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center. He is married to the former Mary Shea from New York. They have 3 grown children, Neil, Jenny and Julie.
ANN B. KELLEHER
BRIAN KELLEY
WILLIAM H. KELLEY
Intel
The Coca-Cola Company
Jelly Belly Candy Company
Ann B. Kelleher, Ph.D is vice president of Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group and FSM co-general manager. Previously, Ann was site and plant manager for Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, NM where she was responsible for all aspects of the operation, including safety, people and operational metrics for 45nm high-volume manufacturing and 32nm ramp. Ann has also been the plant manager for Fab 12 in Chandler, AZ, prior to which she was the factory manager of Fab 24 in Leixlip, Ireland. Ann joined Intel in 1996 as a process engineer, going on to manage technology transfers and ramps in a variety of positions spanning 200mm and 300mm technologies. She is the first Irish woman to have been named vice president in the company’s history. A native of Macroom, Co. Cork, Ann received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in engineering science and a Ph.D in micro-electronics from University College Cork.
Brian Kelley’s business career has spanned 28 years, with experience at Procter & Gamble, GE, the Ford Motor Company (where he was the president of Lincoln Mercury), and 5 years as the president and CEO of SIRVA (a $4 billion global relocation company which Brian took public in 2003). He joined Coca-Cola in 2007 as president of its $6 billion non-carbonated beverages business in North America, and was selected in 2010 to lead the integration of the company’s acquisition of Coca-Cola Enterprises and the formation of Coca-Cola Refreshments. He is currently the chief product supply officer for Coca-Cola Refreshments. Brian was the third of seven children born to an Irish Catholic family in Cincinnati, OH. His father, Tom, is the second generation of his family in the U.S. since his grandfather, Eugene, emigrated from Co. Cork in the mid-1880s. A graduate of Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA with a degree in economics, Brian has served on a number of Boards including Hertz, Mazda, SIRVA, VWR and the Internet Capital Group. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Erin and Gwen.
A fourth-generation candy maker, Bill Kelley is vice chairman of Jelly Belly Candy Co. He joined the family business, Goelitz Confectionery Co., in 1965, after graduating from Xavier University and serving as an army officer in the U.S. and Korea. In 1974, like his grandfather and father before him, Bill became president of the company, which in 2001 merged with Herman Goelitz Candy Co., run by Bill’s cousin, Herman Rowland, to form Jelly Belly. Bill has been honored by the National Confectioners Association (of which he is a past chairman), Candy Industry Magazine, Retail Confectioners International, and was inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame in Hershey, PA.. Bill serves on the boards of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, the North Chicago Chamber of Commerce, and volunteers with the American Cancer Society. He and his wife, Joanie, live in Winnetka, IL and have two children, Meghan and Brian, and four grandchildren. Bill’s great-greatgrandfather, Patrick Kelly, emigrated from Ireland around 1835. Four of Patrick’s children, including Bill’s great-grandfather William Kelley, fought in the Civil War. The origin of the second “e” is unknown.
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BUSINESS 100
DECLAN KELLY
FRANCIS J. KELLY
MICHAEL J. KELLY
Teneo Holdings
Arnold Worldwide
The Weather Channel Co.
Declan Kelly is a founding partner and co-CEO of Teneo. Previously, he served as the U.S. Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland, appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in September 2009. Prior to his government service, he was executive vice president and chief integration officer of FTI Consulting, one of the world's leading international consulting companies. Before joining FTI, he was chairman and CEO of Financial Dynamics (FD) in the U.S. and chairman of FD in Ireland. He joined FD when he sold his company, Gallagher and Kelly Public Relations, to FD in 2000. Declan, who is from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, previously worked as a journalist for over a decade. A graduate of NUI Galway, he currently serves as an adjunct professor in the university's College of Business, Public Policy and Law. He received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast in recognition of his service to business and the economy of Northern Ireland. In 2008, he received the American Irish Historical Society's gold medal, given annually to someone who has made a unique contribution to Irish-American society.
Fran Kelly is vice chairman of Arnold Worldwide, one of the country’s top advertising and marketing agencies. Arnold is headquartered in Boston, with major offices in New York, and nine other cities. Fran has been with Arnold since 1994, first as CMO, then president and CEO. His work with blue chip brands including VW, Volvo, Titleist, Ocean Spray, Hershey’s, Reese’s, Fidelity Investments, Jack Daniel’s, truth, Carnival Cruise Lines and New Balance, is respected throughout the marketing industry. His career began on Madison Avenue at Young & Rubicam in 1978. Fran is a graduate of Amherst College and The Harvard Business School. He is the co-author of What They Really Do Teach You At The Harvard Business School and The Breakaway Brand, and a sought after speaker on the topic of successful branding. Fran resides in Weston, MA with his wife, Heather. He is a third-generation Irish American whose father’s ancestors came from Kilshanny, Co. Clare, and whose mother’s family emigrated from Dublin. He is the proud father of 24-year old twins.
Michael J. Kelly is president and CEO of The Weather Channel Companies, the world’s largest weather-focused media and technology company. With nearly 30 years of experience in media, Mike most recently served as senior advisor to Veronis Suhler Stevenson. He also served on the boards of several digital media companies – MediaMind, Visible World and American Town Network. Mike was president of AOL Media Networks from 2004-2007, responsible for all of AOL’s advertising properties globally. A Chicago native whose great-uncle was the first Irish mayor of the city, Mike is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 1983, he began a 17-year run at Time Inc., first at Fortune, then eventually launching and becoming publisher of Entertainment Weekly. He was twice named Publisher of the Year. Kelly serves on the board of the Ad Council, The American Advertising Federation and is chairman of the AAF’s Advertising Hall Of Fame. A proud Irish American with roots in Mayo and Galway, Mike has five sisters, one of whom is author and filmmaker Mary Pat Kelly.
SHAUN T. KELLY
DONALD R. KEOUGH
ELLEN KULLMAN
KPMG LLP
Allen & Company, Inc.
DuPont
Shaun Kelly is vice chair – operations for KPMG LLP, responsible for the execution of the firm’s financial plan and is a member of the firm’s Management Committee. In October 2010, he was appointed chief operating officer, Americas. In this position, he works with the leaders of the KPMG International member firms in the region to align their respective strategies and operating plans. A native of Belfast, Shaun joined KPMG International’s Irish member firm in Dublin in 1980 and transferred to the US firm’s San Francisco office in 1984. He was admitted to the U.S. partnership in 1999. He earned a bachelor of commerce, first class honors from University College Dublin and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland and a certified public accountant. He is treasurer and member of the executive committee of Students in Free Enterprise and a member of the North American Board of the UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School. He is co-chair of KPMG’s Disabilities Network, and a member of KPMG’s Diversity Advisory Board.
Don Keough has been chairman of the board of Allen & Company, Inc., a New York investmentbanking firm, since 1993. In 1993, Don retired as president, COO and a director of The CocaCola Company after 43 years of working with Coca-Cola. From 1986 to 1993, he was chairman of the board of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the world’s largest bottling system. He also served as chairman of Columbia Pictures, before it was sold to Sony Inc. Don serves on the boards of InterActive Corp, Global Yankee Holdings, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company. Don has also served as a member on the boards of McDonald’s Corporation, The Washington Post Company, H. J. Heinz Company and The Home Depot. He is chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees and a life trustee of the University of Notre Dame. He is a trustee of several other educational, charitable and civic organizations. Don resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Marilyn. They have six children and 18 grandchildren.
Ellen Kullman is chair of the board and chief executive officer of DuPont. As CEO, she has championed market-driven science to drive innovation across the company’s businesses. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Ellen began her career at DuPont in 1988 as a marketing manager. She is a member of the U.S.-India CEO Forum, the Business Council, and the executive committee of SCI-America. She is co-chair of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Changing the Conversation: From Research to Action. Ellen is on the board of trustees of Tufts University and serves on the board of overseers at Tufts University School of Engineering. Prior to joining DuPont, Ellen worked for General Electric. She holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Tufts and a master’s degree in management from Northwestern. Ellen is a third-generation Irish American whose mother’s family came from Nenagh, Tipperary.
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BUSINESS 100
JOHN P. MACKEY
JOANNE MAGUIRE
PHIL McAVEETY
Whole Foods Market, Inc.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
As the co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc., John Mackey is a leading practitioner of empowerment management and has helped build a $10 billion Fortune 500 company, now one of the top 20 supermarket companies in America. John and the Whole Foods Market leadership team believe in decentralization and remain willing to experiment with new business ideas. Recent examples include offering $10 million in low-interest loans to local farmers and food producers to help them expand their enterprises, launching the Whole Planet Foundation to help end poverty in developing nations with micro credit, creating a platform in the marketplace to improve welfare for food animals, creating transparency in seafood sustainability, and promoting Healthy Eating education. A graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, John is a co-founder of Conscious Capitalism, a non-profit organization with the tagline Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Good. About his heritage, John says: “My sense of humor and playfulness probably come from my Irish side! I love being both Irish and Scottish.”
Joanne Maguire is executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company business area and an officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Joanne serves on the board of directors for United Launch Alliance and on the boards of two nonprofit organizations, Space Foundation and INROADS. Joanne assumed her current position in 2006. She previously served as vice president and deputy of SSC. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin in 2003, she worked at TRW’s Space & Electronics sector, now Northrop Grumman Space Technology. Joanne earned a BA from Michigan State University and an MA from UCLA. She is a graduate of the executive program in management at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and completed the Harvard Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security. Joanne is a first-generation Irish American whose father, Michael F. Maguire, was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal.
Phil McAveety is executive vice president and chief brand officer of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., a leading hotel and leisure company. He is responsible for worldwide marketing and brand performance. Phil previously served as global brand director for Camper International in Spain, where he developed the company's strategic growth plan. Prior to joining Camper International, Phil spent nine years with Nike Inc. in several positions, including vice president of marketing for Nike Europe, Middle East and Asia. Before joining Nike, he worked with Leo Burnett International in a variety of roles. He has lived and worked in the U.K., Portugal, Hong Kong, the U.S., the Netherlands and Spain. Phil earned an AMP from Harvard Business School and a BA in economic history from Exeter University. He is a first-generation Irish American, by way of London, who fondly remembers his first visit to the U.S. It was for the 1994 World Cup. His father, Jim, hails from Swalinbar, in County Cavan, and his mother, Bridie, from Kilmichael, County Cork.
JAMES McCANN
ANNE McCARTHY
CHRISTINE M. McCARTHY
1-800-Flowers
Westmeath Communications
Walt Disney Company
Jim McCann is a successful entrepreneur, public speaker and author whose passion is helping people deliver smiles. Jim’s belief in the universal need for social connections and interaction led to his founding of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, which he has grown into a leading florist and gift shop and Celebrations.com, a leading website for expert party planning content and advice. Jim’s willingness to embrace new technologies that help people connect and express themselves, such as the Internet, mobile commerce and social networking, often long before others, has enabled him to stay at the forefront of consumer and social trends. As a result, he has become an award-winning public speaker, a published author and a frequent guest on radio and television programs nationwide. In addition to serving as chairman of the Board of Directors for 1-800FLOWERS.COM, Jim is a member of the Board of Directors of Willis Group Holdings Limited and a variety of private and not-for-profit boards. Jim is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Armagh and Limerick.
Anne McCarthy has spent more than 25 years in corporate communications, serving as both a strategist and an executor for Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia. She founded Westmeath Communications, a consulting firm that offers communications counsel to companies both large and small, as well as a cross section of stakeholders. Westmeath was named after the county where Anne’s maternal grandmother was born. Anne has deep experience in corporate social responsibility, leading the Foundation at Western Union and Polaroid. She has led large image and branding campaigns at Sara Lee Corporation, IBM, DuPont and SAP. She serves on several nonprofit boards, including Alliance for Choice in Education, Colorado UpLift and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. A trustee of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Anne earned a BA in journalism from Michigan State University and has completed executive education programs at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and at INSEAD at Fontainebleau.
Christine M. McCarthy is the executive vice president of Corporate Finance and Real Estate, and treasurer of The Walt Disney Company. Prior to joining Disney, Christine was the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Imperial Bancorp from 1997 to 1999. She was an EVP at First Interstate until it was acquired by Wells Fargo in 1996. Christine is currently on the board and audit committee of FM Global. She is also a mentor for the National Math and Science Initiative’s STEM program. Christine served as a board member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association from 1998 to 2001. Treasury & Risk named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance 2003, and again in 2011. A third-generation Irish American, Christine was born in Winthrop, MA. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in biology at Smith College, later earning an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA. She and her husband, Michael McCormick, live in California with their two children.
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BILL McDERMOTT
HAROLD (TERRY) McGRAW, III
ANDREW J. MCKENNA
SAP, AG
The McGraw-Hill Companies
Bill McDermott was appointed co-CEO of SAP on February 7, 2010. He was first named to the SAP Executive Board in 2008 to manage global field operations, a responsibility he continues to maintain as co-CEO. Before joining SAP, Bill served as executive vice president of Worldwide Sales & Operations at Siebel Systems, and president of Gartner, Inc., where he led the company's core operations. He is a member of the National Advisory Board for KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) and the Advisory Board for Villanova University. Bill earned his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, after first receiving a BS in business administration from Dowling College. Bill is an active community leader and advocate for corporate social responsibility. In 2005, he was elected to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and to the Chamber Foundation Board. Bill is a third-generation Irish American with roots in Co. Roscommon on his father's side.
Terry McGraw is the chairman, president and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies. McGrawHill’s leading brands include Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, S&P Indices, S&P Capital IQ , Platts, McGraw-Hill Education and J.D. Power and Associates. He has served as chairman since 1999, CEO since 1998, and president since 1993. He has also been a member of the board of directors since 1987. Terry received a BA from Tufts University in 1972 and completed his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. He joined McGraw-Hill in 1980. He is the chairman of the United States Council for International Business, and was appointed in 2009 by President Obama to the U.S.-India CEO Forum. Born to Harold McGraw, Jr. and Anne Per-Lee, Terry is a fourth-generation Irish American. He reflects that his family “brought from Ireland a great love of learning and a belief that honesty and hard work are fundamental to strong societies.” Terry and his wife, Nancy, have two children, Whit and Megan.
McDonald’s Corporation Schwarz Supply Source
JOSEPH MOGLIA
BRIAN MONAHAN
TD Ameritrade
MAGNA Global
A football coach for 16 years, Joe Moglia won two Ivy championships as defensive coordinator at Dartmouth, set defensive and kicking records at Lafayette, wrote a book and numerous articles, and has been inducted into two sports Halls of Fame. He served from 2009-2010 as the executive advisor to the head football coach at the University of Nebraska. In January of 2011, he was named the president and head coach of the United Football League’s Omaha Nighthawks. In the business world, both at TD Ameritrade and at Merrill Lynch, Joe has executed world-class business strategies for almost two decades. In his seven years as CEO at TD Ameritrade, shareholders enjoyed a 500% return. The firm’s market cap grew from $700 million to $10 billion and client assets from $24 billion to $280 billion. Joe has received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and has been honored by the National Italian American Foundation, the Columbus Citizens Foundation, the American Institute for Stuttering, and is a recipient of two Honorary Doctorates. Joe is a first-generation Irish American whose mother is from Belfast. He is married, with six children.
Brian Monahan is the executive vice president and managing partner of MAGNA Global’s Intelligence Practice. The company specializes in forecasting media ratings and attention levels, conducting ad experience experiments, and predicting buy side demand. Before joining MAGNA, Brian worked for Interpublic Group of Companies, helping harness emerging media technology. He also founded Inrhythm Marketing, a pioneering analytic and optimization firm. Brian has had much experience working with media technology. He’s been named “Internet Media Buyer of the Year” and “Media All Star” by trade magazines and has also served on the agency advisory boards for Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. In 2011, he received the honor of being named to the American Advertising Federation’s 40 & Under Hall of Achievement. Brian attended Georgetown and Trinity College, Dublin. He is a third-generation Irish American with family roots in Kerry and Cork. He believes “being Irish means being able to find the beauty and humor in almost anything.” Brian and his wife, Victoria, have two children, Conor and Casey.
62 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Andrew J. McKenna is chairman of Schwarz Supply Source, a leading provider of supply chain solutions. Andy is also chairman of McDonald’s Corporation and serves as a director of the AON Corporation, and the Chicago Bears Football Club Team and Skyline Corporation. Over the years, Andy has served on many civic boards. He is a director of Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago, the Big Shoulders Fund of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Ireland Economic Advisory Board and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a BS in business administration, Andy was awarded the university’s Laetare Medal in 2000. He served as the chairman of the board of trustees from 1992-2000 and continues on the board today. He is also a graduate of the DePaul University Law School where he received Doctor of Jurisprudence. A second-generation Irish American, Andy has roots in Mayo and Monaghan. He and his wife, Joan, have seven grown children, 24 grandchildren. and one great-grandchild.
GEORGE MOORE
TARGUS Information Corporation George Moore manages the strategic direction of TARGUS Information Corporation (TARGUSinfo) and its subsidiaries, Amacai and Localeze. He is currently involved in a number of business and civic activities. He is Chairman of Erne Heritage Holdings and a member of the Board of Directors of the New Ireland Fund (NYSE IRL). In 2007, Her Majesty, The Queen, recognized George for his contribution to the Northern Ireland economy and for his international work on behalf of all of Ireland with an Honorary CBE – Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. George holds both economics and MBSc degrees from the University College Dublin, and an MBA and DBA from George Washington University. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Sciences by the University of Ulster in 2006. George lives in Washington DC with his wife, Angela, who is originally from Northern Ireland. They have three children.
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THOMAS MORAN
BRIAN T. MOYNIHAN
ALAN MULALLY
Mutual of America
Bank of America Corporation
Ford Motor Co.
Thomas Moran was appointed chairman of the board in 2005 and has been president and CEO of Mutual of America since 1994. Tom is the chairman of Concern Worldwide (U.S.) and serves on the Boards of Directors of the Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the Educational Broadcasting System, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City. He has been given membership in the Alexis de Tocqueville Society of the United Way and Excalibur membership. Tom has won numerous awards including the Commissioner’s Award by the New York City Police Foundation, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Tom serves on the Irish Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Board and the boards of the Irish Chamber of Commerce in the USA and the Ireland-US Council for Commerce and Industry, Inc. Tom earned a BS degree in mathematics from Manhattan College. He traces his Irish ancestors to Fermanagh and Tipperary. He and his wife, Joan, reside in New York City.
Brian T. Moynihan is the chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors of Bank of America, one of the world’s largest financial institutions. Bank of America serves consumers, businesses and institutional investors with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial products and services. Brian joined Bank of America in 2004 following the company’s merger with FleetBoston Financial, and became CEO on January 1, 2010. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Notre Dame Law School. Brian lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Susan, and their three children. A fourth-generation Irish American whose ancestors emigrated from Ireland to upstate New York in the 1850s, he said in a 2009 interview with Irish America, “There’s no sense of entitlement, no sense of placement – you’ve got to go out and work hard to get there…I think that’s deeply embedded in the culture of the Irish, including the Irish who went around the world.”
Alan Mulally is president and CEO of Ford Motor Co. and a member of the Board of Directors. Before joining Ford in 2006, Alan was executive vice president of The Boeing Company, and president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Throughout his career, Alan has been recognized for his industry leadership, including being named one of The World’s Most Influential People by TIME, one of The 30 Most Respected CEOs by Barrons, Person of the Year by Aviation Week and a Best Leader by BusinessWeek. Alan serves on President Obama’s Export Council. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of England’s Royal Academy of Engineering. A Kansas native, Alan holds BS and MS degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Kansas, and earned a master’s in management from MIT as a 1982 Alfred P. Sloan fellow. With a surname derived from the Gaelic Ó Maolalaidh, Alan traces his roots to the western counties of Ireland, and to Galway in particular.
WILLIAM J. MULLANEY
KATHLEEN MURPHY
GREG MURTAGH
MetLife, Inc. William J. Mullaney is president, U.S. Business for MetLife, Inc. Named to this position in 2009, Bill oversees all of MetLife’s insurance, retirement and corporate benefit funding businesses in the U.S. and serves 60 million retail and corporate customers. He was previously president, Institutional Business, which provided insurance and retirement benefits to employers of all sizes in the United States. He joined MetLife in 1982. Bill serves as a member of the board of directors for MetLife Auto & Home, MetLife Bank and MetLife Foundation. In 2011, he was chair of the National Child Labor Committee’s 25th Annual Lewis Hine Awards for Service to Children and Youth, which recognizes individuals dedicated to the health, education and well-being of young people. Bill was also the chairman of the New York Blood Center’s Volunteer Leadership Campaign from 2007 to 2009. He received a BA from the University of Pittsburgh, his MBA from Pace University and a chartered life underwriter designation from The American College. Bill is a first-generation Irish American whose parents hail from Roscommon and Cork. He is married with two children. 64 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
Fidelity Investments
Triad Retail Media
Kathleen Murphy is president of Personal Investing, a unit of Fidelity Investments, which is the largest mutual fund company in the United States, one of the largest retail brokerage companies and the number one provider of workplace retirement savings plans. Kathy assumed her current position in January 2009. Prior to joining Fidelity, Kathy was CEO of ING U.S. Wealth Management from 2006 to 2008. From 2003 to 2006, Kathy was group president of ING worksite and institutional financial services. Kathy received her BA from Fairfield University and earned her JD from the University of Connecticut. She sits on the board of directors and executive committee of America’s Promise, serves on the advisory board of the Smurfit School of Business at the University of Dublin and is a member of the board of directors at the University of Connecticut Foundation. Kathy’s father’s family is from Cork and her mother’s is from Kerry. She is a third-generation Irish American and is married, with one son.
