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Tea party essentials!

It was a tea party. If you didn’t know it by the pretty pots and cups and the table groaning with sweets, you could tell by the hats.

Especially Sylvia Tolan’s hat, a floppy, sparkly J. Lo hat from Kohls, decorated with. . .a hot pink bra. “I made it myself this morning,” said the Havertown woman with a grin. “I needed something girly.”

Clearly, this was no ordinary tea party. And, in fact, it wasn’t. It was a fundraiser for Carmel’s Crew, a group of women, friends of Carmel Bradley of Havertown, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. The group of 20 women each must raise $2,300 to participate in the 3-Day Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in October.

Aisling Travers, a 19-year-old education student at West Chester State University, who has been part of the group since it began, planned the tea party—right down to delicate china cups and the “Keep Calm and Fight On” posters. It was held on Sunday, August 19, at the Malvern home of her parents, Seamus and Marie Travers.

Why a tea party? Travers is blunt: “I hate asking people for money. Plus, fundraisers are usually beef-and-beers and bar-oriented, and being the youngest on the team, I thought it would be cute for the kids to be involved. I wanted it to be a Mom-and-Me event, and there’s nothing more girly than a tea party.”

She signed on for the 3-Day because “it was on my bucket list and I’ve known Carmel and most of the girls since I was little,” says Travers. It was all she hoped for and more. “It was awesome,” she says. “I was nervous the first time, first because we’re walking 60 miles and I was hoping I’d survive, but also because I didn’t know everyone that well. But by the end of the three days, we all became unbelievably close.”

All of Carmel’s Crew are friends of Bradley, a 47-year-old mother of three and Donegal native. In May 2009, after a routine mammogram, she learned she had an aggressive form of breast cancer.

“I know all the controversy about mammograms,” says Bradley, referring to a 2009 recommendation from a government task force that women in their 40s not get screened. “But a mammogram found my cancer. It wasn’t even a lump. It was a thickening of the skin. All I keep thinking is that if I didn’t get a mammogram, if I’d waited three years, I wouldn’t be here.”

Bradley went through both chemotherapy and radiation after a lumpectomy. While she was in treatment, she and the two of her seven sisters who live in the US began talking about the Komen 3-Day. “We talked each other into it,” laughs Bradley, who is completing her degree in special education at West Chester State University.

Initially, she and her sisters—Una McDaid and Fionnuala McBrearty—thought they’d do it themselves. “Then a few friends said they’d liked to and it just grew—to 20,” Bradley says.

The experience was fun, exhausting, but also healing. “I had just finished up treatment three or four months before, but I got so much energy from the group,” she says. “We would just stick together and carry each other along.”

She’s not normally very emotional, Bradley admits, but it got to her. “The survivors wear different colored t-shirts and when I saw the number that were there, I got emotional.”

In fact, everyone in Carmel’s Crew had a weepy day, says her sister, Fionnuala. “In Manayunk we were trudging along and the sister of one of our walkers came out with a sign for us and gave us candy. When we went through Havertown, our kids were lining Darby Road, and they had Irish dancers there, and they were clapping. It really lifts you so much. On the final day, there’s a ceremony for the survivors and we all took our shoes off and raised them to honor Carmel.”

Bradley says that’s the reason she can’t do the walk without dark glasses. “I’m laughing and crying the whole way!”

What also kept her going, she says, was her husband, Louie, who is president of the Philadelphia Gaelic Athletic Association, and their children, Fiona, 17, and twins Shane and Conor, 15. “I don’t know what I would have done without their support and help,” she says. “I knew I needed to keep going because of them.”

Friends and parents at the children’s schools helped out. “We had more dinners than we could eat,” Bradley recalls, laughing. “I was just overwhelmed by the goodness of everybody. When I came from Ireland [25 years ago] I didn’t have any family and friends here at the time. These people have become our family.”

See our photos from the Carmel’s Crew tea party.

By Kathy McGee Burns

The Dropkick Murphys are an Irish American punk rock band formed in Quincy, Massachusetts in1996. Their front man, bassist/vocalist Ken Casey has been with them from the beginning.

Have you ever heard their music? Well, let me describe it: feisty, loud, yelling, screaming, rough, in your face and boisterous. Are you getting the message? On the other hand, Ken Casey is boyish, kind, sentimental, sincere, and generous to a fault–generous with his time, talent and money! This is quite a dichotomy.

