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Denise Foley
tle=”OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA” src=”http://irishinphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Tommy-Keenan.jpg” alt=”” width=”380″ height=”419″ /> Unofficial official photographer for the Irish community, Tom Keenan.
By Kathy McGee Burns
“The best compliment to a photographer is to see his photographs hanging on your wall, ” Tom Keenan, one of the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame award winners for 2012, told me recently.
The longtime Irish Edition photographer has had his share of compliments. His pictures of people from Philadelphia’s Irish community—and the many photographs of Ireland he’s donated to auctions and raffles—are everywhere, just like Tom Keenan himself.
When AOH leader and St. Patrick’s Day Parade President Bob Gessler nominated Tom to receive this award, he wrote: “ He has for years, chronicled every aspect of our community. With little fanfare or fuss, Tom Keenan, has at one time or another, made all of us part of History.”
Tom Keenan was a Kensington boy, one of five sons (Robert, Hugh, Michael and John are his brothers) of Hugh and Thelma Keenan. His father died when Keenan was still young. When his mother remarried, she added
Kathleen, Donna and Billy to the brood.
Tom graduated from Frankford High and enlisted in the Navy, where he served aboard the USS Simon Lake. When he was discharged, he returned to Philadelphia where he attended Philadelphia Community College and in his own words, “majored mostly in soccer and girls.” He met his sidekick and the love of his life, Jane Mulvenna, at the Friendly Bar. He had just moved into a new apartment and invited everyone back for a late night party. Jane and Tom have been together ever since–37 years. They have a son, Dylan Thomas Keenan.
As a boy growing up, Tom Keenan spent a lot of time with his Uncle Mike Ruane and Aunt Helen. They would take the Keenan kids to the Irish Center where they would “run around like Banshees,” enjoying the Irish music, dancing and food.. Mike was a great republican (in the Irish sense) whose mantle was overflowing with Celtic crosses, harps and much paraphernalia from Long Kesh (aka His Majesty’s Prison, site of the Hunger Strikes).
Between the flavors of the Irish Center and his uncle Michael Ruane’s politics, Tom developed a lasting love for Ireland. But he came to his love affair with photographer relatively late.
In 1983, Tom Keenan started work at the Philadelphia Naval Yard installing electronics equipment on ships and submarines; missile systems and radars. That all came to an end when the shipyard closed.
So, in 1987, he decided to follow his passions. He joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians, returned to school to learn photographer, and became, in his words, the “unofficial official Philadelphia Irish community photographer.” Chances are if you’re at an Irish event, you’ll find Tom Keenan there. He covers galas, games,
I asked Tom to tell me which of his many photographs were his favorites. He did so with words filled with passion and sentimentality.
The first was the arrival of the three-masted replica of the famine ship, Jeanie Johnston in 2003. Tom was invited by Bob Gessler and Seamus Boyle, National President of the AOH, to escort the ship into Philadelphia. They drove him to Wilmington, DE, where he was taken by tugboat out to meet the tall ship. While on board the tug he started to see a mast, shrouded in fog, coming under the Commodore Barry Bridge. To him, it looked like a ghost ship. He started snapping pictures and little by little this magnificent ship came into view. He boarded it and sailed right in to Penn’s Landing.
The second photograph involved the Irish Memorial. He had been taking pictures of the various stages of development. There was a wreath tossing which commemorated the souls lost in the voyage over. Then an event which introduced a small replica (15×6”) of Glenna Goodacre’s yet-to-be monument. Finally, in 2003, came the unveiling of the 30-foot bronze statue with its two dozen life-sized figures. To Tom, taking the photo at the moment of the unveiling was like Christmas morning and opening a special present. It was the coming together of all the Irish to witness a long-awaited dream.
Tom Keenan described to me the joy of capturing “Old Ireland” with his camera; photos of things people can’t see anymore: thatched cottages, fishing villages, small towns. He visualizes the people in those times, big families with two rooms and no running water.
During the Hunger Strike days, he was asked to join Northern Aid’s Honor Guard. With each new death, they would add a small white cross. These were sad but proud days for Tom Keenan.