Greg Murtagh is founder and CEO of Triad Retail Media. In 2000, he was first in the digital media world to enable brands to reach shoppers via digital shopper advertising on large retail eCommerce websites. Greg has worked with many of the world’s largest retailers on how to become effective web publishers, adding a significant incremental advertising revenue stream to complement their already large eCommerce businesses. Triad was recently named one of INC Magazine’s fastest growing U.S. companies. He began his career in sales with Procter & Gamble (Vicks) and quickly rose through the ranks within large consumer goods companies for 15 years before founding Triad. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from The Cox School of Business Management at Southern Methodist University. Greg says of his Irish roots, “I’m proud of how my grandparents took the risk to come here. I love the hardworking and happy spirit of the Irish.” He resides in Dunedin, Florida with his wife, Liz, and their twin sons, Liam and Quinn.
Fidelity Investments is proud to congratulate Kathleen Murphy and all the honorees of the Irish America Business 100.
Sláinte!
Fidelity Brokerage Services, Member NYSE, SIPC, 900 Salem Street, Smithfield, RI 02917 © 2011 FMR LLC. All rights reserved. 600831.1.0
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DENNIS M. NALLY
EILEEN NAUGHTON
DERMOT J. O’BRIEN
PwC
TIAA-CREF
Dennis M. Nally has served as chairman and senior partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP since 2002. He has been a partner of the firm since 1985, beginning at PwC's Detroit office. Prior to being elected chairman, Dennis served in the Audit and Business Advisory Services. Dennis is a graduate of Western Michigan University and has also completed the Columbia University and Penn State University Executive Programs. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New York State Society of CPAs. He also serves on The Carnegie Hall Society Board of Trustees, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, and the British American Business International Advisory Board, among others. As a second-generation Irish American with roots in Mayo, Dennis believes that “with a strong foundation of hard work and determination anything can be accomplished. My Irish ancestry demonstrated this by my grandparents and parents.”
Eileen Naughton is responsible for digital media strategy, marketing and operations across Google’s display advertising businesses in North and South America. Eileen joined Google in 2006 as director in the North American direct sales organization. Previously, Eileen had a distinguished career at Time Warner Inc., where she was president of the TIME Group. AdAge Magazine featured her as a “Woman to Watch,” in a 2007 issue, and in 2009, she was featured in How Remarkable Women Lead, a book focusing on successful female leaders by McKinsey & Company consultants Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston. The American Diabetes Association has named Eileen a “Woman of Valor” for her work to raise awareness of the obesity epidemic. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from its Wharton School. Eileen’s father was from Roscommon and her mother grew up in Drumcliff, in the mountains near Sligo.
Dermot J. O'Brien is executive vice president of Human Resources at TIAA-CREF and a member of the company's Executive Management Team. He has more than 20 years of experience in financial services in both institutional and retail businesses. Dermot started his financial services career at Morgan Stanley, where he spent nine years in various roles, including head of HR for Japan. He is a founding member of the Human Resource-50 Group, and also serves on the CT Partners Advisory Board and helps develop the Institute's agenda and priorities. Dermot has volunteered with Junior Achievement for several years, teaching children the basics of financial literacy. A native of Dublin, he holds an undergraduate degree in finance from the Lubin School of Business at Pace University, where he is a frequent guest lecturer. He is the son of the late Dermot O'Brien, 1957 All-Ireland GAA captain for County Louth and well-known Irish entertainer.
EMMETT O’CONNELL
PATRICK O’CONNOR
DONAL O’SULLIVAN
Great Western Mining Co.
Starcom USA
Navillus Contracting
Emmett O’Connell is chairman of the Great Western Mining Corporation, a mineral exploration company based in Nevada with headquarters in Dublin. A promoter of technology and exploration companies for over thirty years, Emmett has acted as founder and director of other companies including Eglington Exploration plc., Bryson Oil and Gas plc, Texas Continental Securities plc., and Seminole Land & Cattle Company. Emmett’s career has taken him to many countries on five continents. He has been involved with highly successful public companies quoted on the London, Dublin and Vancouver Stock Exchanges. In April 2008, the London PLUS market awarded Great Western Mining Corp. plc., the best resource stock award for the continued investing and expansion of the company’s North American mineral resources. The company is now listed on the AIM market in London and the ESM market in Dublin. Emmett was inducted as a Knight of St. Gregory in the Vatican in 1986. When not in some distant part of the world, he lives on a farm in Wexford with his wife of 50 years. He has three children and seven grandchildren.
Patrick O’Connor is the chief financial officer at Starcom USA. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Starcom managing board, and directs a 100-person professional finance and media operations group. Pat became CFO at Starcom in 2003, expanding his role to include financial start-up and oversight of additional business units including both traditional media and diverse media disciplines. He is responsible for all real estate activities of Starcom MediaVest Group business units in Chicago, including space planning and expansion. He became a certified public accountant in May 1989, and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and the Illinois CPA Society. Outside the office, he is an active supporter of the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House. Pat is a fourth-generation Irish American, hailing originally from Cork, on his father’s side, and Roscommon, on his mother’s. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from the University of Saint Francis, before going on to earn his MBA at Loyola University in 1996. He and his wife, Anne, have five children.
A native of Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry, Donal O’Sullivan immigrated to the United States in 1984 in search of work in construction. Today, he is the president and co-owner of Navillus Contracting, which he founded with his sister Helen, and his brothers Kevin and Leonard. Navillus, one of the largest union contractors in New York City, has been contributing to the city skyline for the last 24 years. Most notably, it was Donal’s great privilege and honor to have Navillus involved with the building of the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. Donal is a supporter of the Irish Arts Center and the GAA. He is a member of the Kerryman’s Patriotic & Benevolent Association and the Kerry Football Club of New York, which named him Guest of Honor in 2010. He serves on the Board of Haven U.S., an extension of the Haven Partnership, an Irish nonprofit organization dedicated to creating opportunity and building homes for the people of Haiti. Donal and his wife, Kathleen, have six children, Jack, Donal, Katie, Caroline, Michael and Kelly. He frequently travels back to Ireland to visit his mother, Teresa, as well as other family members, and to connect with his Irish roots.
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KEVIN O’SULLIVAN
SEAN O’SULLIVAN
JAMES QUINN
Time Square Construction
Universal McCann
Tiffany & Co.
Kevin O'Sullivan is president of Time Square Construction, Inc., a growing New York City-based construction management company and property developer, which he co-founded with his brother Donal in 2006. Time Square Construction and Development is a proponent of sustainable construction practices, and offers practical and projectspecific construction solutions to clients. Prior to co-founding the firm, Kevin served as the senior vice president of Navillus Contracting from 1987 – 2006, again working alongside his brother Donal. With Navillus, Kevin managed high profile projects including the construction of the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens and the Apple Flagship store in Manhattan, and renovations at Grand Central Station. Kevin attended Tralee Technical College in Co. Kerry, Ireland, obtaining a degree in construction management. He has over twenty-five years of experience in the development and construction industry. Kevin was born in Co. Kerry, to parents John and Theresa. He and his wife, Eileen, have five children.
With 14 years experience at Universal McCann, Sean O’Sullivan has risen through the ranks to his current position as SVP group media director. After leading the winning team at a young advertising professionals training conference in London during the summer of 1999, Sean joined the international planning department in New York in March of 2000 where he worked on global strategic planning for CPG clients and Pan Regional specific clients. In 2003, he started to add direct responsibilities for the U.S. A graduate of the University of Limerick and the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland, Sean is a member of the UM Charity Council which supports Free the Children. Sean, whose parents both came from Effin, Co. Limerick, was born in Bronx, New York but grew up in Killaloe, Co. Clare. He is a member of the Shannon Development North American advisory council, and used to play hurling for Clare on a team in New York. He believes that “being Irish instills in a person a belief that with hard work and perseverance any challenge can be overcome.”
James Quinn has been president of Tiffany & Co. since 2003. As president, Jim oversees Tiffany business in over 50 countries and is responsible for its global expansion, including the development of the Tiffany business in key markets in Asia and Europe. He began his career with the internationally renowned jeweler in 1986. Jim serves on the board of Mutual of America Capital Management and is a director of Deckers Outdoor Inc. He is chairman of New York’s 5th Ave. Association, vice chairman and trustee of the Museum of the City of New York, was former chairman and serves on the North American advisory board of the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at University College Dublin and is a member of An Taoiseach’s economic advisory board. A graduate of Hofstra University, he is vice chairman of the University’s board of trustees. Jim received his MBA from Pace University. He is married to Diane and has two children. Jim traces his Irish roots to Offaly and Westmeath on his father’s side, and Kerry on his mother’s side. All four of his grandparents were from Ireland.
EDWARD T. REILLY
BRIAN A. RUANE
KEVIN P. RYAN
American Management Association
BNY Mellon
Gilt Groupe
In May 2011, Brian Ruane was appointed CEO of BNY Mellon’s Alternative and Broker/Dealer Services. He has responsibility for Broker/Dealer Services, Derivatives 360 and Alternative Investment Services. Prior to being appointed CEO of BNY Mellon Alternative Investment Services in 2009, Brian was head of Global Client Management North America. Brian is a member of The Board of Directors of Pershing LLC and BNY Mellon’s Sovereign Wealth Advisory Group. In 2003, he was co-opted onto The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Working Committee on The Future of The U.S. Government Securities Markets. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of The UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business in Dublin and The Frank G. Zarb School of Business, New York. Born in the U.S. and raised in Ireland, Brian is a graduate of The Chartered Association of Certified Accountants in the UK and Ireland and received his MBA in international banking and finance from Zarb School of Business, New York in 1995. Brian and his wife, Dublin-born Anna Lynch, have four children.
Kevin P. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe. In 2007, Kevin, along with a founding team, created Gilt Groupe as an invitation-only site for coveted women's apparel and accessories. Today, Gilt Groupe has over three million members and has added business lines in a number of areas. Kevin is one of the leading Internet entrepreneurs in the United States, having launched several New York-based businesses, including Gilt Groupe, Business Insider, ShopWiki, and 10gen/MongoDB. Kevin helped build DoubleClick from 1996 to 2005, first as president and later as CEO. Currently, Kevin serves on the board of Human Rights Watch, the NYC Investment Fund and INSEAD, and is a member of the Yale International Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an MBA from INSEAD. Born in Milwaukee, Kevin is a fourth-generation Irish American. He traces his Irish roots to Counties Clare and Cork.
Since 2001, Edward T. Reilly has been the 17th president and CEO of the American Management Association, International. AMA is the world’s leading not-for-profit, membershipbased management development, research and publishing organization. Ed previously served as president and CEO of Big Flower Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of integrated marketing and advertising services. Prior to that, Ed spent nearly 30 years with the broadcast and book publishing groups of The McGraw-Hill Companies. Ed holds a BA in business administration from St. Francis College and attended the Stanford Executive Program. He is chairman of the USO World Headquarters Board of Governors, a member of the North American Advisory Board of the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business in Dublin, and a fellow and former chairman of the Royal Society for the Arts in the U.S. A fourth-generation Irish American, he resides in Westport, Connecticut, with his wife, Susan. Ed has roots in Cavan on his father’s side and Limerick on his mother’s. 68 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
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TIMOTHY RYAN
THOMAS J. SHANNON, JR.
BRIAN W. STACK
PwC
T-Bird Restaurant Group
CIE Tours International, Inc.
Tim Ryan is vice chairman and the leader of PwC’s Assurance Practice. He has over 20 years of experience serving clients in the financial services industry in the U.S. and internationally. Prior to his current position, Tim led PwC’s U.S. Financial Services practice. He has served on the U.S. Board of Partners and Principals and its Admissions Committee, the Management Evaluation and Compensation Committee, the Clients Committee and on the firm’s Global Board of Directors. He has also served several of the firm’s major financial services clients, has been published or quoted in numerous publications and is a frequent contributor to industry events. A certified public accountant, Tim is a graduate of Babson College, where he received degrees in accounting and communications. A secondgeneration Irish American and a Boston native, he joined PwC after graduation and currently resides in the area with his family.
In 1992, Tom Shannon formed the T-Bird Restaurant Group to develop the Outback Steakhouse concept in California. Today, the group has 62 Outback Steakhouse restaurants and continues to grow. The California Restaurant Association Educational Foundation named Tom “Restaurateur of the Year, 2002.” Tom serves on the Outback Steakhouse Foundation executive committee, and as the Outback Pro-Am Tournament chairman, he helps raise over $600,000 annually for children's charities in the Tampa area. In 2004, Tom received the “Spirit of Life Award” presented by the City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research Institute, and in 2006, he was presented with the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor award. Tom, whose Irish grandparents settled in the Boston Harbor area in 1899, was born in Somerville, MA. He attended the University of Florida on a football/baseball scholarship and graduated with a double degree in marketing and management.
Brian W. Stack is managing director of CIE Tours International, one of the largest producers of tourists to Ireland, Scotland, and many other areas of Europe. Prior to joining CIE Tours International, Brian worked with Aer Lingus, The Irish Tourist Board, and Ocean Reef Club in Florida. Brian has served as chairman of the United States Tour Operators Association, was president of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives, is Vice Chairman of the Irish American Cultural Institute and is currently vice president of the Ireland-U.S. Council for Commerce and Industry. His awards also include “Man of the Year” from the Incentive Travel Industry and “International Executive of the Year” by the World Congress on Marketing and Incentive Travel, in addition to being honored in the Top 100 Irish Americans by Irish America. A resident of Rye, New York, Brian is married to Anne-Marie and has two grown children. He is a Dublin native.
TIMOTHY SULLIVAN
ANNE SWEENEY
MICHAEL WALSH
Ancestry.com
Disney Media Networks
Visa CyberSource
Timothy Sullivan is president and chief executive officer of Ancestry.com and has served as a director since September 2005. Prior to joining Ancestry.com, Tim was chief operating officer and then president and CEO of Match.com from January 2001 to September 2004. He previously served as vice president of E-commerce for Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch, Inc. and held multiple positions at The Walt Disney Company. Tim holds an MA from Harvard Business School and was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His paternal greatgrandfather was born in Dingle, Co. Kerry in 1866 and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 13. One of his great-grandmothers was born in Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare in 1872. Tim says, “ From the facts around my great-grandparents’ immigration to this country to the stories of their life in 19th century Lowell, MA, I have felt connected to Ireland and the struggles of the Irish immigrants to this country all my life. I feel so incredibly fortunate, thanks to my role at Ancestry.com, to be able help Irish Americans like me discover, preserve, and share the stories of their family history.”
As co-chairman of Media Networks, The Walt Disney Co., and president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, Anne Sweeney has risen through the ranks of television and was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business by Fortune and one of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes. Anne is a recipient of the Cable Television Public Affairs Association’s President’s Award, the Golden Mike Award for Outstanding Contributions to Broadcasting by the Broadcasters Foundation of America, and the Matrix Award for television from New York Women in Communications, Inc. Anne was elected director of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2001. In 2007, she was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. She has received the Committee of 200’s Luminary Award, and just this past October became the first female executive in history to receive MIPCOM’s Personality of the Year honor. Anne, who earned a BA from the College of New Rochelle and an EdM from Harvard, traces her roots to Meath, Kerry and Mayo.
With over 20 years of experience in the technology and financial services industries, Michael Walsh is president and chief executive officer of Visa's CyberSource Corporation. Michael joined CyberSource in 1998, prior to Visa's acquisition of the company. He took over North American sales in 2000, and in 2004 was named senior vice president of Global Sales & Services. After five years in this position, Michael was appointed president and chief executive officer in January 2010. Michael played a key role in doubling the size of the CyberSource footprint in the payment space through the $660 million acquisition of Authorize.net in 2007. In 2010, he led negotiations that resulted in Visa's $2 billion acquisition of CyberSource. Prior to working for CyberSource, Michael held sales and business development positions at Oracle Corporation and Merrill Lynch. He is a graduate of the University of California at Irvine, with a bachelor's degree in political science.
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Susan Kelliher Ungaro, President of the James Beard Foundation, focuses on furthering the famous chef ’s legacy – and on what’s really important about a meal.
Thought
SUSIE CUSHNER
FOOD FOR
BY KARA ROTA
s I pull open the heavy door of the James Beard House on West 12th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan’s West Village, the first thing that hits me is the smell. Chestnuts roasting, shallots caramelizing, the unmistakable and glorious aroma of the very best meats prepared by those who really know what they’re doing. This is what the James Beard House smells like over 225 days of the year, as chefs from all over the country and the world come to “perform” at fundraiser dinners in the Beard house. And that’s not even the main reason why Susan Kelliher Ungaro, appointed President of the James Beard Foundation in 2006, took the job. “I loved what James Beard stood for,” Ms. Ungaro muses as we sit in her cozy office at the top of a creaky yet grand winding staircase, on the third floor of the 1844-built brownstone. Susan Ungaro came to the James Beard Foundation after 12 years as editor-in-chief of Family Circle magazine, where she celebrated her 25th anniversary in 2001. Since joining
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the Foundation, Ungaro has pioneered a multitude of initiatives to further the Foundation’s mission of celebrating, nurturing and preserving America’s diverse culinary heritage, and helping to lead the complex future of the nation’s relationship with food. “The James Beard Foundation is going to be celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2012,” Ms. Ungaro says with true enthusiasm. “It’s a very exciting time for us. Anniversaries are important hallmarks of having not only survived, but succeeded –making a difference and making a mark in what you want your foundation to represent.” A new book called The Best of the Best celebrates 25 years of America’s outstanding chefs, and this May’s James Beard Awards will continue to celebrate James Beard’s legacy. Ungaro’s ability to communicate the importance of the Beard legacy and the goals of the Foundation has certainly served her well in recent years. She has accomplished such achievements as moving the James Beard Awards (“the Oscars of the food industry”) to Lincoln Center’s
Avery Fisher Hall, and initiating the James Beard Foundation’s Annual Food Conference, held last year in Washington, DC and this year at the Hearst Towers in New York. “We gather thought leaders from all different walks of work in the culinary world, from academia and government to chefs and restaurateurs to leaders of nonprofit organizations fighting hunger. We gather to talk about what’s really important in the food world today. We’ve just launched this year our Leadership Awards, which honor work outside of the fields that are traditionally included in the James Beard Awards. [They recognize] people who are working to fight hunger, improve school lunches, improve public policy; people who are doing work in big corporations to feed America healthier and more sustainable food.” The increase in public awareness on such “food politics” issues in recent years might be new to some, but they are an enduring part of Beard’s philosophy. “James Beard was talking about cooking in season long before it was trendy,”
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explains Ungaro. When Joe Baum opened the famous Four Seasons restaurant in New York in 1959, Beard was brought in as a consultant and helped to create the initial concept of seasonality in changing menus.“So many more restaurants now, not only do they tell you today’s menu but they tell you what artisanal cheese maker, where the lambs were slaughtered, where the fish came from,” says Ungaro. “It’s a sign of caring – from the restaurant’s point of view – about educating their diners
affair and an opportunity for greatness still resonates with many today. “He’s considered the godfather of American cuisine,” says Ungaro. “What I loved was that he came to New York wanting to be an opera singer or on Broadway. And what do most aspiring singers and actors have to do? Wait tables. Well, he found a different way.” Beard grew up in a boardinghouse his mother ran in Portland, Oregon, and when he came to New York, he opened a sucClockwise from below: Susan Ungaro at a celebrity chef auction in 2011. The exterior of the James Beard house on West 12th street in Manhattan.
reflects. “If anything, I think [shows on channels such as The Food Network and Bravo] have brought back the idea that being able to cook a meal is something to aspire to. In the 1960s and 70s, it wasn’t a status thing. Feminists certainly wouldn’t have wanted to say, ‘I can cater a great party; I can cook a great meal.’” The role of women in the cooking and food industry has been complex, fraught with a history of the unpaid labor of homemakers and the skills of truly talented home cooks taken for granted, followed by decades of women going without recognition in a chef-glorification culture dominated by men. Ungaro has overseen a time in which that is slowly chang-
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about where their food comes from… I think what [the Foundation has] done in this country, and the media has helped this tremendously, is that we’ve raised people’s consciousness about words like “food miles,” “cooking in season,” “artisanal.” All those words are really changing how people think about shopping at the supermarket and what they put in their bodies. You are what you eat, so know what you eat. That mantra is something that we really endorse. “There is no doubt that the typical American diet needs work. We know that from the work of [Michelle Obama] and her campaign, Let’s Move, fighting the diabetes epidemic in America. And people could say, well, the James Beard Foundation is all about fine dining and thinking about food all the time, but we really care a lot about the fact that we want food to not only taste good but to be good and healthful for you.” Beard’s own beginnings were those of aspiration and determination, and his approach to cooking as both an everyday
cessful catering company for hors d’oeuvres and canapés that inspired his first cookbook. Beard made a name for himself as an author (eventually penning 24 cookbooks), a teacher, and a pioneer in food television. Ungaro remembers “episodes of Beard on the Today Show with a young Bryant Gumbel and a young Tom Brokaw, teaching them how to make homemade pasta and roast chicken. Back then, food was a new kind of content for programming.” In fact, those early episodes were filmed in James Beard’s kitchen, long before in-studio kitchens on talk shows became common. “Thank God for television,” Ungaro
ing, not least with the Foundation’s 2009 focus on Women in Food as a theme. “I really was very proud of the fact that we decided to celebrate Women in Food,” says Ungaro. “As with the rest of business in America, women are still a minority. I was just at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, and there are 12 women in the Fortune 500. When you think about that, about being a chef and restaurateur and getting the kind of recognition that you have to have to become a success – it’s just that much harder for women. I was really proud of the fact that a lot of women who are doing great things and achieving great success are James Beard Award winners; more and more women are getting nominated… I’m confident that women are making headway in the business of the restaurant world; I think we certainly have had a lot of power when it comes to the media world.” As a multiple award winner, a participant in President Clinton’s Women’s Roundtables, and someone who was honored by President Reagan’s Office for Consumer Affairs for her “outstanding DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 73
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contribution to increasing consumer awareness in America,” Ungaro is a strong example of that power. She is the oldest of six children, whose parents arrived in America from County Kerry, Ireland. Her mother was a homemaker whose approach to dinnertime was based around the challenge of consistently feeding a family of eight. “People love to make fun of the Irish and their cooking skills,” says Ungaro with a good-natured wink. “I did grow up on a diet of spuds and meat well-done and lots of veggies. And the desserts – all kinds of cakes and scones and fruitcake; my mother would make an Irish fruitcake that I will defend strongly, and have. When I was the editor of Family Circle, with apologies to my dear mother, I learned more about how to cook in our test kitchens than I did from my wonderful mother…My tastes for cuisines expanded as I expanded my universe. I grew up in a house where we didn’t go out to dinner – it was pretty rare. I think the first time I had Chinese food was when I was in college.” But something more important than the contents of the plates stuck with Ungaro from those family dinners. “I did have a wonderful upbringing in terms of valuing a sense of community around the table. I think what’s really special about food and dining is, yes, the deliciousness of the food, but what really makes a dinner special is the conversation and sense of communal feeling around the table, and that’s what we try to replicate 225 days a year at the James Beard house…The art of conversation, whether it’s about food or politics or movies or the arts. The Irish are known for being great about the gift of the gab, or whatever you want to call it, and I certainly learned that from my parents.” After my conversation with Ms. Ungaro, I’m lucky enough to get an insider’s tour of the James Beard house, from the back patio where guests at the culinary arts organization’s regular fundraiser dinners sip cocktails, to the stove where, tonight, Aimee Olexy and Sean McPaul of Talula’s Garden in Philadelphia are preparing a meal that includes fig-brushed beef rib brochettes; hand-raised hens with savoy cabbage, royal trumpets, and chicken liver compound butter; and sweet November scallops with butternut broth, black walnuts, and Asian pear cider reduction.
