Pittsburgh takes on the Young Irelands in Pittsburgh this weekend.
On Saturday, the Young Irelands will take on Pittsburgh for the senior championship which will take place in Pittsburgh.
So far, the football championship schedule looks like three games next weekend, August 8 and 9, with Pittsburgh facing the Kevin Barry’s in Pittsburgh, and the Young Irelands vs. the St. Patrick’s in both junior and senior action on the GAA fields in Limerick.
Raymond Coleman: The boy is back in town
Have you seen our new calendar? I think it’s kind of pretty. And it’s very easy to use—you can put all your own events on it and you can add pictures. How cool is that?
I’d love to see more events on it. I put them on when I can, but it would sure be helpful if everyone pitched in. We’re a volunteer organization and could use more volunteers. Some of us aren’t getting any younger.
This Saturday, Raymond Coleman will be playing at Paddy Whacks on Welsh Road in the afternoon, then at the Ashburner Inn on Sunday afternoon. We’re happy he brought his wonderful voice back to Philly.
While Frances Black is appearing in a house concert on Saturday with her kids, Aoife an Eoghan Scott, there are sadly no more seats left. The best you can hope for is that Marianne MacDonald will play some of Frances’ songs on her radio show on Sunday at WTMR 800AM, starting at noon.
Paul Moore and his band will back at their usual haunt, Brittingham’s in Lafayette Hill, on Friday night for first Friday.
Next week and beyond, we’ve added the few Irish acts that are playing at Musikfest in Bethlehem to our calendar. But don’t just go for the Irish acts. Jerry Seinfeld is performing (comedy—he doesn’t sing), along with Reba McIntyre, Duran Duran, Alice in Chains, Culture Club (I loved Culture Club back in the day!), ZZ Top, and Snoop Dogg. How’s that for eclectic?
Summer is the slow season for Irish restaurants and pubs, unless they’re downashore. So if you have some time this week, stop in at your local and give them your business. It’s our community—let’s keep it alive!
Jim McLaughlin
When Bob McLaughlin was signing the visitor book at St. Ignatius Nursing Home in Havertown one day not long ago, he said he couldn’t help paging through the list of the people who had come to visit his brother, Jim, who was dying of a malignant brain tumor.
“There were hundreds and hundreds of names,” he told the more than 100 people who gathered in the St. Joseph University Chapel on Tuesday morning to say goodbye to Jim McLaughlin, who died on July 24, just 8 months after his diagnosis.
“There were so many, the man sitting behind the desk said to me, ‘Is he an important guy?’ “ Bob McLaughlin paused. “I said, ‘Yes he is.’”
Over the next 20 minutes, Bob McLaughlin made it clear that he wasn’t referring to anything on his brother’s resume, though it was impressive. Despite his diminutive size, Jim McLaughlin was a wide receiver for Drexel Hill’s Msgr. Bonner High School team. He remained a Bonner booster all his life, becoming part of the Bonner “Mafia” that helped another Bonner grad, Bill McLaughlin (no relation), start the Irish American Business Chamber and Network in 1999. “He really helped me enormously in those early days,” recalled Bill McLaughlin. “He joined the board early on and started recruiting all the Bonner guys he knew to join. That’s how we started.”
He also stayed true to his college. Jim McLaughlin graduated in 1970 from St. Joseph’s University, where he was class president his first two years. A clue to his character: He abandoned the try at a third term after his mother died, leaving four of her seven children still at home, including the youngest, Mary, who was a toddler. When his family called, he dropped everything to be there for them, often, as many learned at his funeral, in exceptional ways.
He remained an avid Hawk supporter all his life— his AOL email address was Jimsju70 —at one point becoming co-chair (or, as Father Feeney described him, “communicator-in-chief”) of the Class of ’70 group. In April this year, he received the Hogan Award, which is given annually to recognize outstanding loyalty and service to the university.
He attended St. Joe’s on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and after graduation became a second lieutenant in the Air Force stationed in Washington State, where he married and started a family. After his discharge, he got his masters of social work and worked in that field for a decade before translating those skills into a new career in healthcare recruitment and marketing.
He was an entrepreneur, opening his own consulting firm, Trinity Health Partners which provided recruiting and business development services to companies. He served as president of the Irish American Business Chamber and Network which fosters business relationships between Ireland and the US, and between Irish-Americans in Philadelphia. In fact, he had just returned home from a trip to Ireland with a group of hospital execs interested in expanding their virtual pediatric medical services to Irish medical centers when he was diagnosed.