Tom sounded very determined when he mentioned that Philadelpia should have an Irish Museum. He believes that all of treasures, memories, and artifacts that are donated or held in one place or the other in the region should be together under one roof.
Tom Keenan is totally genuine—he’s loved by all and a keen observer of life who told me that he thinks that “Life is like sitting on the boardwalk, watching the people go by until one of them comes over and says hello!”
The Delaware Valley Hall of Fame Awards Dinner is on November 11
2012, Irish Center. 5PM. For tickets, call Sean McMenamin 215-850-0518 or Maureen Saxon 610-909-0054
Siobhan Lyons and her dog, Breac.
Siobhan Lyons had a fairly typical reaction to the news that she was going to be inducted into the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame. Typical for her, anyway.
“I thought I had woken up in an alternate universe,” laughs the executive director of two major Irish organizations in the Philadelphia area—the Irish Immigration Center and the Brehon Law Society.
Why? She’s only been on the job for three years. “I’ve been going to the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame dinner every years since I started at the Immigration Center and I’ve seen the kind of people they honor,” she says. “Kathy McGee Burns, Tom Keenan [who will be inducted with Lyons on Sunday, November 11] and Kathleen Murtagh [inducted in 2011]—Kathleen has been helping everyone in the community her entire life. I’m not surprised they won it. These are people who’ve been here a long time and done great things.”
But the people she sees every week at the Immigration Center think Lyons has done great things in a short time. Kathleen Murtagh, a regular at the Wednesday senior lunch at the Immigration Center in Upper Darby, was one of 30 people who signed the letter nominating the young Dublin-born Lyons.
“Siobhan fit in with us quickly,” say Murtagh, who was born in Mayo. ”She is a gentle, quiet, happy and congenial girl; always willing to listen and give advice and guidance to the seniors. I would describe her as a sweet, intelligent and caring person. Siobhan has been continually welcoming to each and every new member. She arranges many programs, great lunches, wonderful trips, musical events, and she does it all effortlessly. We are thankful to God to have her in our midst. She is a well deserving Hall of Fame honoree.”
How she got in their midst is a story of best-laid plans going astray—or, perhaps, turning out better than she ever imagined. Lyons, whose father, Brendan, made a career in the Irish foreign service, graduated from the School of Oriental and African studies in London with plans to work in the Middle East. She even learned to speak Arabic. During her peripetatic childhood, she had lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when her father was stationed there. (The Lyons family—including three brothers and a sister—also spent time in Washington, DC; Nairobi, Kenya; and London.)
But instead, she wound up in the Irish diplomatic service—in Irish Aid, the same department where her father had worked (“I was cleaning out some files and found some of his files!” she says). Her job: monitoring how Ireland’s financial contributions were being spent by the European Union. No need for Arabic there.
What brought her to the US was her then-husband, a Canadian, who came to New Jersey for a job. That’s where Lyons’ passion for immigration reform began. “People are always amazed at the problems I’ve had with my own visa,” says Lyons. “When we moved to the US I foolishly thought that with my background and experience, I would have no problems getting a job in post-911. If we had looked for two minutes at the US visa system, we wouldn’t have come. I’d worked in other countries and thought I would get a job and they would apply for a visa for me and that’s how it would work—the way it does in the rest of the world.”
Her husband got a work visa, but she didn’t. That’s when she learned that spouses don’t automatically get the right to work under restrictive US immigration laws. “In the US, they try to attract skilled professional workers, but their spouses have to commit career suicide,” she says.
But she could volunteer and she did –with Princeton Project 55, a nonprofit founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader to encourage Princeton grads to give back to the community.
Then she did get a job—with the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, which applied for a visa on her behalf. “They had never hired a foreigner before so they didn’t know what was involved—and they probably won’t ever again,” she laughs.
Then, a fortuitous meeting with Philadelphia attorney John O’Malley at Judge Jimmy Lynn’s annual St. Patrick’s day breakfast at The Plough and the Stars on Second Street led to the Immigration Center. “We were introduced by Jim McLaughlin of the Irish American Business Chamber and Network and as Jim was introducing me, I could see John’s eyes glazing over. When he heard that I used to work for the Irish government, and had experience with grant writing and project management, his eyes lit up. He said, “Oh my God, you’re just the person we’ve been looking for.”