Alton Brown, Susan Ungaro and Drew Nieporent at Lincoln Center for the James Beard Awards, May 2010
If a man’s home is his castle, then his kitchen is his throne, and James Beard’s kitchen is at once breathtaking and homey. It’s immediately clear why this historic kitchen, and the brownstone that houses it, were worth saving. “When Julia Child came back from Paris to New York, her editor Judith Jones asked her, ‘Who’s the first person you want to meet?’” Ungaro tells me. “Julia Child’s response was James Beard. They became fast friends, really good friends. When he passed away 26 years ago, he was a single, gay man with no siblings, no heirs. He left his estate, his house and everything in it, and his publishing rights, to his alma mater as well as his editor. Everything was being sold off, and Julia Child, along with [Institute of Culinary Education founder] Peter Kump said, ‘they can’t sell Jim’s house. Let’s take the house back, let’s buy it from them and make it a center for American cuisine.’ And that’s what they did.” Experiencing food culture in a place as historically saturated as the Beard house, I wonder if this generation is missing out on something, and if so, where they can find it. These days, young people are less likely to find a classic recipe or learn a new technique from a cookbook than on a food television show, on a recipe website or in a cooking app downloaded to their iPhone. But Ungaro is largely optimistic about the power of technology to make great food accessible to a wider demographic.
“I think new media has democratized America’s interest in food. It’s something that has become a lifestyle to aspire to. And it’s not just eating at great fancy restaurants or unique cuisine restaurants, I think it’s that people feel that being knowledgeable about food is almost as important as being knowledgeable about politics, or other aspects of life. I just hope that we don’t lose the aesthetic value and comfort of sitting on a couch having tea and flipping through the pages of a cookbook to be inspired about cooking. I think those days – I’ll be long gone – are going to be over at a certain point. I’m the mother of three, my youngest is seventeen, and my kids are reading the New York Times online. They’re getting recipes online. I think [of] baby boomers, women like me who grew up with great magazines like Family Circle, who would keep loose-leaf binders with their favorite recipes. What are they doing now? They’re filing them on their computer. In some ways, it’s making access to a greater breadth of food knowledge available to everybody, and I applaud that. I just hope that we don’t lose...” Here she pauses, uncharacteristically lost for words, if only for a moment, as she tries to articulate something that permeates the Foundation’s mission and Beard’s legacy; the house itself and every dinner eaten there; the conversation around the tables and the satisfied sighs after meals that are artful, thoughtful and truly fulfilling. “Food is so emotional and tangible, and you’ve got to use your fingers at some point, chances are. I think there will always be some aspect that you can hold IA in your hands.”
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COURTESY OF TASTING PANEL MAGAZINE - RYAN LELY
James and John Concannon uphold tradition at a winery founded by their Irish immigrant ancestor.
AN IRISH
Vintage
By Patricia Harty
he Concannon family has spent more than 128 years growing grapes and making wine in California, 42 miles east of San Francisco, debunking the notion that the Irish know their whiskey but not their wine. “I never knew my grandfather James, the founder of Concannon Vineyard,” said Jim Concannon, 80, on a recent afternoon, standing on the rocky soil where James first planted his vines in 1883. “He died in 1911, twenty years before I was born, but I can walk through the house that he built in 1883, where I grew up, and I can stroll through the vineyard picking up rocks, and I know what he left behind – not just a successful winery, but five generations of family.” James Concannon, who was born on the Aran Island of Inis Meain on St. Patrick’s Day 1847, picked a remarkable spot to plant his vines. The Livermore Valley has been compared to some of the
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great wine regions of France. And, whether it was luck, or a good eye for land, James picked one of the best places to grow grapes in the entire valley. But according to his grandson, it was James’ wife, Ellen Rowe from Castlecomer, Kilkenny, who was behind the move to Livermore. “She must have been a great woman,” Jim said of his grandmother. “Grandfather traveled a lot and she was left behind to take care of the family. It was probably her idea to petition Archbishop Alemany for the rights to produce altar wine for the Church. “James and Ellen were living in the Mission District of San Francisco at the time and they were friends with the the archbishop. So whether it was Grandmother’s idea or not, the archbishop eventually said to Grandfather, ‘I know you have this family and want to improve yourself, so why don’t you get some land and produce sacramental wine for the Catholic Church?’”
And so began another adventure for James who had left Inis Meain in 1865 at the age of 18. After stopping in New York and Boston, he made his way to Augusta, Maine to his uncle Peador. “He didn’t speak any English, but he soon picked it up,” Jim said. “He had a way with languages and went on to speak English and Spanish fluently, but the diaries he left behind were written in Irish.” Once in Augusta, James found work as a bellboy in the Mansion House Hotel. He was smart and over the next seven years he worked his way up to manager. Augusta was the state capital at the time and his guests were mostly legislators and businessmen. He heard talk of how the West was expanding and decided to take his wife and child out to California, but first he dipped into his savings and took a trip back to Ireland. “That year, Inis Meain had a surplus of potatoes, and James found a way to sell them to the mainland, making enough
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money to pay for his trip out west,” Jim reveals. James found a job with a bookseller in San Francisco, and went on to buy a rubber stamp franchise. Soon he was traveling as far north as the Canadian border and south into Mexico. Rubber stamps were a popular item and James made money, but Ellen wanted her husband home with their growing family – now five boys and five girls. “She thought that winemaking would put a stop to James’ traveling,” said Jim. But James was not one to sit around
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James had been warned by his doctors not to travel because of heart trouble, but he’d been invited to speak to the Gaelic League (he had met Douglas Hyde, champion of the Irish language revival movement, who went on to become the first president of Ireland through his brother Thomas) and he decided to go. He died shortly after his return. But he is not forgotten. Millions of bottles of wine have borne the Concannon label over the years. And a gallery wall of photographs and artifacts Opposite page: Jim and John Concannon. This page (left to right) The Winery. James Concannon. Captain Joe with Groucho Marx. Below: Oak barrel used to age the wine.
while his vines matured. He brought over his brother Thomas to take over the rubber stamp business, and another brother, Martin, to help with the vineyard, and he took off for Mexico where he persuaded the Mexican president Porfirio Diaz to let him sell vine cuttings across the border. “From 1889 to 1904 he shipped millions of cuttings to Mexico and had remarkable impact on the wine industry there,” Jim said. A few years later, however, the Revolution of 1910 sent Diaz into exile and James lost the connection with Mexico. “I think most of the vines died from neglect,” Jim said. Meanwhile, the cuttings James had brought back from France were producing a remarkable quality of wine in the Livermore Valley, and what had begun as a service to the church, soon became a powerhouse in the California wine industry. But for all his success, James never forgot Ireland. He made five trips home, taking his daughter, May, on his last trip in 1911.
between the tasting room and the restaurant pays homage to James’ colorful life. When he died he left behind several diaries, written in Irish, which Jim and his son John, the fourth-generation Concannon to work at the winery, had translated, and which Jim used as background for his book Concannon: The First 125 Years, which was released in 2006.
PROHIBITION After James’ death, the winery passed into the hands of his son Joseph. A fine horseman, Joseph had joined the First Cavalry and served under General John Pershing and Lieutenant George Patton. “He would have been happy to
stay in the military, but his mother wanted him home to take over the winery after grandfather’s death,” said Jim. Joseph kept up his connections to the military. “He was known as Captain Joe and wore Khakis around the winery every day for 50 years,” said Jim. He stayed in touch with General Pershing and sent him a case of wine every Christmas. He also erected a flagpole that still stands in front of the winery. The tradition Joseph started of raising the flag every morning continues today. The winery faced some tough times during Joseph’s tenure, mainly Prohibition and the Depression, but it was one of only five other wineries legally bonded to continue producing under their winery label. “We had been making altar wine
for 35 years, and it was perfectly legal for us to continue to do so. We never missed a harvest,” said Jim. “And we were selling wine not just to the Catholic Church, but the Lutherans and Episcopalians as well.” But there wasn’t much money around. Joseph’s siblings wanted to sell up, but his wife’s brother Carlo Ferrario, who had a local winery, loaned Joe the money to buy the others out. He and his wife, Nina, Jim’s mother, who like her brother had emigrated from Lonate Pozzolo in Italy, became the sole owners. When Prohibition finally ended in 1931, Joseph had plenty of wine in stock and soon he was shipping it all over the country. A newspaper clipping from that time shows a truckload of wines arriving in Seattle and a crowd gathered with a “Welcome Concannon Wines” placard. If Joseph’s first love was the military, Jim’s first love is wine. On a tour of the winery he points out the house that his grandfather built, the house he grew up in. “I made my first wine in the attic when I was ten years old,” he said, DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 77
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laughing. “It overflowed and leaked into my parents’ bedroom.” Instead of being mad, Joseph took him down to the winery and his Uncle Tom, his father’s brother, showed him how it was done. By this time Joseph had brought in Tom, a chemist, to handle the winemaking, and another brother, Robert, to handle sales. There is still that feeling of family at Concannon. Everyone from farm hands to bottling supervisors are on a first name basis. As we make our tour of the winery, Jim and his son John Concannon pictured in front of the family gallery. John, the 4th-generation Concannon to work at the winery, stop to Davis eventually released clones, 7, 8 chat with workers and visitors alike. A and 11. Most winemakers agree that these young couple who are sharing a picnic clones played a pivotal role in the expantable out front seem surprised to meet an sion of Cabernet Sauvignon plantings in actual Concannon. California. When disease wiped out Napa Valley vineyards in the 1980s, it’s estimatJIM & JOE ed that 80 percent of all replanting of By the time of their father’s death in 1965, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes came from the Jim and his brother Joe were running the Concannon Clone. “To this day if you winery. Joe took care of the sales and Jim want to plant a vineyard that’s resistant to had taken over as winemaker. In 1960 he root rot, you order the Concannon Clone married Helen, a nurse, and the following 7, 8 or 11,” said John. “So the next time year his son John was born. He made a you are enjoying a $100 bottle of Napa very special wine to celebrate the birth. Valley wine, just remember that there’s a The Petite Sirah, known for its small little bit of Concannon in there,” he adds berries and concentrated flavor, was used with a grin. as a mix in producing other wine. Acting THE FUTURE on the advice of a friend, Jim decided to Each generation of the Concannon family see how it would fare on its own. The has had a unique impact on the winery that result was a unique wine with a distinctive bears its name. For John, the newest taste that went on to win high honors. Fifty Concannon at the helm, it is all about years after its birth it’s become reclaiming, repurposing and conservation. Concannon’s flagship wine. He began working in the winery when When President Reagan visited Ireland he was 10 years old, and after 25 years in 1984, his gift to Taoiseach Garrett away, and a successful career in the medFitzgerald was a 1979 Concannon Petite ical field, he is happy to be back at Sirah, delivered with the message: “From Concannon, where his job includes pubthe young Irishman that left his homeland. lic relations and sales. He is now returning his gift.” His knowledge of the winemaking As well as producing California’s first process is vast, and he’s in his element Petite Sirah, something else that Jim and when talking about marrying the latest Joe did would forever impact the future of technology to tradition. California’s Cabernet Sauvignon. “We still do many things the traditional Here John picks up the story. “Back in way,” he emphasizes as we watch the 1966, Dad and Uncle Joe worked with scicabernet grapes, harvested the night entists at U.C. Davis to make root stock before, being sorted by hand. Four differthat was resistant to the viruses that afflictent pairs of eyes and hands quickly toss ed many vineyards. They took cuttings away leaves or grapes that aren’t up to par. from a single vine from here (he points out Yet, alongside this tradition are state of the row), known as the Concannon the art condensers, and chemistry labs, and Mother Vine, and mainly through heat high tech bottling facilities. Sustainability treatment, made it resistant to fungus and is the principle at work here. John points other viruses.” 78 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
out how the energy collected from solar paneling on the roof cools the gigantic oak barrels of reds, while the exhaust from the same refrigeration system keeps the chardonnays warm. The barrel room is a sight to behold, especially as on this day it’s set up for a wedding of one of the workers. Olive branches adorn an altar that is set up in front of an old wine press that was modified from an apple cider press that James Concannon used to harvest his first grapes. There are reminders of the founder everywhere you turn. If you lift your head up from the vines your eye will catch Mount Diablo rising into an empty sky in the distance. The vista is pretty much unchanged from when James first put down roots here. And it will stay that way. The Concannons joined local winemakers in placing their land into a conservation thrust that preserves it for future generations. It’s a project that’s close to John Concannon’s heart. “Three million acres a year, 342 acres of farm land an hour are lost to urban sprawl,” he said, explaining the reasoning behind the move. “So we took all of our land, and you know we are 42 miles east of one of the greatest cities in the world, so land is not exactly cheap, and we gave away our land rights so it would be preserved forever. “All of the juice from our conservatory wines comes from vineyards in the trust, including the ‘Crimson and Clover’ wine we produced to celebrate Dad’s 80th birthday this year. (We drank the last bottle at lunch!) “So all the land stretching back to the mountains, the vista we now see it will remain unchanged for a long, long time. We like to say, ‘saving the land one sip at a time.’” I think James Concannon, late of Inis IA Meain, would approve that move. Epilogue: Concannon is now part of the Wine Group, which purchased it in 2002. David B. Kent, CEO of The Wine Group, wrote in the Afterword to Jim’s book, “Although the ship has changed ownership, we have always been blessed to have a Concannon at the helm. We hope this continues through the fourth and fifth generations, and beyond.” Amen.
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A Fashionable In their sunlit showroom in the Garment District, Nanette Lepore and Bob Savage talk about their journey from Youngstown, Ohio to the epicenter of the New York City fashion scene.
PARTNERSHIP
ocated in the heart of New York’s bustling Garment District, the Nanette Lepore showroom is an oasis of calm and vibrant color. Soft light and white walls highlight the racks upon racks of exquisite clothing in Lepore’s trademark ultra-feminine, playful yet elegant style. The section of the showroom designated for the Spring 2012 pieces is especially bright and appealing, a carefully organized rainbow of the saturated neon hues that define the collection. “We worked really hard,” Lepore says, holding out a delicately pleated dress in the royalist of
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royal blues. “The pigments were actually painted on – pigment printed – to get that kind of saturation.” Behind her, a screen plays a video of the runway show on a continuous loop. Lepore and her husband, Bob Savage, are the creative and business forces behind the label that bears her name. With eleven retail stores around the world, a coveted spot at New York Fashion Week and a client list that includes Sharon Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria Parker, Taylor Swift and Abigail Breslin, their immense success belies the label’s rather humble beginnings.
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Their story starts in Youngstown, Ohio, where both Lepore and Savage grew up. It’s the same Youngstown of former steel mill glory that Bruce Springsteen sang about, and the eponymous city of a “Youngstown tune-up.” Savage describes it as “Sort of like a miniature version of The Sopranos. Cleveland had a mob and Pittsburgh had a mob, and Youngstown was in between. Prostitution and gambling
thought she was a chef, and then when she discovered Cheese Whiz with pimentos, she thought she was a gourmet chef. The interesting thing about the neighborhood was my Italian friends. I’d go to their houses and it was like – food! It was a very interesting childhood, I had a good time growing up interacting with all those different cultures.”
ABOVE: A look from Nanette Lepore’s Spring 2012 runway show. RIGHT: Bob Savage and Nanette Lepore discuss the line in their showroom.
and all of this stuff was going on, and Cleveland and Pittsburgh were fighting for territory. They were always shooting at each other and blowing each other up. It was crazy.” Still, both recall their childhood homes fondly. Savage’s family has roots in Hollymount, Co. Mayo, and the Irish were among the first ethnic groups to settle in the small Ohio city, which grew increasingly diverse. “The Irish were not known for their cuisine, at least when I was growing up,” Bob jokes. “My mother would always say when she discovered Cheese Wiz she
Lepore’s home was Italian and Irish. “My husband likes to say I can cook and drink,” she laughs. In her recollections, the Lepores (the Italian faction) and the McGarrys (her mother’s family, with roots In Cork and Mayo), come across as strong but fairly complementary forces. In a touching Huffington Post blog entry from 2009, she recounted how both sides of her family worked together to construct her parents’ dream house in a rural area of Youngstown. Grandpa Lepore and his sons laid the bricks, while Grandpa McGarry
and his son did all of the carpentry. She describes some of the hidden finishing touches he added as “like the surprise of a beautiful lining in a coat.” “My Irish grandfather used to go crazy over the way the Italians were doing things, because he was more methodical and the Italians would just plunge in. It was such a difference, but they both made beautiful things.” Demonstrating a talent for fashion design from an early age, Lepore was encouraged by her father – himself a painter – and her stylish mother. “I did a couple of funny little sewing classes at the Singer store; I would go buy patterns (especially Betsey Johnson) and fabric – no one else was allowed to have that kind of freedom with money in our family, because money was tight.” She describes her parents as having been opposites when they met in high school – her dad the class clown and her mother the valedictorian. “Their marriage wasn’t approved of in the beginning, but then everyone grew to love each other.” But the McGarrys had to be understanding. After all, “My Irish grandparents eloped on a Harley Davidson. She was from the Maryland area and she was underage. Three brothers married three sisters. Her last name was Michael – three Michaels married three McGarrys.” Lepore and Savage met in Youngstown when Bob, whose first passion is painting, was studying art with Nanette’s father at Youngstown State University. “He actually fixed his daughter up with somebody, I’d never do that!” Bob says, shaking his head and evidently thinking of their thirteen-year-old daughter, Violet. Nanette and Bob came to New York so that she could complete a two-year course at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She wound up finishing in just one year and working for a variety of high-end boutiques and design studios before venturing out on her own in 1992. “She promised me that she would be a famous designer and I could become a painter,” Savage says, sighing dramatically. “I didn’t say famous designer,” Lepore counters. “I said you could be a painter and I would earn the money. But I thought I would be working for someone, I never had any intention of running my own business. That was your idea.” Savage and Lepore began their professional partnership two years into the busiDECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 81
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ness, after she and her initial partner had parted ways. It started with a small store in the East Village, which they rented for $500 a month. “It was in between a soup kitchen and a gas station,” she recalls. “It was crazy.” A new, trendy boutique would be right at home in the neighborhood today, but as little as 20 years ago it was a bit of a gamble. Their initial company name was a riff on the French inspiration behind Lepore’s early collections and the shop’s gritty surroundings. “We had to come up with a name for the company, and Nanette wanted something French,” Savage explains. “One day there were guys making drug deals right outside at about ten o’clock in the morning and I said to myself, this place is like a reign of terror. So I said ‘Nanette, I got the name, it’s French and from the reign of terror: Robespierre.’ And we’re still One of Bob Savage’s paintings, inspired by a incorporated under Robespierre, doing trip to Hollymount, Co. Mayo, to connect with business as Nanette Lepore.” his long-lost Irish relatives. It shows a massive As much of a departure as it was rock between two trees, which, according to from painting, Bob was well-suited for his cousin, was “put there by the giants.” his new role as company president. “I’ve found a local factory to work with, and thought about that,” he says, “because my grew fairly steadily from there. In the grandparents were entrepreneurs and my meantime, Savage continued to support great-grandfather built and ran a hotel in them by working as a waiter. “I waited Pennsylvania. On the other side, my greattables for twelve years. Seven of those uncle had a small oil company in Ohio, so years were while we were a very small there’s this entrepreneurial streak there. It company, so I would work three or four skipped my parents; my dad worked for a days a week, with five or six shifts to bring steel company for forty years and he home the money. It was hard, but it was planned the production for manufacturing worth it.” a pipe in Ohio, but he wasn’t really an Eighty-five percent of Lepore’s line is entrepreneur. As a kid, I was always mowstill produced in New York, in the fabric ing lawns or shoveling snow and trying to stores, factories, and the workshops of patmake a dollar here or there, so I do think tern makers and design cutters that sit there’s a DNA factor in all this.” within a ten-block radius of the showroom. Citing the legacy of craftsmanship in her With this in mind, Nanette and Bob are family, Lepore agrees. “I think the whole strong advocates for the preservation of the family mentality of not being intimidated Garment District. The local businesses are by creating something, by building someunder threat from landlords raising rents thing, sort of comes through. I was terriand city officials reconsidering the zoning fied to start a business but once I did it, it laws that have reserved a portion of the was a lot easier than I thought. I think that area from 34th street to 42nd street for the was because of growing up with people fashion industry. Savage and Lepore have around you who are working in a practical petitioned local politicians, organized way, but also creating beauty.” protests, partnered with the Council of The orders began pouring in, but they Fashion Designers and even traveled to were all COD and the fledgling company Washington three times to plead their case lacked the funds to manufacture enough with officials. pieces to meet demand. Bolstered by a Aside from the re-structuring it would loan from Lepore’s father and a “kitchen mean for their own operation, their protest remodeling” loan from the bank, they against the waning of the Garment District 82 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
stems from concern over what a lack of smaller, local resources would mean for young, emerging designers. “It’s not just for us,” Savage says. “It’s all the jobs. It’s FIT, Parsons, these young people coming out that want to do what she did. To come out of school and start a business will be very difficult if there are no factories, because no one would be making your samples. Even if Barney’s were to buy 100 or 200 pieces, no one in China is going to make 200 pieces for you. They want 5,000 pieces minimum. So if you eliminate the core here, you eliminate the possible future of the fashion industry in America. That’s how serious it could end up being. And that’s what we’re really trying to preserve.” Their own business has also felt the effects of the recession. “We went through about eight years of complete growth, just adding stuff and adding stuff and then we hit a standstill,” Nanette laments. “We had layoffs, and we had never laid anybody off. It was very difficult,” Savage adds. Lepore admits that it has also been tougher from a creative perspective. “It’s been hard trying to understand what’s going to make the costumer excited. I wouldn’t want to have to go through another recession, let’s hope that isn’t what’s going to happen.” Still, she is optimistic. “Sales for the spring are higher than they were last year, and our own store retails are higher than they were a year ago.” Lepore is also at work on her next collection, which draws inspiration from a Francesco Clemente exhibition at the
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Uffizi in Florence, based on the Tarot. “The colors are going to be beautiful and the prints are really lush,” she says, not giving away too much information. Before the recession hit, the label was enjoying something of an Irish moment. “We had so many Irish accounts. It became almost funny, we would come back from showing in Europe and we’d have ten new Irish accounts. We must’ve been shipping to fifty, and now I think they’re almost all gone,” Lepore says. Savage wanted to open a shop in Dublin as a base for European business, but found that “The rents were outrageous. They were more than New York. I found a little spot on Dawson Street and I was disappointed because somebody else got it instead. Then I just recently went back there and they were gone. So it’s probably better it didn’t happen.”
