Pat Montgomery, left, with Michael Bradley, who found Joe Montgomery’s blackthorn stick.
Joe Montgomery’s future father-in-law, Patrick Joseph Collis, came over from Sligo to America in 1911 carrying one of his prized possessions, a blackthorn walking stick, what the Irish call a shillelagh.
It was, like all blackthorn sticks, thick and knotty with a large knob at the top. Traditionally, the knob served as a handle, or, when the situation called for it, as a cudgel to use against an opponent. Montgomery, who died in December 2014 at the age of 95, never used it that way. He was always a gentleman, those who knew him say. He saw it as a link to his Irish heritage, and he cherished it.
Collis had given the stick to Montgomery, who had married his daughter, Mary, shortly after Montgomery returned from the service in World War II, where he was in the US Army Air Corps. He carried it with him everywhere. In his later years, it provided added dash to the appearance of the former truck driver, member of Teamsters Local 500, and Ancient Order of Hibernians president, known for his dapper suits and rakishly tilted top hat.
But a few years ago, Montgomery, who served for 60 years on the board of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Association, slipped and fell on the muddy ground near the reviewing stand at the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade which he attended faithfully every year. An ambulance took him to Hahnemann Hospital where he was treated and released—he made a grand entrance at the post-parade party none the worse for wear—but somehow, in the confusion, he got separated from the stick.
Montgomery was heartbroken. And desperate. He contacted parade director, Michael Bradley. “He must have called me 10 times and I called all the board members, the people at CBS3 who televise the parade, the caterers and no one found it,” Bradley said recently. “He kept calling over and over and my heart was just breaking for him.”
This year, Montgomery was named to the St. Patrick’s Ring of Honor posthumously. The members of the Joseph F. Montgomery AOH Div. 65—Michael Bradley’s division—honored their fallen president by tipping their caps at the reviewing stand. Bradley, who was then in full parade directors’ mode when they made their touching gesture, had a little secret. Though Joe Montgomery wasn’t going to march in another parade, his blackthorn stick might.
“It was the strangest thing,” said Bradley, sitting across the table from Montgomery’s son, Patrick, last weekend at the Irish Center. “I was doing a radio interview with Michael Concannon [host of WVCH 740AM’s Irish Hour, which is aired every Saturday] and, I don’t know why, I started talking about Joe Montgomery’s lost stick when Mike, who has been a parade judge for years, said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, is one of these it?”
Concannon showed him two sticks, one, dark, gnarled and split, the spitting image of Joe Montgomery’s shillelagh. “I knew as soon as I saw it that it was Joe’s. Mike said , ‘One year, someone found it and handed it to me.’ I couldn’t find out who it belonged to so I just kept it.’
“After he lost it, I talked to everyone. . .but I never thought to ask one of the judges,” Bradley said.
So on Sunday, Bradley put the long lost blackthorn stick in Pat Montgomery’s hands. “When Michael called me I felt fantastic,” said Pat Montgomery. “I sure wish he was still alive to see it, but at least it’s back.”
And it may be marching in the parade next year. “At the parade, I wore the pants from the suit he always wore, and my youngest son, Brian, wore his hat,” said Montgomery. “Now everything’s together.”
See photos below for a closer look at the stick and Joe Montgomery at past parades.
[flickr_set id=”72157651121960497″]