O’Malley was serving on a board set up by the Irish government to rejuvenate the Irish Immigration Center in Philadelphia. They were looking for an executive director. Lyons got the job.
While the immigration center does work on immigration issues—including helping Irish with their visas—it’s far from the only role it plays in the region’s Irish community. The senior lunch is part of the fundamental mission of Irish-supported immigration centers across the country, the outgrowth of the tragic experiences of the London Irish in the ‘50s. Most of them men, they went to England to work, sent money home, but many were left alone—they didn’t marry, have children or assimilate into the English culture. Many died alone. So the Irish government established a worldwide outreach program to help. It’s the only country that still keeps tabs on its diaspora.
It’s the Irish way, says Lyons.
“I really think that the Hall of Fame honor isn’t for me, but for the work we do here,” says Lyons. “Taking care of the most vulnerable people in our population, the older people, the prisoners, and people in trouble. This is something that really resonates with the Irish community. Part of what the lunch is about is making connections between people—it’s not for people who might not have lunch otherwise, but for them to connect with their Irish heritage, to meet with each other and feel part of the wider community. ”
This year, Lyons found the money to hire a social worker, Leslie Alcock of County Carlow, to work with the seniors. She’s done home visits, gone to hospitals, sat down with families to help them look for options when they needed to find a home for a relative. One case she handled was a woman who was being kicked out of a nursing home. Leslie was there to facilitate things.”
She’s now working the county board of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians to find a place in the Northeast or South Philadelphia to establish a regular senior lunch there. A second lunch is held at the Irish Center in Mt. Airy once a month—usually with music provided by Irish Center President Vince Gallagher.
“This is one of the things I’m thrilled about because it was something that [The Irish Center’s] Sean McMenamin has been talking about for a while. They approached us to kick start it, and at first we provided the food, but now they’ve taken it over. We send out the mailing and bring our group to the Irish Center. Some of them hadn’t been to the Irish Center for 20 years. For most seniors in our area, most of their issues are transportation related. One of our goals next year is to have a much larger budget for transportation.”
Just as the immigration center has lawyers who volunteer their time to work with the undocumented and others with legal problems, there are regular speakers who come to talk to the seniors about issues that face them, including “how to navigate Medicare and make wills,” says Lyons.
As she did with the Irish Center and the AOH, she has actively reached out to other Irish organizations in the community. “Often we all work at cross purposes,” she says. The Medicare specialist was an Ancient Order of Hibernians contact; Brehon Law Society members are another regular resource. Lyons is executive director of the Brehons (“All part of my strategy to get Irish organizations to work together!” she says) and worked the past two years to plan symposiums, first in Ireland and a few weeks ago at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, to bring lawyers and businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic together to discuss an issue of mutual interest—how they can do business together.
The fledgling symposium is so prestigious that Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny flew in for an overnight to attend this year. He met with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett at a private dinner at the Union League; Corbett has designated next year’s symposium in Ireland an official state trade mission to build business links between Ireland and the US. Pennsylvania already has its fair share of Irish businesses. While here, Kenny visited Irish-owned Zenith Businesses, which makes systems for pharmaceutical manufacturers, in Whitpain, Montgomery County.
But Lyons isn’t all work. She works hard, but plays harder. She’s a competitive runner with the Fishtown Beer Runners in Philadelphia, where she recently bought a house. She’s also done rock climbing and learned how to fly with the greatest of ease on a trapeze at the Philadelphia Circus School in Mt. Airy. Only bad weather kept her from a sky diving appointment this year.
Last year, she was a crowd favorite at the imaginative fundraiser thrown by the Delco Gaels, part of the youth league of the Gaelic Athletic Association, “Dancing Like a Star” in which she was paired with singer Enda Keegan for a cha-cha, swing dance and freestyle. “So now I’m taking ballroom dancing lessons,” she says laughing. “I loved it.”
And she is doting mother to Breac, a speckled, cock-eared daschund-chihuahua mix she jokingly calls “the immigration reform dog” and who goes with her just about everywhere. (He’s also a regular at the seniors’ lunch, though he won’t be coming to the Hall of Fame dinner.)
