Irish America Magazine Names Inaugural Hall of Fame Inductee

NEW YORK, October 20, 2010 ­ Irish America magazine is proud to honor Donald
R. Keough as the first inductee into the Irish America Hall of Fame. The
Irish America Hall of Fame honors the extraordinary achievements of
Irish-American leaders ‹ from their significant accomplishments and
contributions to American society, to their personal commitment to
safeguarding their Irish heritage and to the betterment of Ireland. The
inaugural Irish America Hall of Fame induction of Donald Keough will take
place at Irish America¹s 2010 Business 100 Awards Luncheon on November 30th
at the New York Yacht Club in New York City.

Donald Keough's extraordinary life story, rising from a poor but proud farm
family in Iowa, to the pinnacle of an international business career as
President of Coca-Cola and Chairman of Allen and Company, has earned him the
respect of corporate leaders around the globe. His contributions to Ireland
and Irish-American studies have won him a place in the hearts of Irish
people the world over.

Donald retired as President and Chief Operating Officer of Coca-Cola in
April 1993 and remains a director of the company. He is Chairman of the
Board of Allen & Company Inc., a privately held investment firm; a director
of IAC/InterActiveCorp., Convera Corp. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.; and
serves on the Taoiseach's (Irish Prime Minister's) Irish-American Advisory
Board.

Through all his corporate success, Donald never lost touch with his Irish
roots. He created the Irish Studies programs at Notre Dame and its sister
school in Dublin, and organized and led several trade missions to Ireland,
North and South, introducing such corporate heavyweights as Warren Buffett
and Bill Gates to the country. He has been a voice of encouragement and
commitment on all things Irish from his ancestral land to his own heritage
to his beloved Fighting Irish at Notre Dame.

In June 2007, Donald Keough completed "The Long Journey Home," which began
in the worst of times ‹ the Famine era ‹ with young Michael Keough striking
out for the New World, and ended with the best of times, with Donald, the
Corporate Chieftain, being granted his Irish citizenship. To celebrate he
brought his family, including his wife Mickie and 16 of his 18 grandchildren
to Ireland for a visit, thus ensuring that the younger generation enjoy an
appreciation for their roots.

Best value restaurants in Dublin

Eating out can be expensive but we've managed to find some really great deals that won't break the bank. So if you feel like taking a break from the kitchen this weekend try one of the places listed below. Bon appetite!

Carluccio’s on corner of Dawson and South Anne Street – Italian café, well priced menu.

Wagamama on South King Street – Japanese food in a very casual setting, good for larger groups.

Gibsons  on Wicklow Street - A new find, french style bistro, limited but lovely menu - (€12 main course, €17 for the steak!)

Cafébardeli on Grafton Street – pasta and pizza place, good salads too.

Saba on Clarendon Street – Thai and Vietnamese dishes.  Delish!

Alfies on South William Street- best value meal in town, only €14 for starter, main and side all served at the same time. Fish cakes and pollo pesto are delicious!

Port House on South William Street – delicious Spanish tapas by candlelight. You must try  gambas robozadas and patatas bravas with aioli.

Dada on South William Street – NEW Moroccan tapas bar. Try the hummus and breads to start!

Shebeen Chic on George Street (casual dining with great live music after 9pm - €12 main course)

Yamamori on George Street – great sushi and miso soups. Lunch deals are excellent value.

Diwali on George Street – best Indian food in town.

Byblos on St. Andrews Street - Lebanese food, really great food - belly dancer performances after 9pm on Saturdays!

Gruel on Dame Street - casual dining but real funky - €12 main course, really good chocolate brownies). Portions are big so no need to order sides.

Tante Zoes on Crowe Street, Temple Bar.  Really good jambalaya and gumbo. Good pre theatre deals.

Kevin Whelan: My Grand Uncle Brother Aidan O’Reilly CSC (1877-1948)

Many Americans come back to Ireland to visit the graves of their ancestors. Every time that I visit Notre Dame, I make a reverse trip as my grand-uncle Brother Aidan O’Reilly CSC (1877-1948) is buried in the peaceful Holy Cross cemetery on campus. In the Summer of 2007, with my family members Kathleen and Tom, Frances and Jim, Anne and I had the honour of attending a Mass celebrated in his honour by Fr Timothy Scully CSC in the Log Chapel, and later of laying a wreath on his grave, where one of our gifted students Lauren MacDonough played a lament in his honour. We had a chance to acknowledge this talented and gifted member of our family.  I am proud that our family connection to ND has been re-established since I started working for them in 1998. But I am always aware of Brother Aidan and I never visit the campus without visiting his grave there.

