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Monsignor Joseph McLoone Takes on a Difficult Task

Monsignor Joseph McLoone

Monsignor Joseph McLoone

The circumstances under which Monsignor Joseph McLoone assumes temporary stewardship of St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown are difficult, to say the least. But

McLoone—one of the best known and respected members of the Philadelphia’s extended Irish family—believes he is up to the task.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia this week appointed McLoone parochial administrator pro-tem of St. Joseph’s, following the release of a grand jury report alleging that the parish’s pastor, Monsignor William Lynn, 60, hid sexual abuse by other priests. The archdiocese placed Lynn on leave.

McLoone remains pastor of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Chester, even though he will be spending most of his time ministering to the laity of St. Joseph’s. He is a 2010 inductee into the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame, and he has served as chaplain to that organization for a decade. He also is chaplain of the Donegal Association. McLoone is a 1984 graduate of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.

An Olney boy, McLoone has spent most of his adult life ministering in city parishes. The ethnically diverse St. Katherine’s is a good example of that 13-year trend. “This will be the first time in my life that I will have ‘sub’ in front of ‘urban’,” he said in an interview Thursday. “It’s going to be a challenge for me. I like living in a city.”

St. Joseph’s is more culturally more homogeneous—and it is quite large, with 4,200 families. It is one of the top 10 parishes in the archdiocese, said McLoone.

Although McLoone recognizes that the parish is very different from what he’s used to, he welcomes the opportunity to minister to the people of St. Joseph’s. He has no special plans for dealing with the parish’s troubles. “I hope to just be there,” he said. “That’s the first step. They just need someone to be there with them. Sometimes you don’t need to do much more than that. You just walk with them. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

He isn’t sure why he was chosen to take on this new task, but he suspects it is partly because St. Katharine’s is so stable. “And maybe it’s my personality,” he added. “I’m a happy, upbeat person, and I can keep the parish going forward.”

Without commenting directly on the situation at St. Joseph’s, McLoone said he finds the allegations of pedophilia by brother priests to be profoundly troubling. “It’s disheartening. It’s saddening,” he said. “”It’s evil, an abomination. But at the same time, I know Christ has called me to be a priest. Life has to go on.”

As of Thursday, McLoone has moved into a guest room in St. Joseph’s rectory. His temporary successor Rev. Stephen Thorne moved into a guest room at St. Katharine’s the same day. Even though he has his hands full in his new assignment, St. Katharine’s remains a vital part of his life. “I won’t be able to come back for everything,” he said, “but I’m still pastor here. I have my own bed here. There’s nothing like your own bed.”

February 25, 2011 by
History, People

Ghostly Doings at Philly’s Oldest Irish Pub

McGillin's owner Chris Mullins, Sr, left, and son Chris, McGillin's manager, don't let a little haunting faze them.

By SE Burns

Philly’s McGillin’s Olde Ale House on Drury St. in Center City was recently named “one of the coolest bars” in the U.S by Gourmet Magazine. But if you feel an actual chill there, it might be old Ma McGillin. She’s not “appearing nightly,” but her ghostly presence has been felt—and now captured in a photo—taken by paranormal investigators.

Like anyone else, Ma continues to be welcome at the 150-year-old pub. Manager Chris Mullins and I sat down not long ago to talk about the paranormal activity that has haunted, so to speak, McGillin’s over the years.

The  particular ghost in question is presumed to be  that of “Ma” McGillin. She owned the restaurant with her husband William McGillin, starting in 1860. On August 31, 1901 “Pa” McGillin died and “Ma” McGillin took over running the restaurant until her death in 1937 at the age of 90. Here’s what Chris has to say about McGillin’s spectral hostess:

Q. Do you like the idea of your restaurant being haunted?

A. The concept is both scary and intriguing!  We realize that we are just the current hosts of McGillin’s, there were great characters before us and it is great to know that they are keeping us company. Hopefully we make them proud.  I am not sure we are as wild as they were generations ago, but we try!  At the same time we are proud to be in their midst.

Q. Can you give us some examples of some paranormal activity that goes on in the restaurant?

A. Back in the 70’s and 80’s our longtime manager Anita would insist that Ma McGillin would follow her through the first floor, she said she saw Ma on several occasions.  The irony of this is that when the South Jersey Paranormal group did their overnight analysis of our building, they shot a photo of a “Lady in White” in a reflection of our mirror over the fireplace, pointing to the front door.  This image seemed to be Ma!

Q. Are you afraid to be in the restaurant alone?

A. It can be a little scary when we are alone in certain areas of the building. Our late night cooks feel a bit creepy when they sense a ghost, or see a shadow. When a full pot unexpectedly falls off a counter it gets your goat!