She remains humble—and even a little abashed—about her Hall of Fame induction. But she’s so proud of it that she asked her stepmother, Josie, to fly in from Panang, Malaysia, where her father is head of Panang Medical College (he was once the Irish ambassador to Malaysia) to be with her at the dinner, which will held at the Irish Center on Sunday night.
“This honor is going to hold me accountable for what I do in the future,” Lyons says. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life living up to this award.”
isky” src=”http://irishinphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Billy-McComisky.jpg” alt=”” width=”380″ height=”380″ /> Billy McComiskey will be bringing his accordion to St. Malachy’s on Sunday and to a session at Maloney’s in Ardmore on Saturday after a concert at Villanova.
Hope Sandy didn’t scramble your plans to be Irish this week, because there’s a lot going on.
Mick Moloney is in town. This Irish musician, who once made his home in Philadelphia, is as constant as the falling leaves—he arrives here every autumn to play a fundraising concert for St. Malachy’s, the North Philadelphia mission school that was founded by a group of Irish nuns and immigrants. He’s making his first stop at Villanova to do a concert to benefit the Literacy Council. Then he’ll be at St. Malachy’s on Sunday afternoon. If you’ve never been to the St. Malachy’s concert, it is truly a religious experience. The church is a gilded treasure in this community that fell on hard times in the 1950s and 1960s, when the manufacturing plants that anchored it moved south. Check out the lovely shamrocks in the sanctuary!
After the Villanova concert, bring your instruments to Maloney’s Pub in Ardmore where the musicians Mick frequently brings with him, including Billy McComiskey and Dana Lyn, will be leading a session.
Also on Saturday, Irish glass artist Billy Healy is exhibiting his Irish and Celtic designs in glass at the Sugarloaf Craft Festival at the convention center in Oaks. If you call Healy (check our calendar for his number) he’ll give you a free pass to the show. It’s never too early to start Christmas shopping.
The AOH/LAOH members of Montgomery County will come together at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Norristown to remember those members who have passed away. That’s Saturday night at 5:30 PM. There will be dinner at the AOH Notre Dame Div. 1 hall at 342 Jefferson Street in nearby Swedesburg.
If you love Luke Jardel and the Hooligans, they’ll be performing on Saturday night at the Feast of All Irish Saints at the Church of the Holy Famil in Sewell, NJ. This indoor festival features a DJ, Irish dancers, dinner, auctions and 50/50s.
If you trace your roots to Mayo, you really need to go to the Mayo Ball. It’s also Saturday night. The Theresa Flanagan Band is providing the music, and you can see the Miss Mayo pageant.
On Sunday, TImlin and Kane will be at Brittingham’s in Lafayette Hill.
On Tuesday, poet Catherine Phil MacCarthy will be reading excerpts from her critically acclaimed fourth collection, “The Invisible Threshold,” at the St. Augustine Center Room at Villanova University.
Then, next Friday, enjoy the music of Jamison at the annual Sgt. Patrick McDonald Beef-and-Beer fundraiser at the St. Patrick McDonald Memorial Gym in Northeast Philadelphia, which honors the slain Philadelphia highway patrolman and raises money for a scholarship fund started in his memory.
Coming up: If you enjoyed the Sam Maguire Cup play that brought the prize home to Donegal this year, tell the manager. Jim McGuinness (who played GAA football in Philly during the 1999 season at Dougherty) and two players will be coming to the Irish Center on November 13—with the Sam!—to meet and greet. There’ll be music, food, and an opportunity to have your picture taken with these Donegal heroes.
Dr. Bill Watson acts out a part in the Duffy’s Cut drama. Behind him, from left, Gerry Sweeney and the Rev. Dr. Frank Watson.
Some were murdered, bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range as they tried to escape. Others were buried alive, the disease they contracted—likely from stream water—causing their skin to go cold, their eyes fixed and glassy, like death, but not death. The nuns who came to tend to them were sent away, told they were not needed in this camp of suffering in a hidden corner of Chester County, where the dead and dying were thousands of miles from family and friends.