Ken was born in Milton, MA, the town with the most people of Irish descent in America. His mom, Eileen Kelly and dad, Ken Casey, only had the one child but Ken felt adopted by every family in town. Ken Casey, Sr. died when Ken was very young but his hero, his Grandda, John Kelly took him under his wing and helped him to form the principles Ken lives by every day.

John Kelly was a Teamster who taught his grandson the plight of the Irish working class, the experiences of Irish immigration in Boston and what it is like to be the low man on the totem pole. He emphasized that you need to stand up for yourself and give back what treasures you get. John Kelly told his grandson, “Gratitude is an action.”

At first, Ken says, he was doing a million things for many charities. Then friends began suggesting that he start his own. They said, “Your fans will get involved and feel a part of it,” he told me when we talked recently.

Now, Ken Casey is doing just that. He has formed The Claddagh Fund which is a charity foundation based on the attributes linked to the Claddagh: “Friendship, Love and Loyalty.” It was started in Boston with the help of the great hockey star, Bobby Orr. The band was able to incorporate a lot of fundraising activities with their events and to date, the Dropkick Murphy’s have raised about $1 million.

I was introduced to Ken’s music when I joined the Claddagh Fund’s board of directors and I have to admit I’m still adjusting to it. It is quite different from local Irish music legend Vince Gallagher singing “Emigrant Eyes.” The Irish music that the Dropkick Murphys do is familiar—“Finnegan’s Wake,” “Black Velvet Band,” “Wild Rover”– but “reformulated and modernized for the younger ear,” Ken told me.

He told me that Pete St. John, who wrote the Irish favorite, “Fields of Athenry,” came to see the Dropkick Murphys perform the song and loved it.

Many of the songs they choose mirror the social conscience of the band. The song “Broken Hymns” reflects a young man’s perspective of the Civil War:

“Now the battle hymns are playing
Report of shots not far away
No prayer, no promise, no hand of God
Could save the souls of the blue and grey
Tell their wives that they fought bravely
As they lay them in their graves”

Then there is the song called “The Hardest Mile,” about Duffy’s Cut, the site in Malvern where in 1832, 57 Irish railroad workers were killed—some by cholera, others at the hands of area vigilantes who were afraid they were going to spread the disease.

“Now ghosts dance a jig on an unmarked grave
A slug full of lead was the price they were paid
Vigilante justice, prejudice and pride
No one in this valley will be seen again alive.”

The best, to me, though, is their song “Boys on the Docks”, which is a tribute to the memory of John Kelly:

“And the boys on the docks needed John for sure
When they came to this country he opened the door
He said “Man. I’ll tell ya, they don’t like our kind
Though it starts with a fist it might end with your mind.”

Ken Casey tells a charming story about Bruce Springsteen. He first met “the Boss” when Springstein showed up to a Dropkick Murphy’s gig in New York City, with his son. Ken was still on the bus when he got an urgent call, “Someone wants to see you. “ He rushed to his dressing room and there HE was. Well, here’s the tearjerker, on St Patrick’s Day 2011, to a sold out crowd, in Fenwick Park, they both sang “Peg of My Heart, to Ken’s Grandmother, Peg Kelly. You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2R2cG2Ah4Y

The Claddagh Fund now has a Chapter here. Ken says that Philadelphia reminds him of Boston with its tight-knit communities and a network of friends.

They’re counting on we generous Philadelphia Irish to help make the Claddagh Fund a success here. And by success, I mean raising money for the five underfunded charities it’s supporting in the city, including:

Build Jake’s Place, whose mission is to build playgrounds for children of all abilities;

StandUp for Kids, which helps homeless and runaway kids on the streets;

Peter’s Place, an organization that helps grieving children and families;

Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service and Education Center, which helps veterans with employment, training and related educational services and offers assistance to veterans who are having tough times;

Limen House, which provides a temporary home for recovering substance abusers.

The latest fundraiser will be the First Annual Celebrity Golf Tournament to he held on Monday, September 17, at Woodcrest Country Club, 300 Evesham Road in Cherry Hill, NJ. There are plenty of sponsorships available, ranging from $250 to $10,000 and a foursome costs $1,250. For more information, contact Claddagh Fund Philadelphia Director Kate McCloud and 267-644-8095, or email her at kathleenmccloud@claddaghfund.org.

It should be a great day for golf and celebrity watching. Here’s what I’m hoping: That Bruce Springsteen shows up with his clubs and he and Ken serenade Kate and I with “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”