Timmy Kelly reading his plaque in braille.
Singer Timmy Kelly ran his fingers over the plaque given to him last night by the Hibernian Hunger Project to commemorate his induction into the St. Patrick’s Ring of Honor, delightedly reading the words out loud. Blind since he was an infant, Kelly ‘s fingers picked out the braille writing that the sighted could barely make out.
“When we were doing these, Bob Gessler [parade committee president] said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could get him one in braille’ and I thought, ‘I think I can do that,'” said Kathy Fanning, president of the Philadelphia County Board of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, who was one of the presenters. “I took it to someone I knew at the Overbrook School [for the blind] and we got it in braille.”
It was a touching moment among many as the parade committee honored Grand Marshal Harry Marnie and members of the Ring of Honor, most of whom are affiliated with anti-hunger projects in the city–a nod to this year’s theme, The Philadelphia Irish Memorial: A Decade of Remembrance.They include MANNA executive director Sue Daugherty; Hibernian Hunger Project director Ed Dougherty; WMMR DJs Preston Elliot and Steve Morrison who raise tons of food for the needy in their annual Camp Out for Hunger, Gerry Huot, volunteer coordinator for St. John’s Hospice; Jim Tanghe, president of Shamrock Food Distributors which supplies food for the Hunger Project; Sister Mary Scullion, founder of Project H.O.M.E, which works with the region’s homeless; Will O’Brien, special projects coordinator at Project H.O.M.E.; as well as Dan Harrell, who has been helping to bring a group of basketball players and musicians from St. Malachy’s College in Belfast to the US every year.
The Ring of Honor members got their sashes, along with the grand marshal, at a special dinner at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Philadelphia.
