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Maureen Smyth calls a number.

“I’ve never done this before so googled how to call Bingo,” said Maureen Smyth, as she took her place behind the small Bingo ball cage filled with multi-colored numbered balls at Maggie O’Neill’s Pub in Drexel Hill on Thursday night. “It said that the caller isn’t the most important thing in the game, that you shouldn’t speak in monotone and you shouldn’t make jokes or you can’t do the job. So let know how I’m doing.

“Oh,” she added, breaking one of the rules immediately, “if you or someone you know has a gambling problem, bring them to the next Irish Network-Philly Bingo night.”

And so it went all night. B 15, O 68, N 44, I “tirty-tree.”

“Oh, they told me not to use that one. Okay, I’m one and done,” laughed the tall, blond outgoing Smyth, owner of Havertown Auto Tags,cosponsor, with McCollum Insurance, of the first annual event.

But she wasn’t done. When one woman, sitting at the long tables in Maggie’s upstairs bar, groaned when her one remaining number wasn’t called, Smyth asked her “What number do you need?” The woman answered, and Smyth, without breaking stride, pulled another ball out of the cage and retorted, “Today’s not your day.”

Bingo was an out of the box choice for a fundraiser for Irish Network-Philadelphia, part of a nationwide networking group for people of Irish descent—usually professionals—to meet periodically to develop relationships, the kind that often translate into business success. They usually do it with monthly happy hours, where most of the minglers are still in their business suits. There were no business suits in evidence Thursday night.

“We were looking for something different to do,” said IN-Philly’s chair Bethanne Killian. “[Board member] Karen Boyce McCollum and I were talking about doing Quizzo, but then the Irish Center did a Quizzo fundraiser. So one of the other of us said, ‘The Irish love their Bingo.’” She looked around the room, where every table, booth, and bar stool was filled with people armed with Bingo daubers and two or three Bingo cards. She grinned. “The Irish love their Bingo.”

Yes we do. If you grew up with a weekly Bingo game at the parish hall, the good news is that Bingo is back, and it may still be in the parish hall. But this time, local Irish dance schools, sports clubs, charities, that scramble for operating money every year have taken it over and given it a twist.

The prize table may hold expensive handbags, bottles of booze and gift cards—and it’s going to be lucrative for both the winners and the sponsoring organizations. The grand prize at the IN-Philly Bingo event was a donated lavender beach bike (won at the end of the evening by Noreen Conley, wife of IN-Philly treasurer Chris Conley).

The Cummins School of Irish Dance and the Tara Gael Dancers, an adult Irish dance group, have both held successful “Designer Bag Bingo” events at parish halls. It’s become more popular in bars too. In fact, the Bingo set up that Maureen Smyth used was borrowed from Cawley’s Pub in Upper Darby. “They usually have their Bingo on Thursday nights too but fortunately they just stopped doing it for the spring,” said Karen Boyce McCollum.

The Bingo craze is infectious. On Thursday May 7, the Young Irelands Gaelic Football Club will be holding a fundraising “Bingo Blitz” at the Highland Park Fire Company at Park and Cedar Lanes in Upper Darby.

“We usually like to have a couple of fundraisers a year and Jessica Stevenson, a wife of one of the players came up with this fantastic idea,” says Trish Daly, a spokesperson for the Young Irelands. “I’ve been to many Bingo events in the last few months and they were all extremely popular and successful. I think people just love a night out with friends and the chance to win great prizes. And people just love playing Bingo!”

And, she adds, in usual Young Irelands’ style—this is the club that brought you male and female amateur boxers for a “Fight Night” fundraisers—“we’re doing it a little different and making it co-ed. This allows us to reach a lot more people and the prizes are much more interesting. But don’t worry, ladies. We still have handbags!”

See pictures from Thursday’s fun below.

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Cullen and a Caribbean leprechaun

On St. Patrick’ Day, Cullen Kirkpatrick leads one of the smallest, shortest and most unlikely St. Patrick’s Day parades anywhere. It’s on a sun-drenched beach in Cabarete, in the Dominican Republic.

It’s a time of year when St. Patrick’s Day parades in the Philadelphia area might make their way past the reviewing stand in cold, windy weather—and from time to time in freezing rain or wet snow—climate conditions so horrendous that a band can march and play for blocks without seeing a soul along the parade route. As pipe major of Irish Thunder Pipes and Drums in Swedesburg, Montgomery County, Kirkpatrick knows all about that. He’s been pipe major since 2002, and he marched in the band for years before that.

So he’s thankful in the extreme for the opportunity to perform in a big tent at Jose O’Shay’s, a pub at seaside owned by Frank Brittingham—former owner of Brittingham’s in Lafayette Hill. He’s been playing pipes in the Caribbean over the St. Patrick’s Day holidays for eight years.

“Being in a pipe band, there’s a lot going on around home. As pipe major, it’s hard to say I’m going to miss two or three parades, but I’m going to do this for as long as I can,” Kirkpatrick says. “It’s really enjoyable, and a really nice break from the winter—especially the last two that we’ve had.”

Kirkpatrick plays throughout St. Patrick’s Day, alternating with longtime Philly favorite and the local duo Two Quid (John McGillian and Dave Cohen). “Maybe the night before, we play for a set or so as people as people walk by on the beach,” he says.

Cabarete is not exactly a five-star resort, but it’s great fun.

“There’s not a lot of Irish down there, but people come out in the hundreds,” Kirkpatrick says. “Thre are a lot of Canadians and French Canadians. Americans are in the minority down there.”

