Irish in Virginia 1900, A Poem and Launch of Jimmy Hickey DVD

Photo: Ita Hannon

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Let us not forget

( from Limerick History Gazette archive)

Th

Irish immigrants circa 1900 coming up from a 16-hour shift in the Virginia coal mines.

They were paid in company coins which could only be used in the company store and for company housing.

They were virtual slaves, but they kept their families together, went to church every Sunday, and sent their kids to school to be educated thus ensuring that future generations would live free and prosper.

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A Thread to hold on to in these turbulent times.

The Way it is

by William Stafford

There ia thread you follow
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it, you can't get lost.
tragedies happen; people get hurt or die,
And you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

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Jimmy Hickey's Life in Dance

Jimmy Hickey has led an extraordinary life. He has achieved everything he ever dreamed of in the world of dance.


Now his place in the history of Irish dance is to be celebrated in a DVD; Jimmy Hickey and his place in in the History of North Kerry Step Dancing.


The DVD will be launched by Fr. Pat Ahern in The Listowel Arms on Sunday, October 6 2019 at 7.00

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In Listowel Town Park

Community Centres and Dandy Lodge

Emigration, Raceweek in the 1950s and Pickle Ball

A robin in Killarney National Park photographed by Chris Grayson

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The Races

Bernard O'Connell, himself an emigrant on a visit home to Listowel, took this photo at the emigration memorial in Killorglin.

I receive many emails and comments from emigrants who testify to the truth of this sentiment. So many people reading this during Listowel Raceweek will feel that little tug on the heartstrings. They are settled and happy in the land that has welcomed them in and is now home to them and their families. Listowel race week and Harvest Festival is a gala week in town and every North Kerry person has memories of previous festivals that are awakened at this time every September.

This is a shout out to everyone worldwide with a Listowel connection, especially those who would love to be home for The Races.

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The Week of The Races

Vincent Carmody shared these old photos with us. They were taken by Seamus Buckley during race week in the 1950s or 60s. I have no names for the people but someone might recognise them. In those days the town used to be decorated with bunting on poles especially erected on the kerbs and there was a radio station broadcasting to the town.

The Super Ballroom had some big attractions that year

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Anyone for Pickleball?

Never heard of Pickleball? it may surprise you to hear that it is America's fastest growing racquet sport.


As I understand it, it is ideally suited to people who used to love tennis, squash, badminton or any sport that involves running to the ball in order to strike it. If you feel you could still pack a good belt of the ball if you could only get to it fast enough, Pickleball might just be the sport for you. The game is slower. The racquet is a bat. The court is about half the size of a tennis court. There is no overhead shot involved. American retirees are loving it and it is now a regular feature in retirement villages.


It's only a matter of time 'til we it catches on here.

e car as a symbol of Progress, Tasty Cotter, Writers Week Competitions and an Emigrant's Tale

Listowel January 2016; an ecar fuels beside the Bus Eireann shelter in The Square. In the background is St. John's.

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Tasty Man about town

(photos and text; Vincent Carmody)

Tasty Cotter

Timothy Fitzmarshall Cotter was also known as 'Tasty' Cotter. He was a well loved Listowel character. The family had a shop at the corner of Main Street and Church Street, Timothy worked with the Urban Council as a rent collector. He always dressed in style and was a familiar figure at all events, be entertainment, sporting or otherwise.

Tasty was a very efficient Hon.Sec.with the Listowel GAA club in the early 1900s and as you can see from this 1908 photograph of The Independents, he was a well turned out footballer as well, as were the rest.


Timothy trod the boards and was a prominent actor and performer with an early drama group, known as 'Listowel Dramatic Class'.  He also was a member of The Listowel Musical Society and he is included in that Society's rare and well preserved programme from their Grand Opening Concert in St Patrick's Hall on Tuesday March 4th, 1930.


There was a story told once by Bryan McMahon of a time when Maurice Walsh (of Quite Man fame), had invited a number of his friends from Listowel; Bryan McMahon, Tasty and a few more to attend an opening night in Dublin. Afterwards Maurice Walsh and his friends adjourned to Boland's, his local in Stillorglin for drinks. Here they were joined by some members of the press. As the evening progressed those present gave their various party pieces, Tasty sang his; an operatic number in Italian. The press people in particular, were enthralled. One was overheard to ask, how one from such a rural part of the country could have such clear diction in that language. Hearing this, Tasty's reply was spontaneous. He said, " Friend, if I had the benefit of a University education, like that lavished, like axle grease on the heads of newspaper reporters, then sir, I would have become Governor General of Hyderabad.”

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Do you know a Young writer?

If you know a young person who loves to write please encourage them to visit The National Children's Literary Festival.

The competitions are free to enter and the prizes are good.

There are competitions for adult writers too.

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One Listowel Emigrant's story

Junior Griffin and his late brother, Bert

Junior and Bert's father’s people come from Knockalougha outside Duagh. It was from here that Junior’s father emigrated to the U.S. in 1915. He remembered getting off the boat and seeing a paperboy announcing the main story; The sinking of the Lusitania. He found work in the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit and he worked there under the first Henry Ford. They were manufacturing the Model T.