TOP: The Nanette Lepore showroom. ABOVE: Nanette Lepore. LEFT: A vibrant runway look from Lepore’s Spring 2012 collection.
He has, however, just found a personal base in Ireland – a little cottage near Cong, Co. Mayo. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. And it’s great,” Bob says, displaying a map of Mayo with a proud pen-ink circle to mark the cottage’s location. Both share an interest in their Irish heritage. Their daughter’s middle name is Oonagh, because, as Lepore puts it, “We wanted something Irish, and the double O’s are so beautiful.” Lepore also chose the name for her recently launched line of luxe basics. Bob’s interest may be a bit more vested, though. On the couple’s first trip to Ireland, Nanette balked at the weather. “We landed in Dublin and only made it as far as Newgrange. I think we were headed west when I panicked and said “I’m getting out of here, it is too cold,” she says
with a laugh. “We were sitting in this cafe and talking about leaving, and the waitress said to us ‘Well, certainly you didn’t come to Ireland for the weather!’” Nanette now makes a yearly trip to Italy, to connect with her Italian side. On another trip to Ireland, Bob caught up with some long-lost relatives. His great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland during the famine with his five brothers. Illness spread throughout their ship, however, and they had to return to Ireland before they even had a chance to dock in New York. One of the brothers died, but the four returned to America and survived the second crossing. Though Savage grew up in an IrishAmerican household, he didn’t feel an intense connection to his Irish roots until he began exploring the culture – the music and literature in particular. A friend of his came back from a trip to Ireland and gave him all of the sheet music and songbooks he had picked up; he told him all about The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners. Another friend introduced him to Yeats and Joyce. He now travels to Ireland a few times a year and has a repertoire of about 150 songs, though he doesn’t seem to think that’s a drop in the bucket compared to “the millions that are out there. You go into a pub to sing a song and they’ll say ‘Oh, but do you know this one? Do you know that one?’ I still have a lot to learn.” “It doesn’t take much to get him going,” Nanette teases. Proving her correct, Bob treats Irish America to an impromptu rendition of The Dubliners’ “Dirty Old Town.” And for a few minutes, between the deep resonance of his voice and the tranquillity of the showroom, it’s almost IA like we’ve left New York. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 83
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THE JOY OF
Giving Back
The RTE show Secret Millionaire followed American hotelier John Fitzpatrick as he spent a week undercover in one of Ireland’s poorest communities. BY ALIAH O’NEILL hen Business 100 honoree John Fitzpatrick was approached by RTE (Ireland’s national television and radio broadcaster) to appear on Secret Millionaire, he balked. “I thought someone was playing a joke. I was annoyed that someone would even consider doing a program like that, the way Ireland is [suffering] at the moment,” he says. But the producers of the reality show, in which wealthy individuals go undercover in impoverished communities and end up giving away thousands of dollars to deserving organizations, persisted. Fitzpatrick eventually signed on to spend eight days in the Muirhevnamor housing estate in Dundalk, Co. Louth, one of Ireland’s most disadvantaged communities. He was given a typical low income apartment to live in, about $200 in cash to live on (a major portion of which went on cleaning supplies and mouse traps), and, one of the most difficult adjustments for the perpetually connected businessman, he agreed to hand over his Blackberry.
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Pretending to film a documentary on the recession, Fitzpatrick’s task was to research and visit individuals working to uplift the community through service and volunteer programs. The camera follows him as he spends his days talking with Dundalk residents and looking in on various community programs. By the end of the week, he has to decide which programs he will personally donate money to, and reveal his true identity. According to a recent survey, unemployment in Muirhevnamor, is four times the national average, and the community is concerned about a growing drug problem that puts youth at risk. One of Fitzpatrick’s first stops is the Craobh Rua Community House, an after school program run by Jacinta Grimes and Caroline Flanagan. In this safe environment atrisk children can play, get homework help, and learn the risks of drug use and gang violence. Fitzpatrick sings the praises of Jacinta and Caroline throughout the show, calling them “the heart and soul of the house…I walk in the door and I feel like it's home. I feel what the kids feel.”
Fitzpatrick also visits O’Hanlon Park Boxing & Fitness Club, run by local boxing champion Paul Taaffe and other local volunteers, and Cuidigh Linn, which provides a variety of services to lonely and homebound elderly in the community for little or no fee. What strikes one again and again in watching the show (American audiences can watch it on YouTube) is the amazing fortitude shown by those individuals involved in fighting to keep the community alive and better the lot of residents, young and old. They go about their day with humor and commitment, and in the case of Paul, who started O’Hanlon Park Boxing & Fitness in order to promote physical health and mental well-being and to bring young and old community members together, a belief that “the Club doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the community...It’s about getting the whole community to interact.” Through Cuidigh Linn he meets Tim and Diane, a wheelchair-bound couple living in a two-story house. Tim has not been upstairs in fifteen years, and Diane, who began using a wheelchair five years ago, has no accessible bed – each night, she brings her wheelchair close to Tim’s bed and rests her head on the mattress. But like many people Fitzpatrick met in
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Dundalk, Tim and Diane are positive in their outlook despite the hardship. One of the kids Fitzpatrick meets at the after school program is a young boy named Joel Maguire, who first appears shy and guarded. But when he launches into singing “Billionaire,” a song that boasts, “Every time I close my eyes, I see my name in shining lights,” he loses all his inhibitions and his voice soars. Fitzpatrick spends time with Joel and learns of his ambition to be a famous singer and his desire to help support his mother. So, it will not spoil the show for those of you who want to watch it, to learn that in addition to making a large donation to the Muirhevnamor youth community center, Fitzpatrick also buys Joel singing lessons to put him on track towards achieving his dream. In addition to €20,000 he gives towards expanding the youth center, we learn that Fitzpatrick also gives a donation of €2,000 to the co-ed youth boxing club, and €15,000 to Cuidigh Linn, the senior citizen organization. Fitzpatrick was so struck by the predicament of Tim and Diane, the couple he met through Cuidigh Linn, that after the show ended, he stayed in touch and helped lobby the local government to secure a wheelchair-accessible house just across the street. They plan to move in this March or April. He keeps in touch with Jacinta and Caroline too, and is actively involved in making sure they have the resources to build a new addition to the community center so that more children can attend. In fact, Fitzpatrick has kept in touch
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with nearly everyone he met during the filming – and many whom he didn’t have a chance to meet now recognize him and welcome him into the neighborhood. “I think about those eight days and there was a calmness within me,” he tells Irish America. “Even though I was in these difficult situations, I felt different. Some
places in Ireland, like the area of Dundalk where we filmed, never experienced the Celtic Tiger. But the beautiful thing is they’re still happy, they never complain. You think we have problems – we have no problems.” It was, Fitzpatrick admits, a significant change for someone who has often described himself in interviews as “married” to his work to take time out to do the show. “I hadn’t turned off my Blackberry in 20 years,” he says of his life leading up to his week of filming. In addition to being
LEFT TO RIGHT: John settles into his apartment in Dundalk. Joel and John talk for the first time on the Muirhevnamor housing estate. Andrea Connolly tells John about Cuidigh Linn, the program she directs for senior citizens. Breakfast with Ciaran, Cuidigh Linn’s maintenance man. BELOW: Joel singing.
president and CEO of The Fitzpatrick Hotel Group, North America, which includes two hotels in New York City, he is in his second term as chairman of the New York Hotel Association. He is also an American Ireland Fund Board Director. Yet despite his incredibly busy schedule he has always made time for charitable causes, especially in Ireland. The Eithne and Paddy Fitzpatrick Memorial Fund, which he created 18 years ago in memory of his parents, has raised over $1.4 million for Irish organizations. “When my mother passed away, I was adamant that she would not be forgotten. My father had done so well in Ireland but he would’ve never been as successful without my mother. So that’s why I first set up the foundation. I really didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I got involved with The American Ireland Fund and they guided me,” Fitzpatrick says. Two of the main projects he’s become involved with are the Corrymeala Centre and Barrettstown. Corrymeala Centre is dedicated to fostering peaceful dialogue in Northern Irish communities by bringing families together and Barrettstown provides comfort to children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Fitzpatrick has also recently supported Peace Players International, another organization devoted to reconciliation in Northern Ireland by teaching basketball to children from different communities. In addition to this lengthy list of commitments, Fitzpatrick’s stint on Secret Millionaire was unique because the Eithne and Paddy Fitzpatrick Memorial Fund DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 85
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LEFT TO RIGHT:
was able to match his contributions to the Dundalk community organizations, partly through funds raised at his annual golf tournament. He said, “I was just lucky enough that when I had my golf tournament in May, I stood up and said, ‘I’ve just done something fantastic but I can’t tell you about it. [He kept the show a secret until it aired last September.] But we’re going to raise some
touch with Joel. “I got him two A workshop for time. “I think the credit has to tickets for Rihanna in concert. local mothers on go to the people [like] Jacinta That was in September, so I the Muirhevnamor and Caroline. They’re the ones estate. brought himself and his mother who are there every day. John helps Ciaran up and they stayed at my sister’s paint the home of They’re the ones who should hotel in Dublin.” get the credit for it all.” an elderly woman Thinking back to the concert he in the community. Fitzpatrick remains dedicatsays, “665,000 people watched ed to providing real solutions to Secret Millionaire in Ireland. I’m walking the organizations and people he helps out of the car park [with Joel] and young through the Eithne and Paddy Fitzpatrick Memorial Fund. “I always try to show every year at my golf tournament what the money was spent on. At least 50 percent of the money has to go into bricks and mortar.” And of course, his eye remains on the future of the Dundalk community. “If I just did it for the show, then it’s just a TV show. There’s a lot more work to be done, and I’ve met great friends…so it’s been a hell of an experience.” girls recognize me, and I said, ‘Hold on, In the final moments of Secret girls, look who’s with me.’ And they went Millionaire, Fitzpatrick reflects on his wild, he was like a rock star to them. He’s time in Dundalk. “There’s something brilliant.” about this week I can’t really explain … It Fitzpatrick insists that the financial conwas great. I have to say, looking back on tributions he made on Secret Millionaire it now, it was definitely worth my doing. would mean nothing without the commuIt made me look a little bit more at IA nity members who give so much of their myself.”
“If I just did it for the show, then it’s just a TV show. There’s a lot more work to be done, and I’ve met great friends…so it’s been a hell of an experience.” money for it here, and it’s about kids.’” The response was overwhelmingly positive, and though they did not know who the recipients would be until recently, friends and donors eagerly contributed to the cause. “When you get involved and you can see something happening with what you put in, it’s very fulfilling,” he says. “But really the charity work is made possible by my donors and my team. All my employees give up their free time. The golf tournament is in May, we start [organizing] in November. My salespeople, my bartenders, my restaurant people, my housekeepers… they all get involved and they’re on the committee.” Since Secret Millionaire was filmed in March 2011, Fitzpatrick has been back to Dundalk every time he’s been back to Ireland. “Some people say, ‘Oh, you’re so good going to Dundalk’ – but no, I get a kick out of it.” In addition to keeping in touch with the community organizations, he’s kept in 86 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
John Fitzpatrick was recognized with Irish America’s Irish American of the Year award in 2010.
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Anne Tea With
The singular Irish writer discusses her recent novel, The Forgotten Waltz – an honest, consuming and characteristically biting examination of Celtic Tiger Ireland.
Interview by Sheila Langan
A
nne Enright sipped on a jasmine green tea while I, in a moment of mild panic, had ordered something called white monkey. We met in a little tea house in Manhattan’s West 50s in early October, during her nationwide book tour to promote her latest novel, The Forgotten Waltz. She had been up at 5:00 am that morning, did an interview in Philadelphia and took the train to New York. Later that night she would feature in a Q+A session on stage at Symphony Space. “The road, the road. It will eat you up,” she lamented in her uniquely ironic and frank manner. It’s a practice she had to adjust to quickly after her 2007 novel, The Gathering, won the prestigious Man Booker Prize and propelled her to fame. The Gathering, which she readily acknowledges “put readers through the wringer,” told the dark and immensely absorbing story of the Hegarty family. Narrated by Veronica, who is grappling with the death of her twin brother, it explores how infatuation, repression and abuse can cycle back to affect generations to come, and how strange and changeable the world is when one is grieving. Born in Dublin, Enright attended Trinity College, Dublin and went on to study with Angela Carter at the University of East Anglia. Back in Dublin, she worked in television for a few years with RTÉ, and published her first collection of short stories, The Portable Virgin, in 1991. Since beginning to write full time in 1993, her works have included the novels What Are You Like? and The Wig My Father Wore, and Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood, a collection of essays. Enright lives in Bray with her husband and their two children.
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Enright’s latest narrator is Gina Moynihan, a fairly average 30-something middle-class Dubliner who works in IT (and happens to share her author’s talent for idiosyncratic, bang-on description). She is married to Conor Shiels, with whom everything seems “slightly too much,” but in love with Séan Vallely, an older, also married man with a mysteriously troubled daughter, Evie. The Forgotten Waltz pairs what on the surface reads as a conversational re-telling of a juicy affair (The Huffington Post declared it “Fall’s Sexiest Novel”), with a much deeper meditation on the mania of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger years and the slow settling of reality that followed.
Why explore an affair and Ireland’s recent history together? Well, it’s always fun to explore adultery in prose. Adultery is a great subject for a society where old values are changing. Some money comes into the country and there’s a new sense of possibility. The old authorities are not what they were, so people have to create their own personal morality. People are doing things not because they’re told to, but because they tell themselves. There was something about the last five or six years of the boom, it was so frantic and so hectic and people basically were saying that you have to believe in this or it will all stop – if you stop believing in house prices, they will all crash, and the crash will therefore be your fault. A Tinkerbelle mentality? Like Tinkerbelle, exactly. It was a huge confidence trick, as bubble economies are, and so when the belief went out of the system, we realized we didn’t have money, we had debt. But there was something about the boom, with people getting what they wanted – for once – and people being a bit greedy and enjoying it, feeling that they deserved it, that it was their time, their turn. I thought that this was similar to an adulterous liaison. The attitude was “This is fantastic – and we’re getting away with it!” I found all of the little signs of decadence to be very
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effective. The designer labels – Pauric Sweeney and Issey Miyake – the real estate lingo and the wine talk. Did you do any research for those details or were they just there? I didn’t have to do that much research. The brilliant thing about writing a book that starts in 2002 is that it’s really, really close. When the copy editor was looking at it and saying “What is this Issey Miyake dress?” I could send him a picture of nearly that dress. I just go online and there it is. I get a little bit upset when people don’t like Gina and find her materialistic, because I’m pretty like Gina in a way. I wouldn’t have minded an Alberta Feretti wedding dress – I wouldn’t have had the style, but it’s lovely stuff. I don’t know if that makes me a shallow person. I mean, I’m a writer, I can’t be a shallow person! She’s probably more knowledgeable about wine than she should be – I definitely did a lot of research for that myself, so maybe that’s where the character and the author merge a little bit. I really enjoyed that though, how even her taste in wine follows the times and gets increasingly snobby. At the beginning she’s “mad into Chardonnay” but a few years on she’s drinking Canadian ice wine. Yeah, I remember my brother told me about somebody in his circle who said that he was “really bored with Chardonnay.” That was at the beginning of people really naming the wine by the varietal. My brother thought it was such a pretentious thing to say. So, you know, that’s [one of] those tiny little details you pick up over the years and then put in when they’re needed. But I do think the excesses of the Irish boom are much, much worse than Gina. She’s just a foot soldier. She’s just got a job, she’s not buying and selling, she’s not borrowing huge amounts of money. She’s just living a life really. I quite liked inhabiting the character, though. It was nice this time around. Veronica in The Gathering was so sad, so Gina was a bit of a break. Also, I’m getting older, and so to inhabit a character who was in her 30s, that was fun. You started writing The Forgotten Waltz around the same time that the book itself begins. What was that like? I wrote it from beginning to end. I didn’t skip ahead in my own writing, and that was unusual for me because I usually write in patches and then a book sort of rises to the surface, like a cup filling up, and when it’s full I know I’m finished. What was it about this story that saw you writing in that way? I did it as a discipline, because the novel is about cause and
effect and that feeling of “What brought me here?” so I wanted to do it step by step. I probably also did it because I’d been kept from the desk for so long that I knew pretty much what the book was going to be by the time I sat down. I didn’t know the finer details or anything, but I had a pretty good idea. I’ve always wanted to do that, just sit down and Write. A. Book. You know? It’s the way it’s supposed to happen and then it never does.
Did your writing or your approach change as things grew worse and worse in Ireland? It was very strange. Lehman Brothers went down in September 2008. I sat down in January and stared at the wall for a while, and then that week of snow, everybody knew that whatever had happened was terrible, but they didn’t know how terrible. I finished the book just as the IMF walked in the door. Literally as I was writing it the bubble had burst but we hadn’t heard the pop. We had been falling but we didn’t know how fast, we didn’t know how far…And I was really sad about what had happened to the country. I mean, I wasn’t really on board for the boom, I didn’t really get anything out of it. I was living out in Bray with small children, which wasn’t exactly the glamorous boom-time life. But I still was really angry and upset by it all falling apart. A great similarity between The Forgotten Waltz and The Gathering is the presence of a central moment. In The Forgotten Waltz it’s when Gina first sees Séan in her sister’s garden; in The Gathering, the scene of Ada and Lamb’s first meeting in the hotel foyer, [which Veronica re-creates over and over in her head]. What is it that you like about those moments? Yes, the garden is very like the scene in the Belvedere Hotel. Obviously I’m leaving these things with reluctance….That hotel scene, I was at it for three months and nothing happens. And nothing happens in the garden. [Séan] turns around and he sees [Gina] and Evie comes up with a mucky face. Someone else asked me about all the looks in my books. I don’t know why I return to looks all the time. I rarely describe my characters’ clothes, for example, they never really look in the mirror. I don’t objectify my female characters, I’m not interested in the male gaze as a problem, which many women writers are. It’s a very good problem to be interested in, but I don’t do that. But I did have to go through The Forgotten Waltz and do a word search on “look.” I had a real thesaurus moment, I had to go for glances and take out some, weed them out. There’s a play of glances throughout the whole book. I’ll have a blind character the next time around. Though that would be a bit exploitative. I was at a conference at Princeton earlier in the year DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 89
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where you were talking about the Irish short story, and you mentioned something, which perhaps got lost in the overall Irish focus of the day, about misogyny in contemporary literature – how trendy but seldom discussed it is. What did you mean? Yes, it’s trendy. I think male writers like to look fierce. There’s a lot of showing off in writing in general, whether male or female. And I think there’s probably a puritan streak of disgust in modern fiction. Think about someone like Irvine Welsh, you know? He’s very involved in disgust, which is part of the misogynistic impulse. Counter to that, you look at somebody like Jonathan Franzen, who’s writing about the family. I’m delighted that men can write about the family again. The Victorians did it very easily, so how did we rear generations of men who couldn’t go there? What was so wrong about it for them? Maybe it was a general flight from intimacy socially that isn’t just male. But everybody admires all these horrible, leery descriptions. They think they’re great, and I can’t help taking it personally. I don’t actually mind misogyny when it isn’t lazy and show-offy. I don’t mind [Charles] Bukowski, for example…But if women complain about it, then they’re seen as being bad sports or something.
any strong judgment or consequences. How did you create that balance? The biggest irony happens between the writer and the reader, because we’re both listening to Gina and we’re not believing her entirely. It’s that distance between what she says and what we see is going on that’s fun. I’m always amused when people take what Gina says literally. She says “Séan’s wife is really boring and middle-aged.” Then a reviewer says “Séan, married to a boring middle-aged woman,” but you have to say “No, no. Actually, that’s what Gina thinks.” That moral game is interesting to play. That is the line I’m walking through the book, until reality sort of surfaces towards the end and Gina starts to see what we have intimated. She has intimated it as well, but she starts to see it properly for the first time. And when she sees it properly, it’s not a tragedy. I mean, reality, which is what hits at the end, isn’t a tragic thing. Reality isn’t always a dose of cold water. Do you read your reviews? Oh I do. It’s very hard not to with the Internet. I think writers who say “Oh, I never read the reviews” are always lying… You have to keep an eye.