But what his brother Bob was alluding to was not the typical accomplishments of a smart and successful businessman. People did not remember Jim for his “resume virtues,” said his college friend Kyran Connor, quoting an essay by New York Times columnist David Brooks on what it means to live a meaningful life. What made Jim McLaughlin an important man were his “eulogy virtues,” said Connor, again quoting Brooks, the ones “talked about at your funeral.” Those are the values and characteristics that allow some people to “radiate an inner light,” Brooks has written.
To those who knew him, Jim McLaughlin radiated a bonfire, often signaled by the twinkling light in his eye. He had such a zest for life and people, Father Joseph Feeney, SJ, the St. Joe’s professor who said the funeral Mass, started off the service addressing his old friend. “Jim,” he said, “you can’t not be alive. You’re too merry, too vital, too loveable to stop living. . . .He was the most open, loveable and kind people I have ever met, “ he told the mourners.
Many friends, like Connor, recalled a man who “could make you laugh so hard your sides would hurt.” Bill McLaughlin, who was a good foot or more taller than his friend, recalled Jim’s standard answer when people inevitably asked them if they were related. “ He used to say we were both from the same DNA pool but he was from the shallow end. He used to joke that he and I should have given a networking workshop to the chamber—and call ourselves the McLaughlin twins.”
They also remembered a man with myriad interests, one being Zydeco or Cajun folk dancing. “Jim was a genius at finding a Zydeco dance in Philadelphia and of the 7,000 Zydeco dancers in Philadelphia, I think there were only three who didn’t get to St. Ignatius to see him,” joked his brother Bob. “They loved my brother.”
They were far from alone. Jim McLaughlin collected people like some people collect matchbooks. He nurtured those relationships with unexpected phone calls, emails, and hugs. It was like him to “buy you drinks or dinner,” said Father Feeney. In business, it’s called networking, but for Jim McLaughlin, it was more like a genetic trait.
When his brother Bob, a flute player, became friends with virtuoso Irish flute player Kevin Crawford of the top traditional band, Lunasa, Crawford became Jim McLaughlin’s friend too. Crawford and Lunasa bandmate, noted piper Cillian Vallely, played at the service on Tuesday, opening with the poignant tune, “The Dear Irish Boy.” Afterwards, they remembered their friend whom they, like Bob, called “The Mayor.”
“Jim was an extremely special kind of guy. He would just call you out of the blue and say hello, how are you, when are you coming down, is there anything I can do for you,” recalled Crawford.
In fact, Crawford said, Jim McLaughlin would contact the venues where they were appearing to make sure the band was taken care of. “He knew everyone and had established such good will that they all owed him big time,” added Vallely. “If he asked you for something, you would have done it.”
Bethanne Killian got to know Jim McLaughlin better when she became more involved in the city’s Irish community. She’s chair of Irish Network-Philadelphia, a networking group. But she met him originally in 1995 when an Irish friend, Rose Shields, told her she wanted to introduce her to “this man she met on an airplane, coming into Philadelphia.” It was Jim. Shields and her husband Will chatted with him all the way from Shannon to Philly, then Jim offered them a ride home. “Of course, they became fast friends,” said Killian, laughing.
Along with collecting people, he connected them. Dublin-born Siobhan Lyons, executive director of the Irish Immigration Center of Greater Philadelphia, met Jim McLaughlin at a meeting of the Irish Chamber when she was looking for a job that would qualify her for a visa to allow her to stay in the US. She’d fallen in love with the city.
“Jim started introducing me to people. He told me to come to Judge Jimmy Lynn’s annual breakfast at the Plough and the Stars on St. Patrick’s Day where he introduced me to John O’Malley [on the Immigration Center’s Board of Directors]. He told John I was looking for a job and I saw John start to glaze over. Then I told him my background, that I had worked for the Irish government, and he said, ‘I think you’re the person we’ve been looking for.’ So it was thanks to Jim that I got my job and got to stay in the US.”
Frank Reynolds, CEO of PixarBio Corporation, had just learned how to walk again after a surgical error left him paralyzed for seven years when he met Jim McLaughlin. “I joined the Irish Chamber in 1999 after I was back to walking because I needed to network and make friends. I met Jim and we hit it off. We were both St. Joe’s grads and St. Joe’s had really helped saved my life. The research they gave me helped me literally get back on my feet. Jim introduced me to a lot of people, especially people in the neuroscience industry in Dublin, and I developed some important relationships that helped me develop a cure for paralysis.”
Reynolds’ invention, the NeuroScaffold, is an experimental polymer implant that provides support to injured spinal tissue and encourages healing. It has shown promise in clinical trials.