The written story of the 57 Irish immigrants who came to build a land bridge for the railroad—including one woman, the unwed mother of one who cooked and did their laundry—and died under mysterious circumstances is horrifying enough. But when it’s acted out, as it was on Sunday, October 28, at Philadelphia’s Irish Center, it is bone-chilling. Some people wept as the ghost stories were told by actors and participants in the archeological project that literally unearthed both the story and the victims of this 1832 crime, when disease and ethnic and religious prejudice intersected tragically. See a video clip of the presentation by Lori Lander Murphy.
The two men who lead the Duffy’s Cut project—Dr William Watson of Immaculata University and his twin brother, Lutheran minister, Dr. Frank Watson—both took roles in the theatrical presentation which they co-wrote with Marita Krivda Poxon, a retired librarian who grew up in the Oak Lane section of the city and who has written two history books about the region. One, called Irish Philadelphia, will be released in January.
To turn this drama into theater, the writers drew on both written accounts, some speculation, and the stories of ghostly sightings in the area that were passed down through generations. Jerry Sweeney of Philadelphia played Patrick Doyle, one of those 19th century witnesses who claimed to have seen the dead workers, “saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen, hopping and a bobbing on their graves.”
Those stories passed into the 20th century. In the audience was Kathy Wagner, who lives not far from the mass burial site in Malvern. She said when her sons were young, “I used to tell them to go look for the railroad workers. We knew about them. And they were there all along.”
Project leader Bill Watson had his own ghostly encounters. “Bill saw a trio of ghosts and in the play, Patrick Doyle, sees three ghosts,” said Poxon, after the show.
Poxon, who studied literature at Trinity College in Dublin and had wanted to be a writer, didn’t start writing seriously until she retired. “And I love to write ghost stories,” she said, laughing, the white wimple on her head—she played Sister Pelagia, one of the Sisters of Charity who came to minister to the sick—bobbing like a seagull.
The work at the Malvern site was temporarily halted after seven bodies were recovered—bodies suspected to be the laundress and six workers who had tried to escape and were killed. Most of them were buried this year in a donated plot at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwd. One, believed to be a teenaged Donegal man named John Ruddy, is being held until DNA evidence confirms his identity. The Ruddy family still lives in Inishowen Peninsula, at the top of Donegal, where John was from; one family member came to the US to donate DNA for analysis by experts at the Smithsonian Institute. The Ruddy family has a genetic dental anomaly that was also found in the recovered skull; the family also report that there’s a family story of a young Ruddy who went to America who was never heard from again.
Work at the site won’t continue until Amtrak, which runs trains along the line, issues permits. The rest of the bodies are buried deeper and all work stopped because the mass grave is in close proximity to the train line.
Amtrak is expected to issue those permits, “but the weather has to behave,” said Dr. Frank Watson, who played 19th century journalist Julius Friedrich Sachse, who wrote about the Duffy’s Cut ghost sightings, and provided bagpipe interludes.
The bodies are buried about 30 feet down “at the original grade of the valley,” said Bill Watson, who wrote his own part—that of a young Donegal worker. “We’re going to need an earth mover in there before our team gets started.”
He said that the forensic scientists who helped the Watsons diagnose murder as the cause of death of some of the seven expect that the other 30 likely died of cholera, but that won’t be known for sure until the bones are brought up and examined. “We think that some of those people may have been buried alive because the cholera trance made them appear dead. Cholera has been known to turn people into living corpses.”
In March, PBS will present its second program on Duffy’s Cut in its true-life crime series, Secrets of the Dead.
And maybe, by then John Ruddy will be in his final resting place in Donegal. If it turns out that the bones don’t belong to Ruddy, he’ll still rest in peace in the land where he was born. Irish Center President Vincent Gallagher has donated a gravesite in his family plot in Ardara, County Donegal. “He’ll be right next to my grandparents,” said Gallagher.
athy-pic.jpg” alt=”” title=”Kathy pic” width=”380″ height=”380″ class=”size-full wp-image-7755″ /> Hall of Fame honoree Kathy McGee Burns.
Kathy McGee Burns opens the bright yellow door to her home and invites me in. On a cold, wet October morning, there’s a gas fire flickering in the fireplace, which is framed by classic Chinoiserie. Tables and bookshelves are chockablock with family photos and souvenirs from her many trips–to Ireland, Europe, Asia, and the Holy Land. Irish singer John McEvoy lilts softly in the background from the CD player.