The biggest irony happens between the writer and the reader, because we’re both listening to Gina and we’re not believing her entirely. It’s that distance between what she says and what we see is going on that’s fun. I’m always amused when people take what Gina says literally. How conscious of this are you when you’re creating your female characters, or your male characters’ interactions with your female characters? I don’t know if Séan is misogynistic or not. He is anti-fat, which I always think is a bad sign. And there is a slight streak of misogyny for sure in Veronica’s husband. She’s very troubled by his potentially ruinous sexuality. But in fact, Veronica’s husband is probably just a regular guy. She’s got all these monsters and this phantasmagoria in her head. I said once that the world is full of male writers who write about strangling prostitutes while their wives make them tea. You know, they lead these very quiet lives and then they sit down and they have their imaginations outfit the worst possible things. That’s like what Veronica has. She imagines the worst of her husband’s sexuality. Another of my characters says about men “the things they want and the damage they’ll do to get it.” But she is in love with her husband, too. My personal experience with men is actually very good. I have a really nice father, my brothers are great. I can’t even talk about my husband, he’s fantastic. And so these images of men that you get in literature who are so horrible and so vile don’t ring true to me. I think it’s a noise writers are making, a kind of noise. So I don’t get too worried about it. I have great faith in the human heart, personally. I do. So many other stories of affairs have women throwing themselves under trains or living in guilt and misery, but Gina isn’t like that. It seems like there are a lot of gentle ironies about her situation rather than 90 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
I read the reviews not without some anxiety. But now I amuse myself by thinking about the reviewer’s personal situation and what they think about Gina. It’s usually wives and mothers [who] disapprove – maybe. There was one quite mistressy review, by a woman with a lot of lipstick who thought Gina was fab. So I really saw that it depends on where you’re coming from, how you’re going to view the character. And actually, people are beginning to realize that the character and the book are two different things. But it takes years before you know what you’ve written.
One review [Francine Prose’s in The New York Times] said with a lot of conviction that the book was an indictment of “the self-involved material girls our era has produced.” Were you indicting anyone? No. I have great understanding for people who won’t lead the regular life, who want to do something big, something that might be wrong-headed. I understand that impulse very clearly. So the book is a tiny bit more moral than I’d like, and that is because of the child. Maybe it’s because I’ve become that woman with children that I love putting children in books. But it also matches my interest in the difference between sexual and romantic love and family love. Or love you choose, if you choose, and love you can’t get away from even if you try, which is the family stuff. It’s a great nexus. Your earlier work has a very surreal quality, which hasn’t been present in your last few books. Where did it go?
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Well, you change all the time, you evolve as a writer. I’m probably more interested in real life than I was then. But I still want to write sentences that surprise, sentences that change. I think a lot of what you might call surreal I would call metaphorical, just as a matter of classification. There would still be a metaphorical impulse in my work and there would still be the element of surprise on a more mundane level. I mean, in The Wig My Father Wore, the only actual unreal thing was to have an angel in the book. The other ones, they’re a little bit unreal, they’re a little bit surreal, but everything is logical, everything is mechanically or biologically possible.
The Portable Virgin, though, definitely had its impossible moments. Yes, it did, and What Are You Like? I don’t know, maybe it’s something about occupying the middle ground more as I get older. I wasn’t a natural partaker of the Irish tradition, I think, because there was so much to say that had been unsaid and because life was so absurd in many ways, in Ireland in those days, that the only conscionable response, the only proper response was to be surreal. Maybe moving more towards the real is kind of also moving towards being more in charge, being more connected to things…. Also, you know, my earlier work wasn’t very much noticed, so I might have moved more towards the kind of work that is noticed. What’s next for you? I’ve been working since the kids were born 11 years ago. I think I did have a few holidays, but the last couple of years I’ve been working throughout, still writing in that pleasant village in France instead of having a holiday. So after The Forgotten Waltz came out we took 10 weeks off and had a big break, a big midlife trip around Southeast Asia. And I didn’t write a single word. My children wrote large graphic novels and screenplays, but we were too busy washing out their clothes and sorting out their swimming costumes. I’m not writing at the moment, and that is amazing, I have not done this for years. It might last at least another three minutes, we’ll see. I’m going to write slower. Spend maybe three or four years on a big book. That’s what’s next. I’m going to not write, and then I’m going to write. I heard that you may be switching to third person for the next one? Well, that’s the rumor. I’ve been spreading around rumors about myself! I don’t really know, it takes ages. You have those thoughts and then they don’t really matter once you get going. Writers are always thinking “Is it right? Is it right?” But then when you write it, the ones that are written in order to be right are seldom good, they’re kind of constructed objects. If it’s going to fly, it’s going to come from somewhere else. This in a way is a right book, but it comes from a considerable amount of feeling about what happened to the country. In what way do you think it’s a right book? Well, if the public cry goes “Where are contemporary Irish novels?” and you say “Here’s one,” it’s right in that sense, in some kind of public sense. Considering how immediately you started The Forgotten Waltz as the recession unfolded, do you think it might be among the first of many boom-and-
bust novels in the years to come? What do you think it’s like for Ireland to have [the Celtic Tiger and the recession] already being rehashed in literature? I don’t know. When I was working in telly I went to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I was walking around these momentous streets looking at the East Germans – everyone thought we were East German because our clothes were so terrible – and I said to myself “Walking these streets now is the next great European novelist. This has to produce books beyond books.” And yet, East Germany has not produced three we can readily name, and that was 1989. History doesn’t produce novels in that way. There’s a little-mentioned fact about the way Irish writers are promoted abroad by their own government and are used in an almost ambassadorial way now. Writers are not tamed creatures, and they’re not writing in praise of the country. More often it’s the opposite. So there’s an interesting little double thing that’s going on: wonderful Irish writers, most of whom are saying very harsh things about the country. I don’t know if I should point that out or not, that good Irish writing comes from bad Irish situations. But there’s no other way to describe it. When The Gathering came out people were saying “Why are you so miserable? We’ve got money now.” I wrote it in about 2005 and then nothing happened for another few years, and I thought “Have I got it all wrong?” But as it turned out, IA I didn’t.
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Civil War
Memorials
Irish Sculptors Led Way in Celebrating Civil War Heroes The Civil War is permanently etched in marble, bronze, and granite memorials, carved by sculptors many of whom were Irish immigrants. By Michael P. Quinlin
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agnificent in bearing, you find our nation’s unabashed heroes in Central Park and Lincoln Park, Boston Common and the National Mall. Still others stand like sedentary sentinels in village greens, public buildings and parks from Maine to Louisiana. Civil War monuments dot the American landscape, bronzed warriors turned green, oxidized by age and neglect, having battled the elements for six generations. They are the survivors of history and touchstones to our past. While public art has shaped our memory of the Civil War since the 19th century, much of the visual depiction of the war – from generals to foot soldiers – was created by an amazing group of Irish-American sculptors, several of whose families came to America to escape the Irish Famine. Dublin-born sculptor Augustus SaintGaudens, and his brother Louis, born in New York; the five Milmore brothers from County Sligo; Launt Thompson from County Laois; and American-born artists William R. O’Donovan and James E. Kelly are a few of the Irish-Americans whose work deserves to be appreciated as part of the Civil War commemoration now taking place.
Artistic Expression in America It may seem curious that Irish immigrants of modest means and education became artistic interpreters of America’s defining moment. After all, sculpture required a period of study and apprenticeship that was not available in Ireland, 92 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
except to the wealthy. But America gave the immigrant Irish a freedom of expression that Ireland hadn’t offered, and many Irish transformed their native intelligence into creativity by combining classical traditions of sculpture with new indigenous themes of American life, producing a stunning canon of public art. Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
were at the heart of the Civil War conflict. In addition, Irish sensibilities were shaped by a centuries-long acrimony with Britain, and imbued with the notions of valor, honor, suffering and death that war imparted. While Irish artists captured the power and the glory inherent in battle, they also revealed the humanity and bravery of those who did the actual fighting, particularly the foot soldier.
SAINT-GAUDENS Symphony in Bronze
“The versatile Irish have found in America a favorable field for artistic development; transplanted to this spacious land not a few of the race have revealed an unusual gift for sculptural expression,” art historian Lorado Taft noted. The Irish had a long tradition of patriotism toward their adopted homeland dating from the Revolutionary War, and many were eager to espouse the democratic ideals of equality and justice which
The most acclaimed artist of the Civil War, and indeed, American sculptor of the 19th century, was Augustus SaintGaudens (1848-1907). He was born in Dublin on March 1, 1848 to a French father and Irish mother, Mary McGuinness of Longford. The family fled the famine and arrived in Boston that September, before eventually moving to New York City. Augustus apprenticed as a cameo cutter and took classes at the Cooper Union, then moved to Paris as a teenager to study at Ecole des BeauxArts, followed by a stint in Rome. Saint-Gaudens’ first major work, a sculpture of Admiral David Glasgow
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Opposite page: Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint Gaudens (Chicago) Far Left: Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint Gaudens (Boston) Left: Roxbury Civil War Soldier by Martin Milmore (Boston) Bottom left: Monument to the 2nd and the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer infantry regiments by Louis Saint-Gaudens (Boston)
Farragut, was unveiled at Madison Square Garden in 1881, and hailed as “a combination of realism and allegory” that set him apart from his peers. Other commissions quickly followed, including the General William T. Sherman Monument in Central Park and General John A. Logan in Chicago’s Grant Park. He also completed two significant portrayals of President Abraham Lincoln in Grant Park and Lincoln Park in Chicago. He created over 150 sculptures in his lifetime. Saint-Gaudens’ most celebrated work is the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common. A tribute to Boston’s 54th all-Black Infantry Regiment, whose valor was captured in the film Glory, the memorial took fourteen years to complete. The perfectionist
MILMORES artist approached the project painstakingHonoring the Unsung Hero ly, hiring forty black men as models, In 1851, recently widowed Sarah from which he chose sixteen to appear in Milmore of County Sligo emigrated to the final work. Boston with her five young sons. The Gregory C. Schwarz of the Saintboys began working when they were Gaudens National Historic Site in barely teenagers. Charles and Patrick Cornish, NH, writes that “After declaring apprenticed to a cabinetmaker, and the sculpture complete in October 1896,” Joseph and James worked for monument Saint-Gaudens heard from French sculpmaker John Foote. Martin, whose artistic tor Paul Bion, “whose opinion he valued. genius was noticed at the Brimmer Bion was critical of the angel and this School in Boston, talked his way into threw Saint-Gaudens into a panic. While working for well-known sculptor George the rest of the sculpture (went) to the Ball, by offering to sweep the studio foundry, he withheld the angel for three floor. months and reworked it.” Martin’s apprenticeship with Ball led The memorial was finally unveiled in to several commissions of classical May, 1897 at a ceremony attended by works, followed by the Roxbury Civil Booker T. Washington, philosopher War Soldier at Forest Hills Cemetery in William James, and families of the solJamaica Plain, a commission diers. It was described by one he received at age 21. It art critic as “a symphony in depicts a Union soldier leanbronze,” that captured the ing on his rifle, staring out humanity, nobility and utter over the cemetery. idealism inherent in the war. The Boston Evening Collaborating with Augustus Transcript wrote, “The throughout his career was his young soldier is in a reverie brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens over the graves of his com(1854-1913), an outstanding rades. It tells the story of sculptor in his own right who what it costs to preserve for created an important body of Martin Milmore us our Union, our justice, religious and classical works. our freedom and our humanity.” Louis’ signature Civil War Milmore’s Roxbury Soldier helped to sculpture is the monument to the 2nd and usher in a new era of public sculpture, the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer described as “un-heroic and introspecinfantry regiments. The monument feative,” depicting soldiers and sailors rather tures a pair of marble lions carved out of than generals and admirals. It marked a single blocks of unpolished Sienna marsignificant new direction in American ble, and sits resplendent in the foyer of sculpture that was more in tune with demBoston Public Library’s McKim ocratic principles than to the military hierBuilding. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 93
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archies that art traditionally portrayed. Milmore’s foot soldiers and sailors could have been anyone’s sons, and it gave his work tremendous popular appeal. The Roxbury Soldier resulted in so many commissions that Martin and his brothers opened a studio on Harrison Avenue in Boston’s South End and began fulfilling orders for dozens of towns and villages throughout the region. The Milmore studio produced Civil War statues allegorical in nature too. The most exotic is the Sphinx Memorial at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, carved by Joseph Milmore and commissioned by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, an enthusiast of Egyptology. The six foot, marble Weeping Lion at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, a tribute to the 25 college students and alumni who died in the war, was carved by James Milmore, according to art historian Ernest Rohdenburg III. Martin Milmore’s greatest work is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Boston Common, unveiled before 100,000 spectators and 25,000 veterans in September 1877. The monument was meant to solidify the union between the North and the South in the tense era of post-war Reconstruction. “There is nothing of haughtiness nor
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defiance in attitude or expression,” notes the official program from the dedication. “(It) does not symbolize America the conqueror, proud in her strength and defiant of her foes, but rather America the mourner, paying proud tribute to her loyal dead, whose bones lie upon every battle-field of the great South, toward which her face is turned.”
THOMPSON Acknowledged Genius Launt Thompson (1833-1894) of Abbeyleix, County Laois was also part of the Irish Famine exodus, arriving with his widowed mother in 1847 and settling near Albany. He had a natural talent for drawing and visualization, and apprenticed with Erastus D. Palmer for nine years, working on portrait busts and medallions before graduating to full-figured sculptures. Thompson received several Civil War commissions, including The Color Bearer (above), which honors the fallen soldiers of Pittsfield, MA, plus statues of General Ambrose Burnside in Providence and General John Launt Thompson Sedgwick at West Point.
The Pittsfield committee described Thompson as “an artist of distinguished reputation and acknowledged genius, so original in thought, so striking and appropriate in character.”
Mathew Brady: The War in Pictures
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or 5,000 years, sculpture and paintings were the classic art forms depicting the brutal wars of human history. But the Civil War ushered in photography as a new medium to record the terrible reality and earnestness of war, wrote the New York Times. New Yorker Mathew Brady (1822-1896), a son of Irish immigrant parents, was the famed photographer who documented the Civil War, earning him the well-deserved title, Father of American Photojournalism. Already a successful photographer before the war, Brady received personal permission from Lincoln to shoot the war. He embedded 35 photo teams to follow Union troops for the entire war. Brady’s and his assistants Timothy O’Sullivan and Scottish immigrant Alexander Gardner shot over 10,000 photos, including portraits of soldiers and camp life, engineering and transportation feats, and the battles themselves, writes Webb Garrison in his book, Brady’s Civil War. The 375 photos in the Mathew Brady Collection at the Boston Public Library include “not just the gruesome carnage
Mathew Brady
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Union general Winfield S. Hancock (seated) and his command staff in 1864. Standing, left to right, are generals Francis C. Barlow, David B. Birney, and John Gibbon
but pictures that tell the broader story of the war,” says Susan Glover, Keeper of Special Collections at the library. Many of the photos are from the Massachusetts 20th Regiment and the 9th and 28 Irish Regiments. The library has an ongoing exhibit and lecture series to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
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O’DONOVAN The Rebel Artist American-born artist William Rudolf O’Donovan (1844-1920) was born in Preston County, Virginia (now West Virginia) to an Irish father and German mother. According to Civil War writer T.L. Murphy, author of Kelly’s Heroes: The Irish Brigade at Gettysburg, O’Donovan “enlisted at age 17 in 1861, and served in the Confederate Army from 1st Bull Run to Appomattox.” O’Donovan created the highly regarded Sailors and Soldiers Memorial in Lawrence, MA, unveiled in 1881, and statues of President Lincoln and General Grant at the Soldiers and Sailors Arch at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY, unveiled in 1895. Ironically, this former Confederate soldier won the commission for the New York Irish Brigade Monument, considered one of the most moving memorials at Gettysburg. Unveiled in 1888, it features a Celtic Cross with traditional symbols, and a mourning Irish wolfhound at the base, meant to signify devotion to duty. O’Donovan’s Confederate Memorial in Wilmington, NC, which depicts a single soldier at rest, looking over a graveyard, is similar in nature to Milmore’s Roxbury Soldier. O’Donovan was not the only sculptor to create both Union and Confederate memorials – Alexander Doyle did several important Robert E. Lee statues in New Orleans and the South and also did some Union memorials.
KELLY Sculptor of American History James E. Kelly (1855-1933) was born in New York City and created over a dozen Civil War monuments. Among his notable works are Soldiers and Sailors Monuments in Troy and Yonkers, the Monmouth Battle Monument in New Jersey, and the General John Buford Memorial in Gettysburg. Kelly was a popular illustrator for magazines and interviewed dozens of political and military leaders while sketching them. His interviews with over 40 Civil War commanders, including Generals Grant, Meade, Hancock and
Top: William Rudolf O’Donovan. Above: NY Irish Regiment by O’Donovan (Gettysburg) Below: James E. Kelly (inset); General John Buford by Kelly (Gettysburg)
Sherman, were published in a book called Generals in Bronze by William B. Styple, who in 2006 raised funds to put a tombstone on Kelly’s unmarked grave at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.
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n addition to the sculptors described above, dozens of other Irish-American sculptors contributed to the artistic narrative of the Civil War, including Stephen J. O’Kelly, Alexander Doyle, Andrew O’Connor, John S. Conway, Charles J. Mulligan and many more. As the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War unfolds over the next four years, the work of these artists serves as a reminder of how society turns to art to explore grief, conflict and resolution, and how immigrants continue to play a lasting role in the American IA Experiment. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 95
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{the civil war experience on show}
The Return of the 69th Jerseymen in the Civil War
“Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War,” by Louis Lang at the New-York Historical Society’s renovated building reopening on Nov. 11.
n July 27, 1861, crowds massed along New York Harbor to welcome home New York’s 69th (Irish) Regiment returned from the First Battle of Bull Run.Though the battle was lost on the Union side, the regiment served with valor, despite the capture of Col. Michael Corcoran by the Confederates. In the painting by Louis Lang we see newsboys hawking portraits of Corcoran. General Thomas Meagher, who lobbied for the 69th to become the core regiment of his Irish Brigade, is seen on horseback. The painting, 11 feet wide by 7 feet tall, has been reframed and carefully restored and is now a permanent fixture at the New-York Historical Society building, which reopened after extensive restoration work on November 11th. The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024.Tel:(212) 873-3400. www.emuseum.nyhistory.org
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Macculloch Hall Historical Museum has collaborated with the New Jersey Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee in mounting a major exhibit, “Gone for a Soldier: Jerseymen in the Civil War,” to run from November 6, 2011 to July 1, 2012 on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. The two organizations are using their expertise and connections to private and institutional collections to bring together an unprecedented amount of memorabilia chronicling the experience of New Jersey and her soldiers in the Civil War. The museum offers lectures, book signings, and public programs to complement and enhance this major exhibit throughout the year. An exhibition catalogue is available. Look for program announcements and updates on the museum’s website and Facebook page. For information: call the Museum weekdays at (973) 538-2404. Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, 45 Macculloch Ave., Morristown, NJ 07960.
Left to right: A bullet-struck water canteen from 1862. 3rd NJ Cavalry triple-breasted jacket. A hand-painted drum used by musician William H. Berry, 12th NJ Vol. Infantry.
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{film archives}
Blazing theTrail
to Ireland
At the dawn of American cinema, when most film companies were already heading west to Hollywood, one company traveled east – to Ireland. The little-known story of the Kalem Company, or “The O’Kalems,” as they were fondly called, is the subject of a new collection from the Irish Film Archive. Story by Sheila Langan.
