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A Climb to
Give Thanks New York City native Patrick Connolly celebrated his 90th birthday by making a pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick. Interview by Catherine Davis
ost people, upon reaching their 90th birthday, celebrate the milestone in some way that is significant to themselves and to their loved ones. Most people, upon reaching their 90th birthday, however, do not climb mountains – significant or not. But most people are not Patrick Connolly, and this is exactly what he did. On August 3, 2011, just two days before officially turning 90, he, along with 59 of his relatives, summited Ireland’s holy mountain, Croagh Patrick. The location of the mountain (County Mayo) holds special significance for Patrick, as Mayo was his father’s home, and the place from which his father emigrated so many years before. From his family farm in Mayo, Patrick’s father, also Patrick Connolly, left for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, where he boarded the RMS Lusitania. He paid for his passage to America by shoveling coal. It was on the Lusitania that he
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met Anna Beagan, who was also working on board, as a waitress. Seven years later, to the month, they married. The couple eventually settled in Howard Beach, Queens, just blocks from where their son, Patrick, and his wife, Breeda, live today. The Connollys’ kitchen is tidy and comfortable. Like the rest of the house, it is filled with family photographs, and carries the faint aroma of homemade bread – soda bread, what else? Every corner, every shelf, has a different story to tell. Here is a little change bank in the shape of a smiling cottage (dubbed the “Ireland or Bust” bank) which once sat atop the fridge collecting pocket change, in an effort to save up money for the family’s first trip to Ireland together. Over here, a clock that was hand-carved for them by a man in Long Kesh Prison, circa 1978; a gift thanking the family for their involvement with a Troubles relief program, Project Children. The late-morning sun falls just on the edge of their kitchen table, which is
set for tea. While Breeda pours, Patrick and two of the couple’s eight children, Brian and Stephen, sit down around the table. “The best you ever had,” Patrick says, referring to Breeda’s soda bread. And it ought to be. Mary Breeda Walsh grew up in Limerick City until she was 16. She came to America in 1938, just in time for the World’s Fair, to visit her father and brother, who had moved here for work. But in 1939, World War II broke out in Europe, and civilian travel was cut off, leaving her an effective refugee in Howard Beach. It was there, just down the block from her father’s house, that she and Patrick first met through his sister, Helen, whom Breeda had forged a deep friendship with while Patrick was serving in Europe as a bombardier with the Air Corps. And it was 15 years ago, on one of their visits back to Breeda’s homeland, that Patrick saw Croagh Patrick for the first time. They