Though many recalled Jim McLaughlin’s “unbounded friendliness”—as Father Feeney put it—the truth is that the greatest of his “eulogy virtues” echoed the Jesuit principle that guides his beloved St. Joe’s: “In all things to love and to serve.”
After his mother died, his father also became ill, dying just a few years later, leaving little Mary an orphan at 10. But before his father passed away, Jim flew him and Mary out to Seattle then drove them in a VW bus for 1,000 miles to take them to Disneyland “which we now know to be the plot of the movie, ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’” said Mary, laughing. “We saw everything, the Pacific Coast Highway, Bug Sur, Napa. . . “
Then, when her father finally died, it was McLaughlin and his wife, Celeste, who took her into their home and raised her with their own two children, Suzanne and Kieran.
“Jim and Celeste were just 25, just married, and they raised me, an independent little girl who listened to her brother’s Allman Brothers albums, went bowling until midnight, and did whatever I wanted it,” Mary McLaughlin told the mourners about the man she called “my brother, my father, my friend.”
Her brother “changed the course of my life,” she said, by filling out her application for the University of Washington and submitting it, though she admitted she had other plans.
She echoed her brother, Bob, who credited “everything good about my life” to an afternoon he spent with Jim when he was living in Washington. That day, his nature-loving brother—Jim loved the outdoors was an avid member of the Appalachian Mountain Club– blew off his Air Force duties to take him to Mt. Rainier, the iconic snow-capped volcano in the Cascade range that dominates the horizon in Seattle and Tacoma.
“There we were, looking up at that 14,000 foot peak and over the Cascades and I thought, ‘I’m going to live here someday,” recalled Bob McLaughlin. “And in 1978 I quit my crazy sales job in Philly and moved to Tacoma to be near the mountains—and truthfully to be near my brother.”
Bob McLaughlin found a job in the textbook industry, which he remains in today, got married and started a family. “All of this came to me because of the gift my brother gave me in that trip to Mt. Rainier. That afternoon and the time and attention he gave me was life-changing. Everything good about my life was my brother’s gift.”
Jim McLaughlin leaves behind a daughter, Suzanne, and son, Keiran (Michelle) and a grandson, KJ. He is also survived by his siblings, Kathy, Tom (Fran), Bob (Nancy), Jerry, and Mary, and his fomer wife, Celeste. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon.
In lieu of flowers donations in his memory may be made to St Ignatius Nursing and Rehab, 4401 Haverford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104 or to Visiting Nurses Association of Philadelphia, 3300 Henry Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19129.
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Catherine Burns’ remains are carried by women named Catherine from Clonoe, County Tyrone. The Watson brothers are at right, playing the pipes. Photo by Jim McArdle
On Sunday, July 19, Catherine Burns’s small casket, holding what little remained of the 29-year-old widow who died in the railroad work camp known as Duffy’s Cut in 1832, was carried from St. Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone, to her final resting place by three local women also named Catherine.
For 180 years, Burns lay under the ground in an unmarked grave along with 56 other Irish immigrants hired to build a rail line near Malvern in Chester County, now part of Amtrak’s northeast corridor. She had traveled with her father-in-law on the barque ship, the John Stamp, whose log noted that neither had any luggage. Six weeks after the immigrants arrived from Tyrone, Derry, and Donegal, they were dead, either of cholera or of violence.
Her burial in her home county was the fulfillment of the goal of the men who unearthed these long-forgotten immigrants, both literally and figuratively. “It was something that we had always hoped to do,” says Dr. William Watson, a history professor at Immaculata University who, with his brother Frank, a Lutheran minister, set in motion the search for the Duffy’s Cut victims after discovering a secret railroad file about the incident in their grandfather’s papers. “Once we found them, if we were able to identify them, we wanted to repatriate them,” he said.
In 2013, the Watson brothers and colleague Earl Schandlemeier were able to return the remains of the youngest of the workers, John Ruddy—identified through a forensic examination of his bones—to Donegal, where he was born. He is now buried in the family plot of Vincent Gallagher, president of the Philadelphia Irish Center.
Like Ruddy, forensic scientists determined that Catherine Burns had died of blunt force trauma, likely at the hands of a group of vigilantes determined to stop the spread of cholera that had ravaged the small encampment.
That story, as well known now in Ireland as in the US, is likely what filled St. Patrick’s Church the Sunday of Catherine Burns’ funeral mass, which was said by the church’s pastor, Father Benny Fee. “The story resonates with a lot of Irish people who have little black holes in their family history, family members who came here and just vanished,” said Watson. ‘They have sympathy for anyone that young who experienced such hardship so senselessly. Catherine Burns died just like John Ruddy died, of violence.”