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steam engine chugs into a small railway station in Ireland, and a handsome, well-dressed man steps onto the platform, looking around him. He confers with a train conductor for directions, and we soon see that he has hitched a ride in a one-horse cart, and is traveling along a country road with a contented expression of home on his face. As familiar as it sounds, this is not the opening scene of John Ford’s iconic 1952 film The Quiet Man. Rather, it is a moment near the end of The Lad From Old Ireland, a silent film in flickering black and white, directed by Sidney Olcott and produced by The Kalem Company in 1910. It was the first transatlantic film, the firstever fiction movie to be made in Ireland, and it was extraordinarily ahead of its time. Despite these landmark achievements, both the film and the Kalem Company have been largely forgotten. The early 1910s saw American cinema set off on a
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course that would define it for the better part of the 20th century. Though the industry initially got going in New York, occupying buildings in Chelsea, shooting on rooftops and in the accessible wilderness of New Jersey, film pioneer D.W. Griffith’s first shoot in California in 1910 helped to spark the industry’s great migration west, to Hollywood. In the years that followed, most of the major production companies,
including The Kalem Company, established studios in California. But a few of the Kalem stars were already creating their own, different path, traveling 3,000 miles in the opposite direction – to Ireland. Led by director and actor Sidney Olcott and scenarist and daring leading lady Gene Gauntier, the Kalems first traveled to Ireland in the summer of 1910, and would return almost every summer until 1915, making close to thirty Irish films. Though they also shot in a great variety of other countries, including England, Germany, Egypt and Palestine, their Irish work proved so popular that they were sometimes called “The O’Kalems.” (The company name, derived from the last names of its founders, George Kleine, Samuel Long and Frank Marion, had no official Irish connection.) Their little-known journey is the subject of Blazing the Trail: The O’Kalems in Ireland, a new feature-length documentary written and directed by Peter Flynn, a scholar at Emerson College and founder of the Boston Irish Film Festival, and produced by Tony Tracy of NUI Galway. Blazing the Trail was recently released as part of The O’Kalem Collection, a two-disc set that contains all eight of the surviving Irish Kalem films, compiled by the Irish Film Institute’s Irish Film Archive. Speaking with Irish America from Boston, Flynn, who grew up in Dublin, recalled how he first learned about the O’Kalems over the course of his studies in Irish film, and then encountered them
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again as an intern at the Irish OPPOSITE PAGE: A larger overseas trip. Docking in Film Archive in the early ’90s. scene from The Cobh, they worked mostly in “They always stuck with me,” he Shaugraun. Cork and a bit in Killarney, Co. THIS PAGE, ABOVE: said, “and then many years later Members of the Kerry, shooting The Lad from I’m here teaching American film Kalem Film Company Old Ireland, which they would history and I see no mention of aboard the SS Baltic, finish upon returning to New on their first trip to these guys, and I just keep won- Ireland in 1910 TOP York. That first O’Kalem film, dering why, why are they forgot- RIGHT: The Kalem directed by and starring Sidney ten? That curiosity led to Players. BOTTOM Olcott and written by and coresearching, and the more I RIGHT: An advert for starring Gene Gauntier, tells the The Lad from Old researched them, the more Ireland. story of Terry O’Connor important and central I realized (Olcott), a young Irishman who they were to American film.” leaves his love, Aileen (Gauntier), to try his He believes that if the O’Kalems are left luck in America. He works as a laborer in out of the picture, we run the risk of forgetNew York for a few years, before finding ting “how important Irish audiences in success in the local political scene. He America were – both as an audience to be seems to have mostly forgotten about courted by early filmmakers, and as an Aileen, who, back in Ireland, faces eviction audience that was demanding to be reprefrom her house following her grandmothsented in cinema.” We also risk forgetting er’s death. The local priest writes to Terry, “the role that Ireland played as a location – who immediately sails back to Ireland to as perhaps one of the first really, truly exotsave the day. ic locations to early American audiences.” The movie was a critical success – and a Making the documentary, he said, was popular one. Aside from the “firsts” it holds much like detective work. He gathered all claim to, what made The Lad from Old of the surviving evidence and material he Ireland so unique was the way it presented could find on the Kalems in hopes of its Irish characters. They weren’t the caranswering three major questions: Who toonish drunkards seen in other films from were the Kalems? What made them go to the same era, but realistic, dignified people Ireland? Why was their story so forgotten? with a true-to-life story. As Blazing the Trail tells in beautiful It was particularly well-received by the detail, the Kalems first went to Ireland in burgeoning middle-class Irish communithat summer of 1910 as the first stop on a ties, who until then had not been portrayed
in film. As Flynn explained, the O’Kalems were “the first filmmakers to acknowledge the realities of the Irish immigrant experience. You look at those films – particularly The Lad from Old Ireland or His Mother – and you see the pain and the suffering that led people to emigrate, and what they lost in going to America. You get a sense of how important Ireland remained to them.” And, he added, the incredible thing was that the Kalems were bringing “images of Ireland – moving images of Ireland – back to the Irish in America, and that was of almost sacred importance.” Blazing the Trail speculates that this sensitivity may have come from Olcott, whose mother was born in Howth, Dublin, and had immigrated to Toronto, where Olcott was born. His attachment to Ireland would prove to be the strongest, and would see him make films of an increasingly political and nationalistic nature, returning to Ireland even after the Kalem Film Company was no more. After their success with The Lad from Old Ireland, Olcott and Gauntier returned to Ireland in the summer of 1911, with more time and a bigger, better organized cast and crew. They set up base in a small Killarney town called Beaufort, staying in the Beaufort Bar & Inn, which remains there today and is still operated by the same family that welcomed and befriended the DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 99
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O’Kalems – the documentary includes an interview with its current owner. Over the course of that summer, the O’Kalems made eighteen films, four of which have survived and are included in the DVD. They drew inspiration from classic Irish texts such as Dion Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn and the Thomas Moore song “You Remember Ellen,” and from the landscape of the Killarney Lakes that surrounded them. Another film from that summer, Rory O’Moore, was based on the Irish rebellions of 1798 and 1803, and featured Beaufort locals dressed up as both Irish rebels and British soldiers, giving them a rare chance to, as Flynn phrased it, “act out their own history.” Their last trip to Ireland as the O’Kalems took place in the summer of 1912. That autumn, Olcott parted ways with the Kalem Film Company, and Gauntier went with him. Together they formed the Gene Gauntier Feature Players, and spent a last summer working together in Ireland. By 1914, Gauntier and Olcott’s working relationship had deteriorated. Olcott made his final Irish films in Beaufort in the summer of 1914. His last one, Bold Emmett, Ireland’s Martyr, was based on nationalist rebel Robert Emmet (one “t”) and pointed to Olcott’s own nationalistic sympathies, as well as the rising tensions in Ireland in the years leading up to the 1916 Rising. It enjoyed a short release in Ireland before being banned by the British government. Olcott, who married Valentine Grant, an actress from the Kalem Company, went on to have some success working with Paramount as a writer. Gauntier married and then divorced Jack Clarke, another Kalem leading actor, and spent the rest of her days in Barbados and with her sister in Sweden, unable to find acting work. In 1928, she published her autobiography, Blazing the Trail, from which the documentary draws its name. By the time The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture, came out in 1927, no one was making films like the O’Kalems. They had occupied a strange space – light-years ahead in terms of their on-location shooting and subject matter, but also practitioners of a dying art. An astonishing 90% of all films made 100 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
films being located and repatriated. “What’s really interesting for us now,” Flynn said, “is that chances are there is more to be discovered out there. Hopefully we might come across another film or another article or interview, something hidden that will help to answer these questions. So, in a sense, although the film is done and completed, the process of trying to figure out who the Kalems were – that goes on.” Obscure as they became, one CLOCKWISE FROM has to wonder about their legacy. during the silent era have not sur- TOP LEFT: Scenes Could there be, for example, a the Kalem vived. As Kasandra O’Connell, from direct connection between The Company’s Irish the director of the Irish Film films. Sidney Lad from Old Ireland and The Archive, recounted, tracking Olcott on set with Quiet Man? Or are the similaridown the Kalem films has been actress Valentine ties just a product of emigration Grant, whom he no easy task. As silent films, they would later marry. and return being so central to the were easily distributed in other Jack Clarke and Irish story? Subliminal or not, countries since the inter-titles Gene Gauntier in a Flynn sees a definite impact. scene from The between the scenes were easily Colleen “They’ve had a tremendous Bawn translatable. As a result, “we (1911). influence, one that’s never really come across Irish films in interbeen acknowledged,” he said. national archives rather frequently, but – “But if you look at the way in which the especially with silent films – they can be Irish landscape is framed by Sidney hard to identify since you really have to Olcott in those films, and then you comknow what you’re looking for.” Case in pare it to the way in which John Ford reppoint, the only surviving copy of The Lad resents Ireland, there’s a very strong confrom Old Ireland had German inter-titles, nection. Now, I don’t know if John Ford which the IFA translated for the DVD. Both ever saw those films,” he added. “But in For Ireland’s Sake and His Mother were terms of style and the way of representing found in the Netherlands, in the Dutch and visualizing Ireland, there’s a connecFilmmuseum. Come Back to Old Erin was tion there. I don’t think we can really only found in 2010, at the Museum of understand what Irish cinema and IrishModern Art in New York. American cinema is without going back Both O’Connell and Flynn hope that the to the roots, and those roots are to be IA collection might result in other Kalem found in the Kalem films.”
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The Way of
Mar tin A movie about a father and son, written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his real-life father, Martin Sheen. By Patricia Harty
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he Way, a modern-day road film rooted in the past, is a heartwarming story of redemption and renewal with a message that it’s never too late to change. Tom (Martin Sheen), an American doctor, travels to St. Jean Pied de Port to collect the body of his son Daniel (Emilio Estevez) who has died in a storm in the Pyrenees. Rather than return home, Tom decides to complete the journey his son began and sets out to walk “The Way,” the centuries-old pilgrimage route, some 500 km (depending on where you start) to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which legend holds is the burial site of St. James the Apostle. Along the route, from the south Pyrenees through Galicia, to the west coast of Spain, Tom meets a trio of characters all motivated by different goals: Jack (James Nesbitt) an Irish travel writer, is looking to cure his writer’s block. Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), a testy Canadian, is recovering from a bad break-up, and the jovial Joost (Yorick van Wageningen)
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from Holland is trying to lose weight. The scenery of the Galician countryside is stunning, as is the performance by Sheen who found fame in such early movies as The Badlands (1973) and Apocalypse Now (1979), and whom younger generations came to know as President Bartlet in TV’s The West Wing (1999-2006). The making of the movie was a personal journey for Sheen, now 70, the American son of immigrant parents, a Galician father Francisco Estevez and an Irish mother Mary Ann Phelan from Co. Tipperary. When we spoke in October, he, Emilio and several other family members had been touring the U.S. in an old U2 tour bus to promote the movie, and New York was just one of many stops along the way. When did you first think about walking the Camino de Santiago? We started the journey in the summer of 2003 with a family reunion in Ireland. My mother was from Borrisokane in North Tipperary, so we gathered in that village
on May 22, 2003 to honor my mother’s 100th birthday. She had died in ’51 of course, but we had gone to enough funerals and so we decided we were going to have a celebration. All the remaining siblings gathered and we had a special Mass for my mother and a wonderful three-day celebration at which I invited everyone to come to Spain to walk the Camino with me. I only got two takers – my grandson, Taylor, who was kind of stuck with me because he had been my assistant on The West Wing, and Matt Clarke, who played the priest in the film who gave me the rosary. So the three of us went off to Spain and we tried to figure out how to do the Camino in the remaining two weeks of vacation I had left and it was impossible, of course. So we rented a car and drove the Camino and when we got to Burgos we stayed in a country B&B they call a Casa Rurale. We took rooms there for the night and they invited us to the pilgrim supper. At that supper the family was serving, and their youngest daughter, Julia, took a look at my grandson Taylor and he
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looked at her. They’ve been looking at each other ever since. They’re married and they live in Burgos. So that was the first miracle. In fact, her mother’s name is Milagros, which means miracle in Spanish. So that was the start of the whole adventure. I love that it started in Ireland because a lot of Irish people do that pilgrimage. Yes, there’s the Society of St. James and they’ve been a great supporter of the film. They gather as you know, to begin pilgrimage from Ireland at the gate of St. James, which is at Guinness. You know what, this summer we got a personal handwritten letter from Mary McAleese who was writing to say she had just seen the film with her daughter and she wanted us to know that her daughter was preparing to leave for the Camino as
she was writing the letter. And she was thanking us. So it doesn’t get any more satisfying than that. In the beginning of the film Daniel says that life isn’t something that you choose but that you live. Yeah, I think Emilio was trying to say that we’ve got to loosen ourselves from a fixed focus in our lives. We have to be more imaginative. And it’s when we trust that our feet will land on firm ground if we’re going in a strange area, that’s when we can really grow. From an Irish point of view, I was touched by Jimmy Nesbitt’s performance and the mention of the church in Ireland and how it’s become “a temple of tears.” But yet we see Jimmy go into the cathedral at Compostela. Yes, he has a transcendent moment.
That’s my favorite sequence in the whole film because each one of us, individually, are brought to ourselves – a realization of the mystery of what we are, who we are and what is possible – and there’s not a word spoken. It’s the most powerful and most mysterious scene in the film. Over and over again during our cross country tour because we go in to do Q&A after the film, we go in usually during that scene and the audience’s response, pretty much nationwide, has been one of great joy. Many people weep out of joy during that sequence. It is just a very deeply mysterious moment that we never counted on when we were filming it. We didn’t quite know what we had, you know. Could you talk about your view of the afterlife? Well you know, I’ve had a view on the
question I get an answer that confirms what God is not, because it’s coming from another human being and we’re all very finite creatures and we very often, unfortunately, reduce God to our size. And the genius of God is choosing to dwell within us despite ourselves. So the scandals with the Catholic Church, how has it affected you? It’s a drag but it’s a confirmation that the Church is fallible, it’s human, most of it is run by men and they’re very limited. It’s a very very clear message that the Church is not God. It can be the conduit to God, but we have to find forgiveness and strength in our communities. The Church is not the faith, but the Church is responsible in large measure for the faith. Dorothy Day – when the Church was being criticized – said, “We have to
afterlife but I heard Richard Rohr, Top left: remember that the Church is the Yorick van an American Franciscan Friar who Wageningen, cross that Jesus chose to be cruis a theologian as well, and he said, Deborah Kara cified on. He didn’t choose theone of my favorite quotes that I Unger, Jimmy ologians for disciples. He never and love repeating: “You know we Nesbitt, blamed them for being human. Sheen. don’t go to heaven, we become Top right: On the contrary, he celebrated heaven.” And that I think is a very Sheen, their humanity and assured us insightful message about the after- Yorick van that’s where God chooses to Wageningen, life. The afterlife is the before life. and Emilio dwell.” It’s here. It’s now. We’re not invit- Estevez. ed to live outside the flesh. But our I read that Day had a big influeffort is to unite the will of the flesh ence on your life when you first to the work of flesh. Then we’re going to came to New York. be balanced and focused and the afterlife Oh yes, very much so. You know, my will take care of itself, if we take care of friends at the Living Theater, which was this half. The afterlife is really none of our the first theater that I worked at in New business. If we’re focused on the business York, Julian Beck and Judith Molina were of what our lives are about, then the aftermy heroes and they hired me as a curtain life will be absolutely fine. Another puller and an understudy. They didn’t have thought about that is, we don’t know what a whole lot of money, so they said to me God is, do we? A major question, you “we have a friend downtown who has a know. Most of the time when I ask that breadline. You can go down there and get DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 103
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Martin Sheen takes direction from his son Emilio. Below: Sheen, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wageningen and Jimmy Nesbitt
a free supper every day and you don’t have to listen to a sermon and you don’t have to pay a penny.” So I started going down there, and the place of course was the Catholic Worker and their friend was Dorothy Day. I was asked recently if I had met Dorothy Day and I can’t honestly say I did because I didn’t have a clue who she was or what the organization was. I was there because I was a starving actor, literally, and that’s where I ate most of my meals. I remember one day asking the people there if I could be of assistance to them because they were so generous and they said to me, “You can help us fold the newspapers this weekend” and I said “You have a newspaper?” And they said “Of course, it’s called the Catholic Worker.” So go figure. And to this day, I can’t tell you if I met Dorothy Day. But it’s really not important because her life and her work are what still inspire me, and gladly so. Can you talk about the U.S. road trip? Three of the most rewarding stops were University of Notre Dame, Ann Arbor at University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech—which was not on our schedule. We were invited to come via the internet. They started an Internet plea with Emilio to detour the bus from Atlanta to stop at Virginia Tech on the way to DC, and we made that trip and gladly so. It was the most extraordinary place. We decided to go because our film, in large measure, is about healing. There’s not a better example in our country of that than Virginia
Tech after that awful massacre there a few years ago. So they were a great source of nourishment and confirmation for us and our film, and one of the high points of our whole journey. We’re now in our 26th city. We’ve been from San Francisco to New York to Miami to Ohio and Minneapolis and so many wonderful places in between. The reaction to the film has been so deeply gratifying, and nowhere more so than Virginia Tech. And has [the road trip] also renewed your faith in America? Yes, very much so. The country is going through a lot of great difficulty, a lot of loss. There’s a lot of healing that needs to get done. There’s a lot of anger and a lot of resentment, and rightly so. People have had a lot of their savings ripped away. They’ve lost houses and cars and a lot of possessions and so they’re frightened and insecure. And yet there’s something else going on that we’ve experienced, and that is a great resurgence of community. People are coming together and families are being forced to live under the same roof, and a lot of great good is coming out of that because they’re beginning to realize what’s really important. Food banks
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around the country have never had more needy people on line, and yet there’s a great sense of community and family that maybe wouldn’t have happened without this great difficulty. So as usual, it takes great suffering to realize great healing and great faith, and that I see going on far more than anything else. I think the same is happening in Ireland. I know you just did a film over there. Yes I did a film about a priest in my mother’s village, as a matter of fact, who built the first cinema in Ireland back in the 50s. The film is called Stella Days. So I got an opportunity to play a padre and it was great, I loved it. I just returned this summer to do a segment of Who Do You Think You Are? – the heritage show – and that’ll air in February. So they took me to Spain and Ireland. IA
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{roots} By Molly Ferns
The Ford Family
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he Ford family name has several possible origins. Its Anglo-Saxon roots can be traced back to Devonshire, where the name derived from the topographical term “ford,” meaning “a shallow place where water can be crossed.” However, this term originally comes from the Norse “fjord,” meaning a narrow inlet of sea. Therefore, the Ford family name is also thought to be Viking in origin. Several Irish cities represent this Viking influence—Longford, Waterford, and Wexford. It is also believed that Ford became the anglicized version of several Gaelic clans. One Ford link is found in the MacGiolla na Naomha and the MacGiollarnath clans of Connacht. It is believed that these Gaelic surnames were erroneously anglicized due to the ending sound of ‘ath,’ which translates to ‘ford’ (i.e. Baile Atha Eileen and Jerry Ford Cliath: “town of the hurdled ford”). The MacCosnamha clan of Co. Leitrim also adopted the surnames Ford or Forde. Another region where the Ford or Forde family was found was Cork. Here, the O Fuarain clan anglicized their name to either Foran or Ford. One of the greatest directors in film history was John Ford (1894-1973). Born John Martin Feeney to parents John Augustine Feeney of Galway and Barbara John Ford Curran of Inishmore, he moved to Hollywood with his brother and changed Richard his last name to Ford. He worked with Ford many Irish actors, most notably Maureen O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald. Ford is remembered for famous westerns, such as Rio Grande, and classics like How Green Was My Valley. One of his beloved films was The Quiet Man, which served as an homage to his Irish heritage. The Ford name in Hollywood is also synonymous with actor and producer Harrison Ford. He once stated “I feel Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor.” He was born to parents Dorothy Nidelman, of Jewish descent, and Christopher Ford, of Irish-Catholic and German descent. He is best known for his work as Han Solo in the Star Wars films and as the lead in the Indiana Jones films. Whitey Ford is a name of significance for any baseball fan. Born Edward Charles Ford to parents of Irish descent, he grew up in Astoria, Queens. He was signed to the New York Yankees as a pitcher in 1947 and earned the nickname “Whitey” from teammates for his blond hair. Richard Ford is one of America’s greatest fiction writers. He is best known for The Sportswriter, Independence Day (which won the Pulitzer and PEN/Faulkner awards) and The Lay of the
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Land. He has written several short stories, including “Leaving for Kenosha,” in which his own migration story from New Orleans in the wake of Katrina can be compared to his Irish grandparents’ emigration in the 1890s. In fashion, the Ford name is well recognized due to Jerry (1924-2008) and Eileen Ford, founders of the Ford Modeling Agency. A year after its establishment in 1946, it became one of the top agencies in the business. The United States has also seen a Ford as Commander in Chief. Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006) was the 38th President of the United States. He was not born a Ford – originally Leslie Lynch King, Jr. – but legally changed his name to Gerald R. Ford, after his stepfather. Ford was appointed vice president by Richard Nixon in 1973 and assumed the presidency in 1974, following Nixon’s resignation. He remained in office until 1977. His wife, Betty Ford (1918-2011), was one of America’s most candid first ladies. She was an advocate for women’s rights, abortion, breast cancer awareness and addiction awareness. She helped establish the Betty Ford Center in 1982. Finally, the Ford name is eternally associated with industrialist Henry Ford (1863-1947). John Ford, Henry’s paternal grandfather, was born in Ballinascarthy, Whitey Ireland. Ancestrally, the Ford family was Ford English but settled in Ireland during the sixteenth century. John Ford was forced to leave Ballinascarthy with his family, including 21-year-old son William, in 1847 at the height of the Famine. They made the difficult journey to Queenstown, Canada, and William’s Henry mother, Tomasina, did not survive. John Ford settled his family on a farm in Dearborn, Michigan. William helped his father with the upkeep of the farm. Eventually, he met Mary Litogot. The two married in 1861 and gave birth to their first son, Henry, in 1863. Henry Ford’s Irish heritage instilled in him a strong work ethic. He became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company and after successfully building his first car in 1901, he established the Ford Motor Company in 1903. After introducing the Model T in 1908, the company took off. Ford remained interested in his Irish heritage. He traveled to Ballinascarthy in 1912, and attempted to purchase his ancestral home, but the price was too high. Still, he bought the original hearthstones and incorporated them into his estate at Fair Lane, in Michigan. Ford would make several trips back to Ireland, including one to Cork in 1917 when he began Henry Ford & Sons, Ltd., the first international division. William Clay Ford, Jr., Henry Ford’s great-grandson who continues his legacy, appears on the cover of this issue. He is the 2011 Business 100 Keynote Speaker and the IA most recent inductee of the Irish America Hall of Fame.
