Actor Michael Doherty surprises Mairead Conley with a tribute at the IN-Philly end of summer event.
Irish Network-Philly is looking for a few good deeds.
At its end of summer celebration on Thursday night at Tir na Nog in Center City, the president of the networking organization for Irish and Irish-Americans Laurence Banville asked members to suggest community service projects that will “allow us to give back to the community—not just the Irish community, but the community at large.”
“We’re looking for something other than St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans to report back on in March,” he said, to laughter from the 60-some people who attended the event.
The evening’s festivities also served as a going away party for IN-Philly treasurer Mairead Conley, who is enrolled in a master’s degree program in social work at Temple. Conley is also leaving the Irish Immigration Center, where she has been a volunteer for several years, and many of the Wednesday senior lunch group were at Tir na Nog to give her a send-off.
Members of the Inis Nua Theatre Company helped bid Conley goodbye. Actor Michael Doherty from “Dublin by Lamplight,” the play Inis Nua is taking to the New York Irish Theater Festival in September, tweaked a few of his lines to honor Conley, who blushed and laughed. Some of the proceeds from Thursday night’s event will help Inis Nua pay for its New York Theater run, which will cost an estimated $85,000, says Inis Nua founder and creative director, Tom Reing. “That’s more than it costs us for an entire season,” he told us.
Here are our photos from the evening. See who you could have been rubbing shoulders with.