When I tell her I love her home, she tilts her head. “What is it about it that you love?” The happy colors, I tell her—the corals, pinks and reds that echo the hibiscus vines I can see through the wall of windows, circling the gazebo in her backyard. “What I love,” she says, “are the things I’ve collected on my trips.” She picks up a small bowl from a side table. “Like this. These are whirling dervishes. I bought this in Turkey.”
“Whirling dervishes,” I say. “How appropriate.” She laughs. “You think I’m a whirling dervish?”
If you look at the resume of the woman who has been president of the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame for seven years—and who is being honored by the organization in this, her last year—you’d agree that as a descriptor, “rapidly spinning object” is pretty close to dead-on. Force of nature also comes to mind.
Kathy McGee Burns has served as the first female president of the Donegal Association of Philadelphia, the second female president of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association (and a board member since 2004), board member of the Irish Memorial, member of the St. Malachy’s School Advisory Board, board member of the Claddagh Fund, vice president of the Commodore Barry Club, treasurer of the Hunger Strikers 25th Anniversary Committee. . .the list goes on.
Where do you get the energy, I ask her. She is 75, works fulltime as a realtor for Prudential Fox & Roach, and has 14 grandchildren to spoil.
“I think it’s because I love life,” she answers. “The other thing is that I can never say no to anyone. That’s why I’m involved. People know I get the job done, and I do.”
She has a motto, she says. People who know Kathy McGee Burns know she has many mottos. A dedicated collector of inspirational quotations, she has one delivered to her by email every day. “My motto,” she says, “is what is worth doing is worth doing well. Every time I do a new job I don’t in any way pull back on it. I say give it your best. It’s what I say when I go to work every day.”
It’s a trait borne largely of motherhood— and that’s motherhood on a grand scale. “I think my work ethic actually comes from being a mother,” she says. “When I had nine little children, I knew in my heart that I was responsible for every one of those little children and had to do my best for every one of them.”
And those nine little children were all little at the same time. At 17, Kathy graduated from Mount St. Joseph Academy in Flourtown and was married shortly thereafter. By the time she was 20 she had six children under the age of four, including a set of twins. After her seventh, she and her husband divorced and she was faced with raising them alone on $100 a week in child support.
She not only assumed she wouldn’t marry again, she couldn’t imagine anyone even wanting to date a woman with seven children. Then, friends introduced her to Mike Burns. Her kids fell in love with him first. “He fell in love with them too. So basically, they fixed me up. We never had a date. Just one day we went out and got married.”
They’ve been married for 45 years and have two sons together, Peter and Josh, who joined the Wall children, Kathy, Kim, Tony, Kelly, Tracy, Tierney and Tim, in the little house in Lafayette Hill where Kathy and Mike still live.
She was still pregnant with Peter when she enrolled at Montgomery County Community College. Her first assignment: Write a composition about anything you want, said her teacher. She tore a topic from the headlines at the time—the riots at Attica prison, in which 13 inmates and four guards were killed.
She started researching prisons and their focus, not on rehabilitation, but punishment. “I read a letter to the editor in the local paper from an inmate at Graterford Prison (in Collegeville) that said there was no rehab in prison and that when people leave, they’re twice as angry. He said that if you wanted to be involved in making things better, you need to come to prison and ask what we need. Which is, of course, exactly what I did.”
It was the beginning of more than a decade of volunteer work Kathy and Mike did at the prison. It was also, she says, “the beginning of my writing career.” She has been a regular contributor to the Irish Edition, a newspaper covering the Philadelphia Irish community, for many years, and is a regular contributor to www.irishphiladelphia.com.
And she continued her college education. It took her 16 years, but in 1986, she graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts in history from Chestnut Hill College. She was immediately accepted into Temple University School of Law, which she attended for two years before deciding that law wasn’t her destiny.