John Griffin Senior experienced tragedy early in his life in the new world. He married a lady from Tipperary called Sheridan. Their son was very young when John’s wife died in the great flu epidemic of 1920. He brought his young son home with him in 1926 and this boy, Jimmy, was raised in Fourhane by Junior’s grandmother.

John married again. His second wife, Junior’s mother, was also Griffin from Fourhane. They married in Detroit and their first daughter, Joan, was born there in 1931. Junior’s maternal grandmother had 12 children, 11 of whom lived to adulthood but the eleven were never under the one roof together. The eldest two, Annie and Josie had emigrated to America before the youngest 2 were born.

When the Griffins returned from the U.S. they settled first in Knockalougha and their eldest daughter, Patsy was born while they were there. Her birth was well remembered in the family. Junior’s father had to travel through two feet of snow to Duagh to fetch the midwife on February 25 1933.

Jimmy Griffin, Junior’s older half brother joined the army and was one of Douglas Hyde’s official army drivers. After leaving the army he settled in Limerick and he married a lady called Eileen O’Riordan, a grandaunt of Dolores of The Cranberries. Jimmy has passed away.

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Renovation Work Underway here

Hammering banging and clouds of sawdust are emerging from here recently. A big refurb job underway apparently.

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Look Who Got the Golden Ticket

Bernard O'Connell, formerly of Upper William Street and his wife at the Bruce Springsteen concert.

Bernard took this picture as the stadium at the Air Canada Centre filled up.

Fitzgerald's Park, Cork and the Sky Garden and an emigrant's tribute to his Kerry father

Here comes summer!

Last weekend I took a trip to the real capitol. I took in a gymnastics display, a trip to Fitzgerald's Park and a day out in Fota.

The display was in the hall of the local Ballincollig Gym club. Over 100 young people gave a world class display.

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One of my favourite topics this summer is the Diarmuid Gavin designed Sky Garden in Fitzgerald's Park, Cork. My regular followers will remember that I was there for the grand opening. I visited again a week later and found that the precious garden had become a playground and all the plants were trampled by children climbing on to the stainless steel globes.

 Now, not even a month after the fanfare that attended the official opening, we have bare earth where plants used to be and we have the big silver globe removed and replaced with a semi globe. 

You have probably noticed that there are no children playing in that space anymore. That is because the steel was hot enough to fry an egg on Saturday last.

In another part of the garden stands this feature.

That's my granddaughter in front of it trying out her hurling skills. Last weekend there was a lot of talk of hurling in Cork. The three lovely and extremely talented young men from my home town, Kanturk, accounted well for themselves in Cork's win against their old rivals, Clare.

 When in Rome…..even Rory McIlroy tried his hand at a spot of hurling while he was in Fota for the golf.  (photo; Indosport)

The sky pod of the original design has become a river pod and is very popular with young and old.

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Last Sunday was Fathers' Day. Niall O'Dowd of Irish Central wrote a lovely essay to his own father to mark the day.

The last time I saw him was from the railway line that spanned the Boyne River in Drogheda. thirty miles from Dublin. The year was 1978.

He was a speck in the distance, standing in our small garden waving goodbye for the last time.

He was not an emotive man, but incredibly protective of his children and the loss of another would go hard on him. He would not cry, but go quiet, withdrawn for several days.

Moments later the train swept me away to America, first to Dublin then an Aer Lingus plane across an ocean to a new world.

I wasn’t lonely, I was full of life and piss and vinegar and anxious to get going. Life’s vista was opening up and I was in a hurry to blaze my trail.

Like millions before America was calling. His wish for me to stay home, stick to a teaching job, marry and settle down, could never compete.

Now I wonder how he felt that long ago fine June morning as he watched his third son disappear in the distance, losing another son to emigration. He knew what it was to say goodbye.

He had grown up one of fourteen in a three-room house on a small holding in Gaelic-speaking West Kerry. The kids had scattered to the four winds as soon as they were able, but he had stayed home and become a teacher.

He raised seven kids with my mother and at one time five were away, scattered like his own family before him.

We spoke only once after I left before he died. It was frustrating,he was quite deaf, and I knew he could hardly hear what I was saying.

A few weeks after I left he was dead of a heart attack, I was on a Greyhound bus to California at the time, unaware, stopping off in many American towns on the way on a long mazy trip across country.

The year was 1978 and there were no cell phones, only old-style landlines in Greyhound bus stations where calling Ireland was impossible. I was uncontactable.

I reached a fork in the road in Salt Lake City bus station. Los Angeles was one bus destination, San Francisco the other. I felt him urging me to take San Francisco. It was the night he died.

Was he with me on that long journey across the salt lakes, to the Nevada Mountains and beyond?

I like to think he was. He loved the stories of the old West and here I was landing in the self-same territory inspired with the same version of the American dream that drove so many Irish before me.

Back home he had followed my progress west on a map, living it vicariously. I wrote to him about Cheyenne, Wyoming, the badlands and Tombstone City, places that fired his childhood imagination. He did not live to see the letters.

He was a writer too, I took so much from him, and today am lucky I can still hear his voice reading his short stories in Gaelic on the radio long ago.