It was Father Fee’s idea to have Catherine Burns’ casket carried by other women of the parish who shared her first name, said Watson. “His sermon was fantastic,” he said.
“It is our solemn privilege to welcome home to her native Tyrone Catherine’s mortal remains and to lay them to rest with the prayers and rites of the church and with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Father Fee told the congregation, according to published accounts. “Catherine is one of our own. She’s no stranger—she has Tyrone blood in her veins.”
From his pulpit, Father Fee thanked the Watsons and Schandlemeier for bringing “Catherine back from her exile to her native pastures. Now there’s no fear, no terror for Catherine any more.”
There are still 50 other victims of Duffy’s Cut whose bodies have not been recovered. Radar imaging has found what Watson calls “an anomaly,” a large apparently empty space that may have been left when bodies buried underground decomposed and collapsed. Core samples of that area are scheduled to be taken in mid-August, he said.
The cores will be taken about five feet from where the anomaly is seen on the scan so as not to disturb anything buried below. Forensic scientists will then sift through the circular samples, which will be encased in canisters about a foot long and four feet wide, to determine if there are any human remains before a dig gets underway.
“If what we find what we expect to find,” said Watson, “this maybe the worst mass murder in Pennsylvania history.”
The photos below were taken by Jim McArdle, who was one of several representatives from the Philadelphia area who attended the funeral service. The others included Irish Center President Vincent Gallagher, Donegal Association President Frank McDonnell and his wife, Kathleen, and Donegal Association members Nora and Liam Campbell and John Durnin.
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It only felt like hell on earth, but it sure was hot at the Limerick GAA field on Sunday when Allentown squared off against Philadelphia in a hurling match.
The Weather Service says the temperature hit a high of 93 degrees in the Pottstown area, but on the field, the athletes say, it gets a lot hotter. All that running back and forth doesn’t help much, either.
Fortunately, at the end of the game, officials turned the sprinklers on. Some of us couldn’t pass up a chance to add least stroll through the spray. (Including me.)
Final score: Allentown 3-19, Philly 4-4.
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Frances Black and her kids, Aoife and Eoghan Scott.
Frances Black’s sister, famed Irish singer Mary Black, made her farewell tour last year accompanied by her ultra-talented daughter, Roisin O. And this year. Frances, herself an acclaimed singer, is returning to the US for the first time in 20 years to tour with her two musically talented children, Aoife and Eoghan Scott. It’s a family thing.
They’re at the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival this weekend, then performing in Massachusetts, upstate New York, and at the New York Irish Center in Queens. But they’ll also make a stopover for a house concert in Philadelphia on Saturday, August 1 at the home of singers Gabriel Donohue and Marian Makins.
In interviews, Frances Black, the youngest in a family of five musical children, says she never thought she’d become a singer. “It was never expected of me,” she told the Belfast Telegraph in January. “Everyone expected it of Mary, because she was singing from a very young age. But I didn’t think I was a very good singer.”
Many others would disagree. Singer Nanci Griffith once described Black’s voice as “the sweetest in Ireland.” Black produced her first album, Talk to Me, in 1994 and the awards and accolades followed.
Her daughter, Aoife Scott, is a singer-songwriter as well as a song collector whose interest is in the Irish language—she lives in the Gaeltacht and has made frequent appearances on Irish language TV shows. Son Eoghan Scott is also a singer-songwriter whose recently released EP has garnered positive reviews. He’s played guitar on stage for his Aunt Mary as well as other leading lights, including Sharon Shannon, Paddy Keenan, Mary Coughlan, Tommy Fleming, and with the Irishband, Slide. He’s also playing on his sister’s upcoming release.
Since this is a house concert, seats are limited but there are still a few open. Price of admission is $20, all of which goes to the performers. Email barnstarconcerts@gmail.com to reserve your seat for this one-of-a-kind, very intimate performance.
This Saturday, you downashore people can hear Jamison perform at Casey’s in North Wildwood. Those of you on your way home from the shore on Sunday should stop in at Ashburner’s Inn in Philly to hear McHugh and O’Neill. The Irish duo will be on stage from 4 Pm to 8 PM.
If you come home earlier from the shore and want some good craic, join the 2nd Street Plough Bhoys as they launch the beginning of the Celtic FC season at the Plough and the Stars, with music, football talk, and some of the young coaches from the Glasgow team (which is Irish—and they’ll be happy to explain that all to you over drinks). That starts at 2 PM. And we hear Raymond Coleman may be back in his old haunt singing some songs.
If you’re home all weekend, head up to Limerick to watch some football and hurling. The Notre Dame Ladies GFC will be playing at 11 on Saturday, with the men taking over the field later and on Sunday.