Patrick O'Reilly – a cooper-  and Margaret O’Reilly were the parents of Brother Aidan, whose Christian name was Thomas. Their PP described them as ‘respectable and excellent parents and devout Catholics’. Thomas was born in 1877 and had two brothers Myles, and Patrick (‘Park’) – my grandfather.  Brother Aidan’s father died in 1882 when he was only five years old. His uncle Myles took over the cooperage and responsibility for the family. The boys attended the infant school at the Faithful Companions of Jesus Convent in Bunclody. His mother Margaret died in 1894, following the bite of a dog. She was only 42 years old, and her death orphaned the three teenagers.

In 1899, Thomas met a distant relative Rev. Andrew Morrissey CSC (1860-1921), the seventh President of Notre Dame [1893-1905], later Provincial of the CSC in the USA, and after whom Morrissey Manor is named.  He was born in Thomastown, County Kilkenny, although he presumably had some connection to the well-known Morrissey family of Bunclody. Fr Morrissey was a potent figure in Irish-America: he was a close friend of Eamon De Valera, and he organised his fundraising trips to America: he was involved with the influential Friends of Irish Freedom, and he championed Irish matters at Notre Dame. He was responsible for hiring Desmond FitzGerald, father of the Irish Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Garret FitzGerald, when he could not get a job in Ireland in the 1920s because of his involvement in the 1916 rising. Fr Morrissey recruited Thomas O’Reilly to the CSC congregation.

Thomas left Ireland in Summer 1899 to seek a new world in a new setting in a new century. What courage that required. He travelled by ship to New York and then by train to the American mid-west. He always recalled that he fell in love with Notre Dame at his very first sight of the Golden Dome. There was at least one thing on campus that might have reminded him of home: in 1902, a thirty acre field of reassuringly familiar potatoes occupied the space where the old Post Office and University Club used to stand.

He was inducted into the Congregation of the Holy Cross on 15 August 1899, an appropriate date for an institution devoted to Our Lady. He chose the highly appropriate name of Aidan, Bishop of Ferns, his natal diocese. He took his final religious vows in 1902. In 1906 he was named first director of ND’s new hall of studies for the Christian Brothers - now known as the First College Building. He also wrote two of the first vocations manual for the CSC: The Gateway to the Religious Life and Out of Many Hearts. The Irish writer Seamus MacManus described him in 1917 as ‘Brother Aidan of the beautiful character, noble representative of the noble land to which his warm heart, ever turning, is needle-true’.

His notebooks from his novitiate years survive and reveal wide reading in both spiritual and literary works. One of the people whose lectures he attended was W. B. Yeats in Washington Hall in January 1904.[1] ‘I followed the lecture from start to finish with keen interest’. He noted that Yeats’s ‘gestures are often stiff and ill-timed. On the stage he strikes you as very unassuming and not a bit self-centred’ but he concluded that ‘ Yeats had one of the requisites of a true orator - sincerity- but he hasn’t the gift of the gab’. He developed a lifelong habit of taking notes: Years later in the National Library of Ireland, I found the following quotation that I have never forgotten in one of the books on Wexford history that he later donated to the Library: ‘The faintest of inks is more retentive than the strongest of memories’.

He had taken a vow of poverty and he never sought funds to go back to visit Ireland: he only did so once when he stayed at the Faithful Companions of Jesus Convent where he had been a pupil so many years before, and which I myself was later to attend when they first started admitted boys [It is entirely a different story what it was like to be the only boy in a class of thirty girls- a story for another day].

Brother Aidan was keen to expand Holy Cross education into the American High School system and he undertook further studies to earn the appropriate qualifications. In 1909, the CSC opened their first high school. In 1919, he was appointed President of Holy Cross College in New Orleans, a High School that combined a boarding and day element. He himself taught English and Math. Later he was transferred to teach in high schools in Evansville, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Indianapolis. Then he moved back to campus to teach English at ND and to become the archivist.


He died there on 19 February 1948, and is buried in the serried ranks of his beloved CSC community, close to the grotto. A Wexfordman had come to rest in northern Indiana. A memorial pamphlet was written on his life entitled As a Star for All Eternity. The title pays tribute to those who choose the vocation of teaching:  ‘Those that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all eternity’ [Daniel 12:3].

---

[1] Scholastic, xxxvii, (1903-04), p. 276

New Ross Piano Festival

by Mike Rodio

On Sunday, September 26, I made the long trek to the New Ross Piano Festival in New Ross, a quaint and quiet town on the River Barrow in County Wexford.  The bus trip--it would be more appropriate to call it a voyage--wound through some beautiful countryside, which provided an airy break from Dublin's more metropolitan confines. 

The Piano Festival, which is in reality a series of performances throughout the weekend, featured some of the best pianists in Europe, including Finghin Collins, a dramatic Irish pianist and local favorite.  The performances were held at St. Mary's Church, an early nineteenth-century church that provided an ideal venue.  Interestingly, the church commands the New Ross hillside along the 12th-century ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, which reminded the visitors that even the "classical" styling of the music played inside are quite recent compared to the island's ancient history. 

