Athena Tergis and Billy McComiskey
No one can recall quite when Mick Moloney started playing his annual benefit for St. Malachy School, the most recent of which was held a couple of Sundays ago in the church on North 11th Street.
The parish’s retired pastor Father John McNamee figures it’s at least 22 years since he bumped into Moloney at a presentation on ethnic music at the Balsch Institute. The two struck up an immediate friendship, and Moloney soon suggested a fund-raiser for the little school a few blocks from Temple University in North Philadelphia.
Since then, Moloney’s annual gathering of musical friends has become, McNamee says, “the longest and most successful benefit we have all year” for a school the American Ireland Fund has called “a preeminent symbol of ecumenism and outreach to poor and disadvantaged youth and their families.”
Without this concert and other fund-raisers, Father Mac told his audience, “We’d have closed down 15 years ago.” And he added: “I can’t imagine this neighborhood without this school.”
Neither can we.
Thanks to Moloney and a few of his fellow musicians—Athena Tergis, Brendan Dolan, Billy McComiskey, Brendan Callahan and Caitlin Finley—we won’t have to.
Here are a few photographic remembrances of the day.