By then, something else began to consume her—the search for her Irish identity. At the time, Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers at Long Kesh prison were starving themselves to death to protest conditions there. “Bobby was the same age as my son, Tony. I thought, here I am, with a son that age, and I’m taking him to a posh college in Chicago and there is Mrs. Sands watching her son slowly starve to death. I asked myself what I would give my life for. My children, of course. But my country? I don’t know. The idea of starving yourself to death for freedom took me over and put me on a path.” She wanted to know where she was from—and more. “I wanted to know, were my people republican? Did my people ever do anything to help?”
Her father, who came from a poor family but built his own successful florist business, knew little about his Irish heritage. He offered only one clue: “We’re related to every McGee in Bridgeport, PA, Kathy,” he told her. So she contacted every McGee in Bridgeport until she found one who offered one slim lead: the lines to an old song she’s heard their parents sing, “We come from Donegal where they eat potatoes, skins and all.”
On this barest of clues, she assumed the McGees were from Donegal and applied to join the Donegal Association. She volunteered for everything and, in 2001, she was elected its first woman president. But what most of the members didn’t know is that a week before she was nominated, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She told only a few people, including the association’s president, Vince Gallagher. “I wanted to know if they still wanted me to take the office,” she explains. “They said yes, I was elected, and I was thrilled. I went from not know where I came from to being the first woman president of the Donegal Society. My life is full of wonderful things, isn’t it?”
She seems unaware that she has been talking about the same period in which she went through surgery and 36 weeks of chemo for a malignant tumor. I remind her. “That wasn’t a wonderful thing,” I say.
She dismisses that idea. “I saw it as a journey,” she explains. “It was another road that presented itself to me, although I was pushed onto this road kicking and screaming.” She laughs, then becomes serious again.
“You know how people say that after being sick their whole life changes? My life didn’t change one bit. I was already doing what I wanted to do.”
One of the things she wanted to do was track down her family in Ireland. She got unexpected help from Patsy Duddy, who had been the president of the Donegal Association when she joined. She and Mike were going to Ireland and he recommended that while she was in Letterkenny, she stay at his brother Mickey’s bed and breakfast. Mickey arranged an introduction to a local man, Hughie McGee. When she met him, she says, “The hair stood up on the back of my neck. He looked exactly like my Uncle Hughie McGee!”
Later, DNA testing confirmed the link. “The day I got the word that we were related was magical to me,” says Kathy.
One of the best days of her life, she says, was when, last year, as president of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade committee, she gave the welcoming remarks at the annual Mass at St. Patrick’s Church and looked out at her family—including the Donegal McGees, who flew over to be there, and a Bridgeport cousin she met only recently—and realized that “they were sitting there, proud of me. When I left the church, I grabbed my cousin from Ireland and introduced him to my brother and his son. ‘Hughie McGee,’ I said, ‘I’d like you to meet my brother, Hughie McGee, and his son, Hughie McGee.’ I have a photo of the three of them in my office!”
But one of the most thrilling days of her life, she says, was in 2002 when she was named “person of the year” by Clan na Gael, an Irish Republican organization in the US, active in supporting the cause of Irish freedom since the 19th century. “It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever gotten—it had so much meaning to me,” she says. “One of the first things my cousin, Hughie McGee, said to me was ‘I want you to know that you’re from a good republican family.’ I was proud. My question—did my family do anything to help—was answered.”
Though she is leaving the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame and shedding a few of her other volunteer jobs, don’t expect retirement news from Kathy McGee Burns any time soon. She’s just making room for the new things she’s taken on, like raising money for St. Malachy’s, a mission school in the North Philadelphia parish where her grandparents lived.
“When a road presents itself to me, I take it,” she says. “I feel like something new is presenting itself to me now. I just don’t know what it is. I’d go back to college to get a master’s and a doctorate in a second. I loved school. But I don’t know what’s coming. All I know,” she says with a laugh, “is that I’ll say yes.”
The annual Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame dinner is Sunday, Nov. 11. Also being honored: Irish Edition photographer Tom Keenan and Irish Immigration Center Executive Director Siobhan Lyons; the Irish American Business Chamber and Network, founded by local businessman Bill McLaughlin, will receive a special award. For tickets, contact Sean McMenamin at 215-850-0518 or Maureen Brett Saxon at 610-909-0054.