This Father’s Day I will put on one of those CDs and for a moment the years will roll back as that powerful Kerry accent and beautiful lilting Gaelic can be heard again.

Then I will raise a glass to the old man, with the granddaughter he never knew and for a moment the world will be full again.

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Beautiful, beautiful Ballybunion

Sunset captured by John Kelliher…awesome!

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Solved!

Thanks to everyone who helped identify the people in this old photo. The man playing the harmonica is Jackie Faulkner and the boy is the late Ned Walsh. The photo was taken on the day before the first Fleadh Cheoil in Listowel in the 1970s. The place is Freezers. Ned Walsh passed away in 1989.

The photo stirred a good few memories. Thanks everyone.

Plus ça change……April horsefair

More from April 3rd's horsehair

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Limerick 1853…..many young men of twenty…….

from the twitter feed Limerick 1914

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Closed last week

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Wigs and jigs

World Irish Dancing Championships are closer to home this year.

The very best of luck to Sean Slemon who is carrying all our hopes and dreams into this huge arena. Whatever the outcome in London this little lad is some dancer!

Well done to The Listowel Arms on winning the prize for best wedding venue at the Munster wedding awards 2014

Emigration then and now, Dr. Eamon OSullivan and lost records from Tullamore National School.

The following is an extract from an Irish Times article in its excellent Generation Emigration series. It is written by Anya O'Sullivan. It will strike a chord with many of my blog followers.

Although being at home filled me with a very specific sort of sadness, leaving Ireland left me just as broken hearted, in a very different way. It is as if I am having a tempestuous love affair with my country. I cannot, and do not want to, break away from her. Yet, she leaves me broken hearted each time I visit, and each time I must leave. She is my home. My quiet, my strength and my blood. She is my sense of longing when I am away, and my sense of belonging upon my return. It pains me deeply to see such waves of our young folk flocking to other nations, for the opportunities they cannot find in Ireland. It is absurd that the key figures responsible for the country’s descent into the financial dregs, have not been held accountable for their actions. Like they were in Iceland, for example. The bright young minds Irish families took such time nourishing, and encouraging, are not feeding the development of our own nation. We are mainly abroad, contributing to the greater good of a different economy. We are the generation of Skype relationships with our families and friends. The long distance flights, the jet lag, the tearful goodbyes. They are all intrinsic parts of our lives.

I am back in the sweltering Brisbane heat now. The Australian summer is in full swing. When I look out my window all I can see are blue skies. But, there is something missing. An ache in my heart that no communication via technology will cure. A hug from my Mum, a spontaneous visit from a friend, a train ride to see my niece and nephews. It’s the little things you miss.

Ireland, you may not be in a position to give me everything I want from life right now. But, I hope to be back. Please, sort out your economic situation so those of us migrants that want to return home, can.

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This is what brought many of our forefathers to the US particularly Oregon and Idaho in the 19th. century.

(Source: Erin go Bragh Facebook page)

There is an interesting study on the Irish in London here:

http://breac.nd.edu/articles/36997-placing-the-displaced-lessons-from-researching-the-irish-community-in-london/

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Long shot!

Weeshie Fogathy posted the following letter on his Terrace Talk page; Maybe one of listowelconnection blog followers could help.

Dear Mr Fogarty,

I am leading a research project on the history of occupational therapy in Ireland at the University of Limerick (I think that you might have spoken to my colleague, Dr Katie Robinson, briefly a year or so ago). A couple of years ago one of my PhD students, Brid Dunne, “stumbled” across the work of Eamonn O’Sullivan (whose early contribution to the development of occupational therapy was previously unknown in contemporary Irish occupational therapy). Since then we have being undertaking research on Dr O’Sullivan’s work (this includes an analysis of his book as well as archival research in the St Finan’s archive in Tralee Library). We are of course familiar with your book (which sits on my desk) and with the material in the Croke Park archive. I am contacting you at this point as we are wondering if there are any other sources that we should contact/examine in order to gain greater insights into Dr Sullivan’s life and his influences. For example, we are especially interested in the fact that one of the international pioneers of occupational therapy, Dr William Rush Dunton (who continues to be revered in American occupational therapy, unlike O’Sullivan who has been forgotten) wrote the forward to his book. We have no idea how they met/knew each other. We assume that they might have met at international psychiatric conferences and/or perhaps when O’Sullivan and the Kerry team visited the US. We would also like to know about some of Dr O’Sullivan’s other early influences which led him to develop one of the first occupational therapy departments in Ireland. We are wondering, for example, if you have contact with any members of his family (we know that one of his sons was/is living in the UK). We would greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have.

You may be interested to know that we have given several presentations (both national and international) on Dr O’Sullivan’s contribution to occupational therapy and hope that in the future the full extent of his pioneering input to our profession will be acknowledged and appreciated.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Judi

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Another long shot…..

Would anyone have any idea of the whereabouts of the old roll books from Tullamore National School? This is Tullamore outside Listowel and the records we are looking for date back to the mid 1870s. The man behind the enquiry has looked in all the obvious places e.g. Dept of Education, County Library, nearby schools….

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