For Kirkpatrick, the highlight is the St. Patrick’s Day parade along the beach. “Frank passes out a lot of plastic Paddy apparel. Everybody in the tent goes marching up the beach. He gets a local Dominican band. Sometimes he brings in these young girls who dance, and they usually have some batons and some crazy outfits going on. I’ll lead it. We’ll walk up the beach a couple hundred yards, and then we’ll turn around.”

Not exactly Conshohocken.

Kirkpatrick gives a lot of credit to Frank Brittingham for that eclectic spectacle on the beach, and, indeed, for the whole day of merry-making. Brittingham, he says, has always been a pioneer, dating back to his ownership of Brittingham’s. His great love of Irish music was well known—Irish music was a constant presence in his sprawling pub on Germantown Pike.

“When he picks up at the airport, he’s listening to Irish music in the car,” Kirkpatrick laughs. “He’s got a bigger selection of Irish music than anywhere in the United States.”

While he’s there, Kirkpatrick carries on the tradition, playing a wide selection of pipe tunes, from marches to reels and jigs and strathspeys.

The pipes—they can be cranky beasts, susceptible to changes in weather—apparently take to the Caribbean climes as well as Kirkpatrick does.

What pipes are not crazy about are sudden changes in climate, which Kirkpatrick has to deal with as soon as he got back, leading the Allentown St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“My pipes were so used to the nice, warm, humid weather, they went into shock,” he recalls. “In Allentown, it was in the high 30s, and windy. I had to do a little bit of maintenance before I could play in Allentown.”

See last week’s interview with John McGillian.

Look for Cullen in this video at about 1:08.

A Marine and his skateboarding bulldog.

Bad weather knocked them down but not out. The Conshohocken St. Patrick’s Day Parade marched down Fayette Street on Saturday, a little late, but not less fun for the hundreds who lined the street bundled against the cold. (March refused to go out like a lamb this year.)

For Grand Marshal Micky McBride, a fine son of Donegal, this was his second parade. After the Conshochocken parade was postponed because of heavy rain, Philadelphia’s Grand Marshal Kathy McGee Burns, who also traces her roots to Donegal, invited McBride to march with her on March 15. And he did.

Photographer Gwyneth MacArthur was at the parade and captured the flavor–and, as you’ll see, a little of the cold–in her photos below.

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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.

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Karen Boyce McCollum and her uncle Kevin McGillian performing at The Plough and Stars.

We had breakfast at the Plough and the Stars, watched Irish dancers and a flag-raising ceremony at the Irish Memorial, went to the supermarket for potatoes–George’s Shop ‘N Bag in Dresher, because we heard they had live Irish music in the bakery and they did–and had lunch with the  200 seniors who filled the ballroom at the Irish Center for ham and cabbage, shepherd’s pie, and a couple of different kinds of spuds and dessert, a joint production of the Irish Center, the Irish Immigration Center, and 11 stalwart volunteers.

Then, we took naps. It’s a grueling couple of weeks covering everything going on in Philly’s vibrant Irish community, but undeniable craic–Irish for fun.

We took our cameras with us, so you can see where we were on Tuesday.

What did you do?

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Philly Parade Grand Marshal Kathy McGee Burns.

There were more than 200 groups marching, about half a dozen Pope Francis imitators (and one Elvis), and in some places the crowds were five- and six-people deep, despite the bitter cold temps and wind that swept up the Parkway like an icy punch. That’s the definition of success for the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade which went off without a hitch on Sunday.

Many of the Saturday parades were called or postponed, so along with Philly Grand Marshal Kathy McGee Burns, who was president of the parade association for two years, there were two other grand marshals in the parade–Mickey McBride from the Conshohocken parade (postponed till March 28), who marched with McGee Burns at her invitation, and William McCusker, GM of the cancelled Springfield Township, Delco, parade, who marched with Cardinal O’Hara High School, where he served as president for 13 years. Parade Director Michael Bradley contacted all the organizers of the parades that were weather casualties and invited them to join in Philly’s celebration.

At one point he delighted the crowds at the reviewing stand by donning a curly Irish dancer wig for a time as he coordinated between the parade participants and the CW-Philly and CBS3 crew filming the event. He later explained that he did it to cheer up McDade-Cara dance school owners Sheila McGrory Sweeney and Maureen Heather Lisowski, whose father, John McGrory, died recently.

We were there from beginning to end with four photographers. Click on the links below to view our photos.

Parade Photo Essay 1. 

Parade Photo Essay 2.

Parade Photo Essay 3.

Parade Photo Essay 4.

Michael and Linda Bradley

At its 244th annual St. Patrick’s Day Gala at the Union League in Philadelphia, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick President Bernard Buckley gave the president’s award to Michael Bradley in honor of his years of service to the Irish community.

For the past 13 years, Bradley, a former president of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade Association, has been director of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade which marches down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway the Sunday before the holiday rain or shine. Or as Bradley always puts it, “dry or liquid sunshine.”

In the past two years, along with serving on the boards at Cardinal O’Hara High School, which his two sons, Colin and Mickey attended, and Penn State where he earned a degree in business and marketing, he has been chairman of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Advisory Council for Elementary Education in Delaware County. The council is working on a strategic plan to keep the 23 archdiocesan grade schools still open in the county alive and well.

Bradley, accompanied to the gala by his wife, Linda, appeared surprised when Buckley called his name and was visibly emotional as he accepted the award.

Photos from the event are below.

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