Q.  Why do you believe that this ghost is actually “Ma” McGillin?

A.   Ma spent the longest time on this property of any past owner – she raised her children on the second and third floor, her husband, the famous William McGillin, died in the basement; after his death in 1901 she  ran the tavern until her death in 1933. Who else would it be?  McGillin’s storied past surrounds Ma so much that it seems obvious that even in death she would reside here.

Could that be Ma in the looking glass? See insert for a close-up.

Q. Was “Ma” McGillin well-liked in Philadelphia?

A.  Ma was beyond well-liked here in Philadelphia – she was beloved!  She ran a very clean, very respectable tavern, and was one of the few female proprietors of her time.  For most of her ownership, women were not even allowed in the major part of the bar, so to have her own the place is pretty extraordinary.  Hundreds descended on Drury Street on the night of January 17, 1920 to watch Ma symbolically lock the front doors of McGillin’s and mourn the end of legal consumption of alcohol.  Each November 12, thousands came to McGillin’s to receive a white carnation from Ma herself, on her 89th birthday, her last, 4000 carnations were distributed!  When Ma died, she was the oldest living parishioner of St. John’s the Evangelist, and was one of the first women to have Broad Street closed for her funeral procession.

Q. What was “Ma” McGillin’s favorite dish to eat in her restaurant?

A.  Quite honestly during most of her time at McGillin’s there were few options, mainly a roasted potato from the hearth, beer was the liquid food of choice.  During Prohibition however, Ma hired the Executive Chef from the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, then the finest hotel in the Philadelphia, to create the first real menu.   Even then the menu was fairly simple: Broiled steaks, lamb chops, ham and egg platters, and oysters, along with surprisingly similar sandwich options that we offer today.

[Chris told me that his great uncle was found dead in the alley behind the pub.]

Q. Is anyone ever nervous about going to the back alley where your great uncle was found dead?

A. No, in fact this is the way most of our “in the know” guests enter and leave daily.  My great uncle left on a very high note, I am not sure he had any regrets!

Q. Has anything unusual happened in the alley since the death of your great uncle?

A. No not so much, though on an anniversary of his death, when my grandfather and a few staff were enjoying a few cocktails after a long night of work, they were sharing stories of their deceased relative and friend, Steve, my grandfather made a crude comment about his ghost telling him to just leave the bar and its patrons alone. Then he threw a wet rag at the window above where my great uncle had passed the last year, and the entire window fell right out of the pane – from what I understand, the entire group fell as white as a ghost, so to speak!

Q. Do you feel your great uncle’s death, or the window breaking, had anything to do with the ghost of “Ma” McGillin?

A. I think that each of these characters miss the fun and are slightly jealous of the living enjoying all that they worked so hard for.  I think it is all in good fun, and they find there is something irresistible and need to come back!  Let’s hope our living customers feel the same way!

SE Burns writes frequently for www.irishphiladelphia.com about the Celtic paranormal.

February 25, 2011 by
Columns, People, Travel

Return of the Wild Geese

Tom Finnigan: Son of Irish immigrants who moved to England, he's emigrated to Ireland.

Editor’s Note: Tom Finnigan is the son of Irish immigrants who moved to England, where he was born. This is the first of a series of essays he wrote about being an immigrant of a different sort: an Englishman of Irish descent who emigrated to Ireland–to the country’s northern most point, Malin, County Donegal.

We came to Malin and built a house in Goorey, on rocks above Trawbreaga Bay. My neighbor Connel Byrne calls it Ard na Si and tells us that Niall – king of all the fairies of Inishowen – holds court here. Barney Doherty used to come for gooseberries. Enid Stewart remembers it as a place full of hazel bushes, where fishermen came for wands to make lobster pots. She came for nuts when she was a child.

‘You’re nuts!’ shouted my father in Manchester when we announced our plans.

He remembers the poverty of Mayo in 1930; how De Valera suggested that he dance at the crossroads; how Doctor Walshe demanded a pound note before he would mount a trap in Ballyhaunis and visit my sick grandmother. Donegal, insisted my father, is full of rain and wind. The women wear shawls and fishermen drown.

“If ye go back and show an English number plate, some eejit from Derry will shoot ye.”

He couldn’t conceive of anyone choosing to live here.

And there’s the point. We have chosen. My father’s generation did not have choice. The Inishowen of holiday homes and art studios is inconceivable to the mind of my mother-in-law, the eldest of 13 children from Ballygorman in Malin Head. She has lived in Manchester for 70 years. When she comes to visit us, she doesn’t watch light stream through cloud. She has nothing to say about how mist hovers. She marvels at lights on the Isle of Doagh, the spread of houses in Carndonagh. Her memory is of blackness at night, the lighthouse at Inistrahull flashing, oil lamps smelling of kerosene. Her talk is of neighbours and where they went–to the tunnels in Glasgow, the towers of Boston.