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{what are you like?}
John Kelly The Irish Chamber Orchestra
J
ohn Kelly grew up on the grounds of Clongowes Wood College, near Dublin, where his father, composer T.C.Kelly was the head of the music department. He was one of six boys, all of whom played music. He started his performing career at the age of nine, appearing with his family on national television. John was a member of the first Irish Youth Orchestra, and won scholarships to study violin/viola at the Royal College of Music in London and the Nordwestdeutsche MusikAkademie in Detmold, Germany, where he studied with the legendary Tibor Varga. He has performed throughout Europe and the USA in many festivals and concert halls.
John now works as the CEO of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. He took over the ICO in 1993 and has developed it into one of Ireland’s leading cultural ambassadors. The orchestra has forged relationships with worldrenowned artists including Leon Fleisher, Jorg Widman, Pekka Kuusisto, Nigel Kennedy and Alison Balsom. It encourages and showcases young artists, and regularly commissions new works. With a strong commitment to bringing live performance to underserved areas, the orchestra is equally at home playing in a school in West Clare, or in Lincoln Center. In addition to upholding the highest standards in artistic programming and performance, the ICO has established a community outreach program in Limerick’s disadvantaged schools that is changing the lives of students and teachers alike by helping children develop musical skills, with an added emphasis on transferable skills that they can use in other areas of the curriculum and in their lives as they grow. These include listening and responding, concentration and memory, communication and group cooperation, respect, and a strong sense of community. The program is now being expanded in partnership with schools in the United States and Singapore. John says, “I would describe myself as a visionary and a motivator of people. I think of my work as helping to facilitate talent, including musicians, conductors, guest artists, composers, teachers and children. I take great pride (as does the whole ICO) in bringing some of the greatest masterworks ever composed to audiences throughout Ireland and around the world, and acting as cultural ambassadors for Ireland wherever we go.” The ICO recently concluded an eight-concert U.S. tour, which took them from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains. Learn more about the ICO at www.irishchamberorchestra.com
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Your perfect day? Sharing food with family and friends Best opening line in a book or piece of music? The first four notes in Beethoven’s 5th Symphony Favorite composer? Bach Prized possession? Violin/iPad Your hero in real life? George Muller, John G. Lake Most interesting stranger that you met? Gerry Adams What is your greatest passion? My greatest passion is the Irish Chamber Orchestra. First, developing it as a global brand so that as many people as possible can enjoy the amazing musical talent of this world-class ensemble. Second, expanding our work with children from the disadvantaged areas of Limerick with a view to establishing music as a compulsory subject in every primary school in the country What is your driving force? Knowing that God loves me
What kind of music/artist would your friends be most surprised to know you listen to? Charlie Parker If you could have a drink with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be? Jesus Christ If you could live in any time period? Today Proudest moment? Holding my daughter minutes after she was born. Attending concert of the kids from the ICO’s Sing Out With Strings program for schools in Limerick’s underprivileged neighborhoods Favorite venue/space to play in? Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center Your pet aversion? People throwing rubbish on the street What’s on your bedside table? Bible Hidden talent? Whistling
Favorite country you have visited? Italy Best advice given or received? Love is the greatest law in life. To love is to discover life Favorite instrument to play? Violin Favorite instrument to listen to? Cello
First album you ever bought? Mozart string quintets
SADE JOSEPH
Favorite sound? Birds singing
John Kelly before playing the fiddle at Irish America’s Wall Street 50 celebration in September.
Last album you bought? Paul Simon, Graceland
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A Passion for
Reporting Amy Ellis Nutt won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” about a boat that sank off the New Jersey coast. She followed that newspaper story with a nonfiction book, Shadows Bright as Glass, tracing a man’s remarkable recovery from brain surgery. By Aliah O’Neill Lady Mary was one of those stories that was hiding in plain sight. It was a back of the paper story, briefly on NJ.com. ‘Scallop boat missing, six feared dead.’…I kept thinking to myself if this had been a car accident, and six people had died, we would’ve had front page stories, and several days in a row.” After researching the possibility that a container ship had crashed into the Lady Mary, Amy Nutt was convinced that there was a story to tell. “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” was printed as a special supplement in New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, in 2010, and Nutt’s grasp of the intricacies of the shipping world and the still-fresh emotions surrounding this tragedy won her the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Nutt’s career as a reporter could also be considered “hidden in plain sight.” She’ll be the first one to tell you that “it was like the slowest lightbulb going off over my head. I loved reading, I loved writing poetry…[but] I had never written for a high school or college newspaper. It never occurred to me that I could channel my talents into journalism.” A graduate of Smith College with degrees in english and philosophy, Nutt 110 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
had settled on a life in academia. She enrolled in Ph.D. programs at MIT and Boston College, but when she had trouble keeping interest in either program, she decided to try something different. That’s when she became a fact checker for Sports Illustrated. Nutt calls the 1988 Summer Olympics her “ticket out of Boston.” Then in her 30s, Nutt moved back in with her parents in her native New Jersey and fell in love with working for SI. Eventually, she was able to write her first piece – a first-person article about growing up loving to play baseball – and received such a positive response from colleagues and readers that she realized she could be a nonfiction writer. Nutt enrolled in Columbia Journalism School to hone her skills and the rest is history. Nutt may have arrived at journalism in an unconventional way, but speaking with her at her desk in the Star-Ledger’s Newark office, you see that the energy she brings to her craft rivals that of a cub reporter. Her commitment to shoe-leather reporting has enabled her to write with incredible detail, a palpable sense of urgency and, above all, a passion that defines successful human interest stories.
In writing and researching “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” Nutt immersed herself in reports on commercial shipping boats that had been run over by container ships. She found that these accidents happen more often than people know, and that “people go to jail in Japan, China, Israel…but no one has ever been convicted for running over anyone in U.S. waters, even though it’s been proven to have happened several times.” Then, she went into the field. The first thing she did was find the sole survivor from the crash, a man named José Arias who was asleep in the bowels of the ship as it sank. She knew that he had no cell phone and spoke little English, but intuition and luck led her in the right direction: “I was able to figure out from people down on the docks that he lives in Wildwood [New Jersey]. I knew he was Mexican. So I drove to Wildwood, figuring I would find a Catholic Church and ask them where most of the Mexican and Mexican Americans go to worship. But right around the corner was a Mexican market.” Nutt went in and asked around, and people seemed to know who José was. Nutt exchanged numbers with them to follow up later, but before she even drove
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away, a woman from the market came out to tell her she had contacted a roommate of José’s and she knew his address. It was the first breakthrough for Nutt and her story, and just the beginning of the depths she would go to in order to recreate the events surrounding the crash and accurately portray the people who were impacted. While she was not able to prove definitely that the Lady Mary was run over by a container ship (at the time of our interview, the Coast Guard report had yet to be released) she was able to make sure that the sinking of the ship was fully investigated. “I tell people it’s like The Perfect Storm but with a bad guy,” Nutt says. “I got to know a lot of the families [involved]…and it becomes very haunting. It’s why I still feel a year later that there’s still got to be more done.” Nutt’s level of involvement in her work is equally apparent in her most recent project, a nonfiction book entitled Shadows Bright as Glass. It began as another news series (also nominated for a Pulitzer in 2008) called “The Accidental Artist.” The series and book follow the life and work of Jon Sarkin, a man who suffered a catastrophic stroke and survived near-fatal brain surgery to become an artist with an insatiable need to create. While his recovery was undoubtedly miraculous, Sarkin’s transformation continues to be something of a mystery. Nutt meticulously chronicles the ongoing process of Sarkin’s self-discovery in Shadows. Through years of exhaustive interviews with Sarkin’s wife, Kim, his children, and family and friends, Nutt renders a portrait of an average American guy whose life is turned upside down by his sudden urge to paint, write, and express anything that comes into his mind. The book is also about the science behind the brain, a topic as dense and complex as the brain itself. Yet Nutt’s grasp of analogy and metaphor makes understanding the history of neuroscience and the brain’s perceived connection to
felt something in his brain “unhinge” and “float away,” the moment of his stroke on a golf course in 1988. “I went to the golf course. I checked on Weather Underground to see what the weather was that day. You make sure you go out to the golf course the same month so you know how the sun sets and what the feeling is during September. And then based on what the weather was for that day, correlated with what people remember, you can give that description.”
Word for word, moment for moment, Nutt captures the pain, confusion and unbridled creativity that bombards Sarkin as much as his family. the self a readable, if not enjoyable task. In one chapter, Nutt explains that the brain was thought by ancient Egyptians to be an unnecessary organ. The self, they believed, existed in the heart, which was why the brain was pulled out through the nose upon death. Fast forward to the 1980s, and Jon Sarkin’s surgeon understood that moving one nerve in his brain more than a fraction of an inch could immediately end his life. Beyond the fundamental questions about the self posed by Shadows Bright as Glass, Sarkin is simply a great subject for a book (or a movie – Sarkin’s story has garnered several movie offers over the years, none of which have materialized yet). Nutt kept all of Jon’s emails and art that he sent her, which came erratically but often – whenever Jon felt the need to put words down – and used this as a starting point for the project. “Jon was also someone who was very aware – I mean I think he has an artistic soul anyway – so he remembers details about his life.” This allowed Nutt to recreate scenes that happened 15-20 years ago, corroborating with friends, family, and even Sarkin’s brain surgeon. Again, Nutt went the extra mile to recreate the moment during which Jon
Word for word, moment for moment, Nutt captures the pain, confusion and unbridled creativity that bombards Sarkin as much as his family. Like “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” Nutt’s love of writing and reporting shines through, and we as readers also feel committed to stick with these people, to see how their stories turn out. Nutt celebrated the launch of Shadows Bright as Glass as well as her Pulitzer Prize win at the Mutual of America building in New York, where her cousin Tom Moran is president and CEO. She is thirdgeneration Irish-American on her mother’s side. According to family legend, both of her grandparents escaped from Ireland and met on a boat to America, promptly losing track of each other upon landing. Nutt’s grandfather spent three years tracking her grandmother down, and they eventually married and had six daughters. Throughout our interview, one word that Nutt used often was love: love of sudden deadlines, love of breaking stories, love of good old-fashioned sleuthing to get the facts straight. Reporting may change, but as long as the love of writing remains, Nutt’s work proves that journalism can excite, affect, IA and transform. DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 111
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Recently published books of Irish and Irish-American interest.
Recommended
also, of course, found in Kennedy’s writing, from his staccato dialogue to his sometimes understated, sometimes meandering prose. Chango’s Beads is sure to leave readers eagerly anticipating the next movement in the cycle. – Sheila Langan
Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
hirty-six years after publishing Legs, the first book in his acclaimed Albany Cycle, William Kennedy, 83, has added an eighth book to his dedicated rendering of his home town. Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes tells the story of Daniel Quinn, another son of Albany, whose life bears a striking resemblance to Kennedy’s. Just as Kennedy once was, Daniel is a reporter. And, similar to Kennedy, he travels to Cuba to report on the Revolution with the hope of securing an interview with Castro himself. There, he meets another legend, Ernest Hemingway, and a beautiful, wellconnected revolutionary, Renata Suarez Otero. He quickly determines to befriend Hemingway and marry Renata, and consequently becomes somewhat embroiled in the struggle to oust the President, Fulgencio Batista. Split into three parts and three different times – Albany in 1936, Cuba in 1957, and Albany again in 1968, where racial tensions are coming to a height right after Robert Kennedy’s assassination in California – it is a beautiful whirlwind of a novel, filled with passion, history, revolution and music. This unique musicality of Kennedy’s is felt in the two-step rhythm of its title, and becomes immediately apparent in its opening scene, where a young Daniel Quinn wakes in the middle of the night to hear Bing Crosby singing an “old coon song,” “Shine” in his father’s living room, accompanied by a black piano player, Cody Mason. It continues throughout the book – from the rhythms of the Santeria ceremony that eventually binds Daniel and Renata together, to the streets of Albany, where – in what may be the best passage of the book – Daniel’s amnesiac father, George, wanders the city with his former flame, Vivian. And finally, it goes back to a now old Cody Mason, who plays another, more meaningful rendition of “Shine” as tensions rise in the city around him. The music is
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(336 pages/Viking/$26.95)
ly since, as always, Colfer’s word play has a tendency to steal the show. The twists and turns are still plentiful, though, and the roving plot laughs in the face of anyone who would dare call it predictable. – Sheila Langan (288 pages/Overlook Press/$24.95)
Poetry Once
Plugged
ew adults would be ashamed to step forth as fans of Irish writer Eoin Colfer’s best-selling Artemis Fowl series for the younger set. Still, the announcement of the Wexford native’s first venture into adult fiction was met with much anticipation, and the wait has certainly been worth it. With Plugged, Colfer offers a book expressly for his older readers, written to suit their tastes for bawdiness, violence and brilliantly sarcastic humor. Plugged’s narrator, Daniel McEvoy, is a 42-year-old Dubliner living in the dismal fictional town of Cloisters, NJ, which boasts the slogan “For People Who Are Tired of the City.” At the start of the book, it seems as though Daniel has had a rather ho-hum existence, working as a doorman at a local casino, handling the occasional brawl and worrying principally about his balding pate. But the drama builds quickly for Daniel. He kills the local Irish gang boss’s right-hand man in self-defense, and then finds Connie, his on-again-offagain fling and fellow-casino worker, murdered in the parking lot. Zeb Kronski, the Lebanese doctor who was overseeing Daniel’s hair transplants (and who was possibly his only friend) is missing, possibly dead, and was likely mixed up in whatever is going on. Things get progressively hilarious and confused as Daniel tries to figure out who exactly is after him, and why. Plugged calls itself crime fiction, but humor definitely trumps suspense in this madcap mystery – especial-
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ollowing her brave, powerful and deeply reflective memoir, The Long Goodbye, which chronicled her mother’s death after a harrowing struggle with cancer, Meghan O’Rourke returns to poetry with a new collection, Once. Her debut collection, Halflife, was met with praise by The New York Times, and Publisher’s Weekly hailed O’Rourke’s “playful, energetic intelligence, varied aesthetics and...welcome self-possession.” Once shares all of these qualities, but its soul is, quite understandably, more solemn and meditative. Those who have read The Long Goodbye will recognize moments first encountered in O’Rourke’s prose, now expressed through poetry: her description of her aunts, for example: “Grew up on the Jersey Shore in the 1970s. / Always making margaritas in the kitchen, / always laughing and doing their hair up pretty, / sharing lipstick and shoes and new juice diets.” Or her mother’s confusion in “When it Went to Her Brain,” “On TV a hurricane beats a boat. / Gazing at the air, / you ask me, ‘Is that our wind I hear?’” Other poems in the collection, which is divided into three parts, make new explorations into the landscapes of childhood, relationships, adulthood and grief. In an interview with Irish America following the release of The Long Goodbye, O’Rourke explained that after her mother’s death, she was almost afraid to write poetry: “It was too scary, too emotional, like going into a well. Whereas with prose, I had the through line of the sentence, which became a tightrope that I could hold on to on the path.” In Once, she lets go of the tightrope, braves the well,
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and ventures off the path. Readers will be grateful that she did. – Sheila Langan (92 pages/W.W. Norton/$24.95)
History
The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America
aren McCarthy’s The Other Irish is a delightful and deeply informative new take on the Scots-Irish who, despite being relatively unknown, made a tremendous contribution to America’s culture. What I particularly appreciate about the book is the way in which she tells their story by concentrating on the incredible characters in that tradition. She thereby circumvents the dry as dust abstractions of the more conventional approaches taken by academic historians and sociologists. Because she is an experienced journalist with an eye for the telling detail, the figures she writes about leap off the page in all their wonderful idiosyncrasy, orneriness, hardscrabble toughness, occasional tenderness and persnickety charm. For the first time she really brings the whole Scots-Irish saga to life and makes us understand why they have made such an extraordinary contribution in so many different ways to Southern, and indeed American, culture in general, nowhere moreso than through country music. As well as by providing more U.S. Presidents than any other ethnic group. – James Flannery
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(347 pages/Sterling/$24.95)
Irish People, Irish Linen
ertain crafts have become synonymous with certain cultures and places: Delft tiles, Grecian urns, Chantilly lace – Irish linen. Irish People, Irish Linen, by writer and crafts historian Kathleen Curtis Wilson, is a comprehensive study of the refined and complex art of linen making, which has been a part of Irish society for generations. Rather than simply summarizing the history of the craft and the industry, Wilson makes a strong and eloquent case for the close connection between Irish
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emigration and Irish linen. In the same way that the Irish diaspora has been compared to a fabric, she points out, “so too has linen been described metaphorically as a person.” Irish emigration, she argues, was instrumental in the journey of Irish linen from local craft to global product. But before it became a global phenomenon, linen making took root in Ireland and was urged on by many patient workers and a few key characters, to whom Curtis is careful to give their due credit. She also takes the time to explain the linen making process in detail, and the interesting and innovative ways in which it has evolved over the years. Beautifully compiled with nearly 200 stunning color photographs of threaded looms, flax stalks and gorgeous patterns, Irish People, Irish Linen presents a littleknown segment of history well worth acquainting oneself with. – Sheila Langan (328 pages/Ohio University Press/$49.95)
Young Adult & Children’s Literature The Infernals
ohn Connolly, the Dublin-born author of the best-selling Charlie Parker detective series, has released his second book for young adult readers. A sequel to 2009’s The Gates, The Infernals features heroic teen Samuel Johnson and his aptly named dog, Boswell. After their unplanned Halloween adventure in The Gates, one would rightly suspect that Samuel and Boswell have had quite enough of the underworld. Unfortunately, fate seems to have other plans for them. When the same Large Hadron Particle Collider that created a hole in the universe in the first book opens yet another portal into hell, the evil Mrs. Abernathy, whose plans Samuel and Boswell foiled, is determined to journey back to Earth and seek revenge. To make matters worse, Samuel’s poor eyesight is preventing him from asking
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out his crush, Lucy Highmore, as he keeps mistakenly chatting up inanimate objects like the lamppost on his way to school. Inelligent, witty, suspenseful and filled with irreverent and surprisingly philosophical footnotes, The Infernals is sure to keep young readers fully engrossed and older readers thoroughly amused and enchanted. – Sheila Langan (311 pages/Atria Books/$22.00)
Stuck
ith his latest book, Stuck, Belfastborn illustrator Oliver Jeffers has created an amusing tale for children – one that is at once minimalist and zany. Following a boy named Floyd and his innovative if misguided attempts to retrieve his kite from a tree, Jeffers’ story begins quite simply, as do his drawings. Squiggles and swirls, the kind that children will recognize from the back pages of their own coloring books, serve as shadows and clouds, but these form only the foundation of Jeffers’ world. He layers textures, combining mediums and expressive colors to create a vibrant and visually comical picture-book. Readers will find their expectations continually subverted in increasingly absurd ways. The narration is dry and self-aware – meaning that adults, too, will appreciate this clever, if unapologetically silly story. Stuck has no straightforward message. Which is not to say that it is hollow, but rather that it is ambiguous. Is it a parable about perseverance? About faith? Is it satire on single-mindedness? An exploration of humanity in the face of futility and randomness? This is Kafka for the 3-7 set. Stuck is a charming story; familiar enough to draw in young readers, and respectful enough of their intelligence to keep them returning years past the ages indicated on the bookjacket. – Catherine Davis
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(30 pages/Philomel Books/$16.99) DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 113
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{music} By Tara Dougherty
Other Voices NYC
“Well the weather tonight is Irish,” seemed to be the joke of the
evening as four hundred lucky audience members packed into downtown New York venue Le Poisson Rouge on a wet October evening. The long celebrated Other Voices program made a leap from Dingle to New York to film two nights of music and the written word as a part of the Imagine Ireland campaign. “We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know where we’ll be when we get there. And when we get back, we won’t know where we’ve been. So come on this journey with us,” actor Gabriel Byrne said as he opened the evening. He welcomed Glen Hansard, of bands the Frames and the Swell Season, to the stage who rather than taking
up his guitar, read a poem by Seamus Heaney. As Hansard read the last few lines of the poem, the sound of the fiddle began swell behind him. Joseph O’Connor took the stage soon after to read an excerpt from Joyce. But the audience favorite of the evening was Gabriel Byrne’s own original piece, an essay of sorts about his early days as an actor. “Ay your man’s an actor, and couldn’t you tell by the cut of him?” Byrne took the audience on a hilarious journey from his mentor’s Dublin apartment to his first film set where when delivering his single line, he hobbled into and sent a priceless statue crashing to the ground. Then Paul Muldoon launched into his poem “Bob Dylan at Princeton: November 2000” which expressed much of his longtime love for Dylan. The night shifted into a bit of a tribute to the late 60s, 114 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER/JANUART 2012
and what better a venue than a dive on Greenwich Village’s own Bleecker Street? Hansard returned to the stage to follow up with a cover of The Band’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” Hansard then debuted some new material, leaving his beat-up
shows together since he was twelve. After seeing Hayes play while vacationing with his parents in Dublin, Bartlett and his family tailored the rest of their uncharted holiday to follow Hayes’ touring schedule. “He must’ve been thinking who is this blond kid grinning at me so lovingly?” Bartlett joked as he told the story. Bartlett and Hayes began emailing and Bartlett booked shows in Vermont for Hayes, who would only realize later that his new American booking agent was the same twelveyear-old who had turned up at all his shows in Ireland earlier that year. Popular band The National praised Other Voices and played a bit of music they had written about what it felt like to wander the
Lowden guitar momentarily for a Clockwise Dingle Peninsula. The night went from top: stay behind the keyboard. on to feature more contemporary Glen Hansard The stage rotated legend after performs New York artists, some with obvilegend from Colum McCann to with Martha ous Irish connections and others Iarla Ó Lionáird, Joseph Conrad to Wainwright. just friends along for the ride. The Roddy Doyle. Martha Wainwright. Damien Rice Thomas most moving moment came surprised the audience with an Bartlett, Philip toward the close of the evening, unscheduled and unplugged per- King and when Iarla Ó Lionáird took to the Glen Hansard. formance of his song “The Martin Hayes stage to sing sean-nós. For a Professor.” While Rice was met on the fiddle. moment the genius of Martin with surging applause, if anyone Hayes, of Joyce and Heaney cowstole the show it was certainly the ered in a collective bow to Ó young Thomas Barlett. He sat in on keyLionáird whose performance connected board for most of the evening’s performthe evening to a more ancient spirit, an ances and served as a sort of curator. He overtaking one. received by far the most admiration of his It was a triumph of the Imagine Ireland peers throughout the night. As Bartlett campaign and a thrill to witness. Other introduced his own idol, fiddle virtuoso Voices should be ready, with perhaps a Martin Hayes, it became clear why larger venue for the future. New York Bartlett seemed to have such a knack for will most definitely be demanding an IA organizing the show: he’d been putting encore.