While I was easily the youngest person in the audience by probably around twenty years, it made for plenty of interesting conversation ("An American? You've come quite a long way then, yes? Have some tea!").  One particular Irish gentleman was especially excited to hear that I've been studying at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.  He had become a banker after completing his university studies, but kept up his piano work, and was happy to hear that young people are still continuing the tradition of classical piano studies.

The performances were, in the very best sense of the word, intriguing.  With all due deference to the canon of classics, the best pieces get stale after so much exposure.  Finghin Collins played Bach with a histrionic style that performers rarely dare to try, but his playing was so musical that critics were remarkably silent.  My favorite piece, however, was Abdel Rahman el Bacha's performance of Chopin's Concerto no. 2, backed by the Renoir Quartet. 

Yes, you read that correctly.  The Renoir Quartet.  St. Mary's simply isn't big enough to house an entire orchestra, so the Renoir Quartet filled in an arrangement of the Concerto, which is light on the horns and features almost no percussion.  The arrangement was so well done, and the performance so musical, that I left the concert wondering why anyone had ever performed it otherwise.  The second movement, in particular, was so harrowingly tender that I saw a few tears glitter in the audience.

Dublin is fantastic.  But away from the touristy hustle and bustle of Grafton Street and into the Irish countryside, the island's hidden gems lie waiting for a careful eye and a welcoming ear.  The New Ross Piano Festival, tucked away in a church on the hill, was a typically beautiful--and most welcome--find.

The Plough and The Stars: A New Take on an Old Story

by Clare Cooney

Dark, devastating, and bitterly funny, Wayne Jordan’s fresh take on Seán O'Casey’s The Plough and The Stars left audiences haunted by the painful echoes of the past. The first two acts of the play take place before the Easter Rising, when hope was in the Irishman’s heart, courage was in his step, and Patrick Pearse’s voice was in his ear.  The final two acts are set during The Rising, when the reality and heartbreak of war came crashing down on every man and woman.  In its time, this was a play that confronted traditional ideas of nationalism, sparked passion (both good and bad) in the audience, and revealed an honest depiction of the brutal tenements in working class Dublin.

Through the years, The Plough and the Stars has evolved into a slightly different show.  At the surface level, Jordan’s physical presentation of the show shattered old expectations and challenged audiences to embrace a new form of theatre.  Influenced by the minimalist stage movement, the set design sacrificed walls and windows, but peppered the deconstructed set with homey props like a teakettle and deck of cards. Stripping away the walls, Jordan hung black-and-white photographs of the tenements on thin cloths.  Besides providing a dramatic, raw backdrop, the cloths held symbolic significance as well.  By replacing sturdy walls with delicate fabric, Jordan further emphasized the fragile existence of these men and women living in the unstable tenements.

The original showing in 1926 was met with riots and anger.  Our showing was met with subdued appreciation and the occasional inappropriate giggle.  The passions that were once present in the audience have faded, and the story’s social commentary has lost much of its power. We were there to be entertained. And entertained we were.  Joe Hanely’s clown-like Fluther and Cathy Belton’s bold Ms. Gogan spoke with relatable wit and honesty. The antics of Peter (Frankie McCafferty) and Covey (Mr. Kinlan) kept us laughing with their schoolboy pranks and temper tantrums.  But it was in the quieter moments of the show that the real plot took place.

            Some of my classmates said that the show was “slow,” and that nothing much seemed to happen. The so-called “action” of the play takes place off-stage, in an epic battle that we are never permitted to see.  But Irish theatre is different than American theatre.  Irish theatre is not the actor’s theatre, but the writer’s theatre.  The words are the action.  Persuasion and emotion are the driving force of the plot.  There is more to the words than simply information—there is a poetic, lyrical quality that makes the language even more powerful.

            That being said, the writer can’t do it alone.  Jordan’s production presented a dynamic ensemble. Each actor needed to have an impressive range, since their characters go through demanding transitions. Fluther (Hanely) was at one moment endearingly dim-witted, and at the next the most courageous man in the tenement.  Bessie Burgess (Gabrielle Reidy) seemed completely insane with eyes that were eerily blank. But by the end of the show, Bessie was the mother figure, the savior, the woman that gave her life and her sanity to those in need. It was Denise Gough’s devastating portrayal of Nora that I found most remarkable.  In the first two acts, she was a beautiful wife, determined to run a perfect household. When she staggered onto the stage after intermission, she was sobbing openly, covered in dirt and blood.

With a young cast, an edgy set design, and a new director, this old story is as significant as ever.  After 84 years, the sharp juxtaposition of the working poor against the idealistic Patrick Pearse is still driving audiences to the Abbey Theatre.