And we?

We observe the light. We read John McGahern or something by Seamus Heaney. We identify birds–herons rigid on the shore, wood pigeons flapping, oystercatchers piping. We wonder if we shall cook scallops from Malin Head or some pasta from Sainsbury’s. We listen to Lyric FM or watch a DVD, put a bottle of Frascati in the fridge and rustle the business pages of the Irish Times. We are anxious about our SSIs. We lobby for broadband and sing in church. We e-mail Holland and Singapore, sell in Ballsbridge and Cork. We book a flight to Stanstead, then walk on Five Fingers strand, amazed at the light.

The children of the Wild Geese are back. We have sold our English property and returned to claim our heritage. We talk of Colmcille, visit Gartan and Derry, discuss the peace process. In Malin, once the demesne of the Harveys, Gaels with broad English vowels oust Planters with rich Irish consanants. Our Jeeps climb Knockamany and frighten the goats. We learn Irish, join writing groups, take up water colours.

On Five Fingers strand, wind lashes the Atlantic. Gulls scream. I raise my binoculars and scan the Bar Mouth. A sail billows, then another. Oars flash. Steel glints.

The Vikings are back.

Editor’s note: Who are the Wild Geese? Read more about them here.

February 24, 2011 by
News, People

All That Glitters

The Newbridge Ladies: Kathleen Reagan, Fidelma McGroary, and Linda Maguire.

Since the 1930s, many Irish newlyweds were choosing their silver pattern from a small company in Newbridge, County Kildare, that grew out of an economic vacuum after the British Army abandoned its garrison there in 1921, leaving Newbridge in financial crisis.

It didn’t take long for Newbridge Silverware to take over the cutlery market from the English companies, such as Sheffield, to become the iconic Irish wedding gift. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that Newbridge made a move that gave the company, feeling the pinch of cheaper foreign imports, a whole new life. It started when one of the company’s craftsman started playing around with the scraps of silver left on the factory floor, making pendants and bracelets out of the valuable detritus of soup spoons and butter knives. Owner William Doyle knew a good idea when he saw one, and the Newbridge Jewelry line took off.

Until this year, though, if you wanted a piece of Newbridge, you’d have to get it on your trip to Ireland or in one of the rare shops in the US that carried it. Today, thanks to an Erdenheim woman, Linda Maguire, you can get a Tara pendant, Rose earrings or a sterling silver baby frame right in your own livingroom.

Maguire recently founded Curragh LLC, the only company in the US licensed to sell Newbridge, and she’s taking a page from hugely successful companies like Silpada, Pampered Chef, and Avon and going the home show route.

A jewelry designer herself, Maguire had a special place in her heart for Newbridge. Her husband, Paul, a native of Newbridge, often bought a piece for her when he was home for a visit. “I absolutely love Newbridge and always have,” Maguire said as she took a moment from toting up a jewelry order at a recent Newbridge party hosted by the Philadelphia Rose of Tralee Centre to talk about her brand new venture. “It’s a simple, classic design, and even though it’s very modern for the most part, it does harken back to traditional Irish images.”

Many pieces are the modern equivalent of Celtic knots, spirals, and the interlacing Book of Kells calligraphy patterns that are so recognizably Irish. Even more modern is the giftware, also sold a home shows, from executive desk clocks to baby gifts to wine holders. But there are also replicas of vintage items—Grace Kelly’s string of pearls and pendants based on William Doyle’s Paris flea market finds—as well as the chunky bead bracelets that have become so popular in the US. And they’re all relatively modestly priced.

If Paul Maguire hadn’t been buying his wife a piece of Newbridge the last time he was in Ireland, there might not be a Curragh LLC. “Paul and William Doyle went to school together,” explains Maguire. “He hadn’t see the Doyles in 30 years and be was buying me a bracelet when he ran into Oonagh Doyle (William’s sister).”

The idea that eventually became a serious move to market Newbridge in the US came with the innocent question Paul Maguire asked. “Why don’t you think about coming into the US market?”

And the home show seemed like the perfect fit. “I’d done them before with my own jewelry,” says Linda Maguire. “Home shows and fundraisers are a big area. I remember doing one to benefit Heifer International. It was very successful.”

When Linda Maguire set up her company, she called her sales people “Irish ambassadors” and the two in the Philadelphia area really are Irish—Kathleen Regan and Fidelma McGrory, both immigrants. She also created an incentive program for the home hostesses who can earn up to a 50 percent discount on any Newbridge silver product—with lots of smaller discounts, depending on how much is sold at the show.