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For the Holidays…
By Tara Dougherty
The Blair Band • Christmas with the Celts his Christmas, Ric Blair and his merry band of Celtic musicians released a studio album to accompany a DVD of their very popular Public Television special, Christmas with the Celts. Filmed in Nashville in front of an eager sold out audience, the television special is a wonderful ode to Irish & Scottish music with the added spice of holiday celebration. The DVD shows the excitement of the players and their wonderful lineup of guest performers including the Nashville Irish Step Dancers, famed piper Ivan Goff and the Children’s Celtic Choir. The studio record is a mixture of familiar Christmas tunes and lesser-known Celtic gems, some originating as far back as the 12th century. These ancient treasures fit seamlessly into the holiday theme of the album. Many of the favorites from the DVD are heard on the album and played to perfection by “The Celts”: Ric Blair, Jeff Durham, Kim Barnes, Patrick Darcy and Skip Cleavinger. The uilleann pipes, mastered by Darcy, are given their fair due throughout the record, while Durham’s percussion varies from the traditional to a new electronic loop beats. While classics like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Silent Night” sound as if they were written to be interpreted with these Irish accents, some Christmas favorites take on totally new identities at the hands of the Blair Band. “Little Drummer Boy” is reimagined with electronically looped percussion while Blair’s freeing vocals on “O Come Emmanuel” give refreshingly different sounds for around the tree this year.
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Trad John Doyle • Shadow & Light eleased earlier this fall, Celtic guitar virtuoso John Doyle’s Shadow and Light is a triumphant return to studio work for Doyle. It’s been six years since Doyle’s first solo release Wayward Son. His collaborations with fiddler Liz Carroll have long maintained Doyle’s reputation in the Irish music world and now, Shadow and Light will serve as a second badge for Doyle to wear as a more than capable composer and soloist. Doyle’s tenor is both rich and homely. In the track “Little Sparrow” which is backed by simple guitar, the vocals wiggle between the fun-driven live performance quality that is so beloved in the trad genre and a refined quality, a new hint of confidence. For those entranced by Doyle’s skill as a finger-style acoustic guitarist, “Tribute to Donal Ward” will be a favorite. Doyle’s ability to take tunes the mind would assign to a fiddle and recreate them not only as guitar pieces but as rhythmic masterpieces will without a doubt make his name an immortal one on the Celtic stage.
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An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration nother live Christmas celebration was held last December in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The third annual Irish Christmas celebration “Live from the Arts Centre” was recorded and released as an album this year, with none other than the legendary Mick Moloney at the helm. The concert featured Riverdance fiddler Athena Tergis, button accordionist Billy McCormiskey, pianist Brendan Dolan and New York’s own Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra as well as many other virtuosos in the trad field. As Moloney’s introduction to the album suggests, the tone of the collection is a tad more somber than we typically associate with the holidays. A stress on the winter solstice as a time of reflection guides the album. Moloney writes, “There’s something magical about the dark days of winter in Northern Europe, when the earth goes into a deep transformative, regenerative hibernation with only the magical evergreens defying the forces of nature. The midwinter solstice has always been culturally a time for reflection on the big issues we all live with, particularly themes of life, death and renewal.” While the album is certainly reflective, it maintains a holiday cheer that is wonderfully mixed with that unmistakable smile of a seisuin with friends. “Christmas in the Trenches” is hauntingly beautiful, sung by Liz Hanley who also graces many tracks on violin. Then there is the Celtic holiday favorite “The Holly and the Ivy” to set off the record with an exciting and playful tone. An Irish Christmas balances just enough of the darker tones of winter with the warmth of the holiday season.
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Contemporary Lisa Hannigan • Passenger ince her early days accompanying Damien Rice, Lisa Hannigan has enchanted audiences with her effervescent vocals. Now into her sophomore solo project, Hannigan’s Passenger is a further exploration of much of the songwriting techniques she tested in her first album. While stylistically Hannigan maintains the identity of a quirky female singer-songwriter, there is a maturity in Passengers that shows promise for even more of what the Dublin singer has to offer. The tracks “What I’ll Do” and “O Sleep” are the largest testaments to Hannigan’s experimental side. Driven by drummer Tom Osander’s background in jazz, the tempos of these songs are unconventional. While the jazz drumming is certain to pique a listener’s interest, in most of the songs it is the lyrics and vocals that will keep them intrigued. Clearly out to carve her own identity into the music world, Hannigan’s writing style tends to shy away from anything resembling her days with Rice. Hannigan’s vocals are most effective in the more tragic “Save Travels (Don’t Die)” which is the most similar to those early days of folk soul in her career. Most fans would welcome her back to the genre but in the meantime, Miss Hannigan seems to be working her way through the alternative pop world just fine. IA
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Once
By Tara Dougherty
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t is hard to forget the little Irish movie that could, Once. Released in 2006, Once was shot in Dublin over a 17-day period, with a scant budget of $150,000. It became an Indie sensation with stars Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard of the Frames winning an Oscar for Best Original Song and winning far more fans with their showstealing, sweet acceptance speeches. The film has now been adapted into a live musical. With a book by Irish playwright Enda Walsh and a cast of bright young actors, Once opened November 15th at the New York Theatre Workshop, an Off-Broadway hub for theater lovers. Just as the film seemed to grow right out of its humble clothes, so too has the musical. After a short stay at the Workshop, Once will begin previews for its new stay on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater in February. Once tells the story of an Irish songwriter in Dublin who has lost hope in his own ability. His drive is reignited by a young Czech woman he meets on the street who takes a liking to his songs. At its core, it is the classic story of boy meets girl but what sets it apart is Hansard’s soundtrack. In the film version, neither he nor Irglova came to the set with any acting 116 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
experience whatsoever, but both were iconic in the roles, leaving incredibly difficult shoes and songs to fill. Actors Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti were selected to fill the starring roles in New York. The stage show opened with a very charming set-up that invoked the fly-onthe-wall filming technique of the movie. The set was a crescent room lined with foggy pub mirrors and a bar at the back. As the audience trickled in to find their seats, they were encouraged to visit the bar on stage and have a drink as the cast stood at the front, playing Irish and Czech folk songs. The transition from this seisiun into the show itself was seamless as the
audience was quietly ushered off stage and the cast continued their songs. Then, Kazee stepped up to play the song “Leave.” The lights dimmed and it was clear the show had begun. Kazee was refreshing in Hansard’s role. He nailed the songs and, for the most part, stayed true to the character so many fell in love with in the film. Milioti, never having
seen the film, took on Irglova’s character with an interpretation entirely her own. In various interviews, Hansard himself expressed quite a few reservations about the stage show as it prepared to open. He made no apologies about his fear that the very quiet and unassuming nature of the film would be transformed into an overthe-top stage production. His fear was not totally unfounded. There were definitely moments in the show that felt at odds with the film. Both the dance numbers, which were thankfully understated, and Milioti’s much more animated interpretation of Girl, distinctly separate the two incarnations of Once. Ultimately, Irglova fans are likely the ones who will grapple with the changes the most, but something that becomes very clear during the production is that the goal of this show is not to perform a film live. It is its own entity. With the addition of more Hansard/Irglova (now performing as the Swell Season) songs not featured in the film as well as a stunning a capella performance of the memorable “Gold,” Once as an off-Broadway show also made many welcome changes. The characters of Girl’s Czech roommates and Billy the music shopkeeper were given more depth and attention, filling much of show’s comedic moments. Lucas Papaelias played one of the Czech roommates, Svec, and he was quite the scene-stealer. With a pronounced Czech-Dublin accent, he played the role of the wild drummer and dedicated soap opera fan hilariously. The entire cast also takes their turn playing the abundance of acoustic instruments that line the stage. Songs often began with Kazee on guitar and Milioti on piano, but by the end of the tune the cast would join in with two mandolins, a cello, two violins, bass, drums and anywhere from two to four guitars. The resulting build-up of each song grew somewhat chaotic more than a few times. Just one of each instrument would have sufficed instead of the army of strings that bellowed by the end of each song. Overall the cast was lively, the production sound and the script certainly had a refreshing dash of humor thrown in. As the production moves uptown to Broadway, it is expected that the power of Once that shook the Oscars will do the same come Tony season. Stay tuned. IA
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{crossword} By Darina Molloy
ACROSS 1 (& 25 across) Former rich list businessman, filed for bankruptcy in November (4) 6 Happy accident (11) 7 (& 18 down) Kerry festival, almost 400 years old (4) 8 Big _____: John B. Keane play (6) 9 Butch Cassidy drama with Stephen Rea and Sam Neill (10) 14 This boy group are disbanding (8) 16 Long period of time (3) 17 Sun in Irish (5) 19 (& 42 across, & 11 down) Ireland’s ninth president (7) 20 The Lake Isle of _________ (9) 23 See 43 across (8) 24 Frozen water (3) 27 See 1 across (5) 29 Twice-daily religious reflection on RTE radio and television (7) 32 Irish Christmas (7) 34 Prime ____ : New NBC drama with Aidan Quinn (7) 35 Newfangled (6) 36 (& 24 down) Belfast actor in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (6) 39 Kerry town (6) 41 (& 33 down) The Wire’s Tommy Carcetti (5) 42 See 19 across: The full D (6) 43 (& 21 across) Priest compensated by RTE for false story (5)
DOWN
2 (& 12 down) Best-selling book by late John O’Donoghue (4) 3 Neolithic tomb in Co. Meath (9) 4 Various (13) 5 One-fourth (7) 10 Food made from coagulated soy milk (4) 11 See 19 across (7) 12 See 2 down (4) 13 See 22 down (6)
15 Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter (4) 18 See 7 across (4) 19 Little Christmas, January 6th (8) 22 (& 13 down) Dublin-based, NY-born comedian whose dad was ‘nearly James Bond’ (3) 25 See 36 across (5) 26 _____O’Hara: Quiet Man actress (7) 28 Short or power sleeps (4) 30 True ____: Jeff Bridges western (4) 31 Waterford town (7)
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 January 20, 2012. 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 September / October Crossword: Elizabeth M. Long, Katy, TX 118 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
33 See 41 across (6) 35 Hotel, perhaps of the budget variety (3) 36 Regret or French street (3) 38 Cork river (3) 39 Indefinite article (2)
October/November Solution
NewTEST-ITPage_Irish Treasures1 12/7/11 10:45 AM Page 1
IrIsh Treasures GIfT GuIde Whether you are looking for fine parian china, knitwear, collectibles, books or travel information, here are some of the finest Irish treasures available for any season.
To place an ad in The irish Treasures secTion, please conTacT Tara dougherTy aT Tara@irishamerica.com
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{sláinte} By Edythe Preet
The Night of Cakes o Christma-a-as! No Christma-a-as!” Such was the town crier’s chant in the streets of 17th-century Dublin when Ireland felt the hammer blow of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan iron fist. Garlands of greenery were pulled down and publicly burned. Revelry was forbidden. Priests were imprisoned. But the Irish people found ways to celebrate their most loved holiday despite the hazard. Those troubled times were in fact the origin of the custom of putting a lighted candle in the window on Christmas Eve. The honor of lighting the candle was given to the youngest daughter of the household, even better if she were named Mary. According to one belief, the candle served as a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph who desperately sought shelter on the first Christmas night in Bethlehem. It also served as a signal to any priest seeking refuge and protection that he was welcome to say Mass free from danger in that household, albeit in secret. In our own time, the one candle has multiplied to hundreds of colorful electric lights that glitter on the eaves, roofs and windowsills of homes all through the Christmas season. Another Christmas Eve tradition based on Mary and Joseph’s fruitless search for shelter was common practice in many Irish homes for more than a millennium. After dishes from the evening meal were cleared, the household’s front door was unlatched and the kitchen table was set with a large pitcher of milk, a loaf of bread filled with raisins and caraway seeds, and a lighted candle. This offering of hospitality to the Holy Family, or any other hapless wayfarer who might be caught traveling on the Night of Nights, provided the origin for another of our modern traditions: the plate of cookies and glass of milk children leave out for Santa Claus. Baking, always a prime activity in Irish kitchens, reaches its zenith at Christmas and begins in late October with the making of the season’s fruitcakes. Evidence that the time for holiday baking has arrived is apparent when grocery shelves fill with plump sultana raisins and minced candied fruit peels. Redolent with spices and regularly doused with liberal spalshes of whiskey, the fruitcakes are left to age until a week before the holidays. Then they are covered with a thin sheet of almond marzipan and iced with snow-white royal frosting. Some creative bakers go a step further and decorate their masterpieces with holly and berry designs cut from bits of candied citron and cherries. In times past, three fruitcakes were usually prepared. The first cake, cut at midnight on Christmas Eve and passed around with accompanying glasses of whiskey and cups of tea, marked the beginning of the Season’s Twelve Joyous Days. The second cake made its appearance at midnight on New Year’s Eve when it was distributed with similar liquid refreshment and wishes for a prosperous new twelve-month cycle. The third cake was saved for Women’s Christmas. Better known as The Feast of the Epiphany, the day was so named because it marks the Twelfth Day after Christ’s birth when Mary first appeared in public and took her Son to the temple so that He might be seen and blessed by the Elders.
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But there was more to Irish Christmas baking than fruitcakes. Kitchens also bloomed with the scent of two other delights: Seed Cakes and Mincemeat Pies. Seed cakes were filled with caraway seeds, a common medieval spice. Mincemeat, which also made its first appearance during the Middle Ages, originally included chopped meat and suet, but today is a mixture of chopped apples and nuts, candied citrus peels, raisins, spices, lemon juice, wine and brandy. The spices, once thought to represent the gifts of the Magi, were in fact necessary preserving agents along with the brandy and wine. As with all other Holy Eves, the day before Christmas was an ordained Fast Day and people were forbidden to eat meat. Until this century, going without meat was commonplace for Ireland’s poor, a description that fit most of the population. In the 16th century Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potato farming on his estate in County Cork, and onions, potatoes and milk products became mainstays of the workingman’s diet. Christmas and its Eve were much anticipated exceptions. For the Night Before Christmas, families usually managed to acquire a bit of fish that was stewed with everyday vegetables in a thick cream sauce. After dinner, small circular Seed Cakes were passed around to each family member, and woe to anyone whose cake crumbled prior to being tasted, for such an ill omen
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RECIPES augured bad luck for the coming year. What with Seed Cakes and the season’s first fruitcake playing such important roles on this momentous eve, people often referred to it as The Night of Cakes. As for Mincemeat Pies, Oliver Cromwell and his minions enforced strict edicts that forbade making the pies for several reasons. In Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe, the pies were baked in an oval crust that was meant to represent the infant Christ’s cradle. Cromwell’s cohorts considered the form a heretical use of a sacred image. The ban also extended to the pie’s rich ingredients and liquors, sinful indulgences that Puritan dogmas rigidly prohibited. After Restoration, the pastries were made legal again, but during the forbidden years stalwart Irish women risked imprisonment by continuing to make mincemeat pies for secret Christmas celebrations. Except for the oppressive Cromwell years, church bells have always rung throughout Ireland on Christmas Eve. For centuries the bells began tolling at eleven o’clock and ended with the twelve strokes of midnight. Known as ‘the devil’s funeral knell,’ the practice grew out of the folk belief that the devil died when Christ was born, and people believed that the sound of the bells would keep evil away from their parish for the next twelve months. Today, bells still ring, but only to call the faithful to Midnight Mass and announce the start of the joyous holiday season. The weeks leading up to Christmas Eve have always been filled with traditional holiday preparations. In rural areas people flocked to nearby towns to “bring home Christmas” from the year’s biggest market gathering. Called Margadh Mor, or Big Market, it was an occasion to exchange the products from their farms – butter, eggs, hens, geese, turkeys and vegetables – for luxuries like dried fruits, spice, sugar and tea. Though tea is now Ireland’s favorite beverage, it was once a rare commodity and was often only served on Christmas Day. Whiskey, wine and beer were also purchased, as were trinkets and sweets for the children. In An Irish Country Christmas (St. Martin’s Press), author Alice Taylor recounts her holiday memories of growing up on a farm in County Cork. Plucking the Christmas geese and peeking through slats of the barn where they hung frozen stiff until they were brought in and stuffed for Christmas roasting. Trooping into the forest armed with a rusty saw and bits of twine to gather holly and ivy with her brothers and sisters. The meatless Christmas Eve dinner, eaten while a savory ham boiled in a bastable pot on the turf fire. Hauling in Blockeen na Nollag, the Christmas Log, and watching it crackle on the hearth. Lighting the Christmas candle, “the key that opened the door into the holy night.” My childhood memories growing up in Philadelphia are somewhat different but equally unforgettable. Weeks of cookie baking. Placing electric candles in each and every window. Hanging greenery, mistletoe, and the cards we’d received from friends far and near. Setting up the precious Lionel trains my mother gave my father on their first Christmas. Trudging through the snow to bring back a prize tree. Placing every ornament with precise care. Fish for Christmas Eve dinner. Milk and cookies for Santa. Roast turkey and mincemeat pie on Christmas Day. And when my daughter was a child, we created a host of special traditions our very own. As you most surely have done for yours. May the joy of the season linger in your hearts all year long. IA Sláinte!
Seedcake 1 1 4 11⁄2 2 21⁄2 1 ⁄2
(The Art of Irish Cooking – Monica Sheridan) cup soft butter cup sugar eggs teaspoons caraway seeds tablespoons Irish whiskey cups sifted cake flour teaspoon baking powder
Line an 8-inch square cake pan with waxed paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well. Stir in the whiskey and caraway seeds. In another bowl, sift the flour and baking powder. Gently fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture. Pour the batter into the cake pan. Scatter extra caraway seeds on top. Bake for one hour, or until a cake tester can be withdrawn clean. Remove seedcake from the oven and let sit for ten minutes. Extract cake and place on a wire rack to finish cooling. Remove paper and cut into squares before serving. Makes 8 servings.
Seafood with Cheese Sauce
(In An Irish Country Kitchen – Clare Connery) 1 pound cod fillets, cut into finger-size strips (salmon can be substituted) 1 ⁄4 pound mushrooms, sliced and minced 1 ⁄4 pound cooked bay shrimp 2 cups milk 1 ⁄4 medium onion 6 lack peppercorns 1 blade of mace (or 1⁄4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg) 1 bay leaf 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour salt and pepper 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 ⁄4 pound grated cheddar cheese
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a baking dish large enough to hold the fish. Pour the milk into a saucepan. Add the onion, peppercorns, mace, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and steep for 15 minutes. Place the fish in the baking dish, and scatter the mushrooms and shrimp on top. In another saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a paste. Cook for a few minutes, stirring all the time. Strain the hot milk into the saucepan, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Season with salt and pepper, and cook over low heat to thicken. Add 2/3 of the cheddar cheese. Stir until the cheese is completely melted. Add lemon juice. Pour the cheese sauce over the fish and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake for approximately 20 minutes until golden. Serves 4. (Note: Recipe can be doubled without problem to serve more.) DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012 IRISH AMERICA 121
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{photo album} Family Pictures
The Old First Ward
Photo (left to right): Florence (Patts) Tobin, Jimmy Patts, Leo Martin
hese photos were taken [80] years ago in front of my grandfather’s house on Kentucky Street in Buffalo’s well-known “Old First Ward.” This section, on the South Side of the city, is Buffalo’s little Ireland, and would relate to Leopold Bloom’s trip through the streets of Dublin. Everyone on these streets is of Irish ancestry, and it is a world apart from the rest of the city. The streets have unique names – Mackinaw, Tennessee, Miami, Kentucky, Alabama, Hamburg and others. The parks all have Irish names – Father Conway Playground, for one – and the pubs are The Old Sod, Molly O’Brien’s, McCarthy’s, and others.
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Life was simple and uncomplicated in those days in this great “Old First Ward.” Neighbors borrowed sugar and two dollars to hold them until payday. All the men worked on the boats, and doors were left unlocked at night. These photos of me and my friends reflect the simplicity of the times, and the smiles on our faces tell a story of happiness at home, especially on this Holy Communion Day. We were dressed, but the houses in the background do not depict wealth here. Irish America lives on here, in our hearts and in the surroundings. – Florence Tobin, Buffalo, NY
Please send photographs along with your name, address, phone number, and a brief description, to Sheila Langan at Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. If photos are irreplaceable, then please send a good quality reproduction or e-mail the picture at 300 dpi resolution to submit@irishamerica.com. No photocopies, please. We will pay $65 for each submission that we select. 122 IRISH AMERICA DECEMBER / JANUARY 2012
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