Jamison will be back at the shore on Thursday, playing at The Wharf in Wildwood.
Then on Friday, Sean Wilson will be getting dancers on their feet at another on the Roy Lynch Nights of Music and Dance at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Newtown Square.
We’re putting the Celtic lineup for Bethlehem’s annual Musikfest on our calendar. It runs from August 7 to August 16. Look for that right here next week.
Even high temperatures didn’t cool the competition.
And we mean really hot. Temps in the 90s didn’t stop the young footballers from taking the field on Saturday for three games at the new Philadelphia Gaelic Athletic Association field in Limerick.
We could only manage to shoot one game before we returned to our liquid state–at least, that’s how it felt–but it was a good one. The Young Irelands’ seniors trounced the visitng Pittsburgh GAA 3-21 to 3-11.
The action continues this weekend with Pittsburgh facing St. Patrick’s and the Notre Dames Ladies GFC will take on Baltimore (starting at 11 AM). On Sunday, the junior Kevin Barry’s will be playing the Young Irelands starting at 1 PM followed by the senior teams at 2:30 PM.
The field is located at 485 Longview Road, Limerick, PA. Bring sunscreen.
Check out pics from last week’s game below.
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Tiernagh & Mia Moore and Meagan & Jenna Diver with their cards for Caolan & Conall
“It’s overwhelming how people just come together in situations like this. Situations that you don’t even think about before they happen.”
These are the words of Fidelma McGroary, and she knows what she’s talking about. Fidelma is one of five Delaware County women who organized last Sunday’s Garden Tea Party to raise money for two strong little boys who are fighting cancer.
Caolan Melaugh, the cousin of Fidelma’s sister-in-law in County Donegal, was diagnosed at four weeks with Neuroblastoma. Now four months old, Caolan is undergoing an 18 month protocol in Ireland to treat his cancer, but the best chance for a successful cure would mean treatment in either the U.S. or Europe. An expensive undertaking, the Caolan Melaugh Fund has been established online, and half of the money raised at Sunday’s Tea Party will be donated to Caolan.
Conall Harvey is much closer to home. The five year old, whose family is part of St. Denis Parish in Havertown and whose great-grandmother was the late Rosabelle Gifford, was diagnosed in March of this year with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The Leukemia was discovered when Conall was admitted to the ER with what his parents thought was dehydration from a stomach virus. But instead of a stomach virus, Conall’s body had gone into septic shock from a bacterial infection that his immune system was too weak to fight off. Doctors amputated both Conall’s legs at the knee and part of his hand to save his life; the other half of the money raised Sunday will go directly to Conall’s family as he undergoes chemotherapy and rehabilitation.
“These are two special little boys,” Fidelma said. “And we decided we weren’t going to let another day go by without doing something to help them. We’ve been talking about giving back and paying it forward for years. I wanted to do something for Caolan, and then we heard about Conall. That’s how it started.
“This could not have happened without Louise Moore, Sharon Doogan, Kathy McGuinness and Colette Gallagher-Mohan. And the people who donated raffle baskets and food and their time. Everybody lifted the phone and said ‘What can I bring?’ And then the word started to spread, that’s the people of the Irish Community.”
Another group that was instrumental in making the Garden Tea Party so successful was their children. “They did all the decor. They did everything, we couldn’t have done it without them,” Fidelma said. “It was important that the kids were a part of this. I wanted them to grow up realizing how blessed they are and to learn to give back. So when they grow up and we’re old and gone, they’ll carry on.”
The special guest of the day was Mairead Comaskey, the Philadelphia Rose of Tralee. Beautiful and gracious, Mairead could usually be found with a trail of young girls in her wake. In addition to judging the best-dressed contests, she happily posed for pictures and shared her sash and crown with the crowd. In a few weeks, Mairead is off to Tralee for the International Rose Pageant, but on Sunday her heart was with Caolan and Conall.
At the time of the fundraiser, Conall Harvey was still recovering at CHOP, but his aunt, Rose Harvey Kurtz, was at the event. “Conall is just a beautiful bright light, a beautiful spirit,” she said. “He’s a fighter. His school dedicated a day to him, and the motto was ‘Conall Strong.’ We do down to visit him to brighten his day, and instead he brightens ours.
“The outpouring of love and faith is keeping us going. There’s something about Conall’s spirit that is bringing out the love and goodness in people. People’s faith is coming back. The positive thing is the strength of the family and friends who are so supportive, and the beautiful people who do beautiful things like this. It’s overwhelming how good people are.”
You can see all the photos from the Garden Tea Party below.
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