“It’s a really attractive program and women seem to really like it,” says Maguire. Around her, the din of chatter had died down as the party-goers got down to the serious business of actually deciding what to buy, their heads bowed over their catalogs and order forms. “I think it’s going to be very successful.”

To find out more about Newbridge in the US, you can contact Linda Maguire through her website.

Check out our photos of the Newbridge party that was a fundraiser for the Philadephia Rose of Tralee Centre. (Newbridge is a longtime sponsor of the Rose of Tralee Festival and Pageant in Ireland.)

February 18, 2011 by
Music, People

Halfway to Spring: The Midwinter Festival Arrives!

Festival organizer Bill Reid gets a bagpipe lesson from Rathkeltair's Neil Anderson.

When I caught up with Bill Reid on his cellphone early Monday morning, he admitted he was “in panic mode.”

By next Friday, the first of thousands of people would be coming to the Valley Forge Convention Center for the opening concert of the Mid-Winter Scottish-Irish Festival Reid and his wife, Karen, have been organizing for 19 years. This year, he bagged his mailing list because he thought it was too old and used the list compiled by the organizers of Irish weekend in Wildwood. Some of his regulars didn’t get their usual postcards and they were calling. “Aren’t you having the festival this year?”

Yes he is. And it’s bigger than ever. And I have to say, for a guy in panic mode, Reid is really funny. I may call him every Monday morning to get the week off to laughing start.

The best part of this year’s festival: “There’s nothing downstairs,” says Reid, who is of Scottish ancestry. That means no pet lovers, computer geeks or swingers competing for parking spaces in the convention center lot or stools at the local bar. There’s only one convention in the building and it’s Celtic.

That sent Reid off on a trip down memory lane. The Pet Expo was a mess, he says. Really. And you know what he means. But the swingers’ group provided an even more embarrassing moment for Reid.

“I came in to the pre-convention meeting and was sitting with everybody and I innocently asked, ‘Where’s the swing group’s band?’ They all looked at me and someone finally said, ‘Billllll.’ Not those kind of swingers. On the bright side, at night after the festival is over we usually go over to the bar and there was plenty of room. They were off doing what they do.”

Then there was the gay and lesbian group who held a pajama party one night on the floor of the convention center. “If anybody else had walked around the corridors the way they were dressed—or not dressed. . . .” He laughs.

He’s had to handle plenty at his own festival too. “One year we had the Daughters of the British Empire take a table and we put them next to an AOH group. The first thing the ladies did was put up a picture of the Queen and a Union Jack. The AOH guys came to me and said, ‘Hey Bill, we thought there was no politics here.’ So I went over to the ladies and said, ‘do you know where you are?’ They were nice about it. They said, ‘Maybe we can take the flag down.’ What I about the Queen? I asked. The guys said, “Oh no, she can stay.’ By the end of the weekend the ladies were feeding them biscuits and the guys were helping them take down their display.”

At this point I’m thinking that maybe they should have tapped this Scotsman who traces his roots back to Paisley, near Glasgow, Scotland, to hammer out a peace accord in Northern Ireland. He accomplished in three days at Valley Forge what it took decades there. He even handles the division of labor among the vendors. “I like to be on the floor at 6:30 AM to make sure that the husbands who are there to help their wives set up help their neighbor instead. The woman there won’t yell at the guy and he won’t yell at her. It’s all peaceful then.”

That may be the only time during the three-day festival that’s it’s peaceful. Reid keeps the music cranking all day and all night long, with headliners such as the Kansas City-based group, The Elders, who describe themselves as “arse kicking Celtic Music from the heartland;” The Young Dubliners, who hail from L.A.; Seven Nations, a Florida-based Celtic/punk/metal band with longevity (around since 1993, the year the Reids launched their festival); and Albannach, whose warlike tribal music (heavy on the drums) every year draws the kilted goth crowd wearing the traditional t-shirt that reads “Outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes.”

Albannach almost got Reid into trouble with his 90-year-old mom. “She’s learned to do the Internet, email and all this. One day she went online and put in our company name, East of the Hebrides. The next thing you know my sister gets a call. ‘What is your brother doing with those tattooed men?’”

One festival regular, Brother, an exciting band with an unusual sound, is especially near and dear to Reid’s heart. Formed by a group of Australian brothers, it combines tribal drums, bagpipes and didgeridoo, a wind instrument invented more than 1,000 years ago by aboriginal people in Northern Australia. Brother’s didgeridoo player is not Australian however. He’s a local native known widely “DidgeriDrew”—and he’s the Reids’ son, Drew.

“He’s the only American,” says Reid proudly. “We were once on a plane with Solas and they wanted to know, ‘how come you never hire us?’ I said, ‘Because you’re too expensive.’ We were on our way to Denver to an Irish festival to see our son and we told them he plays with a band called Brother. Winnie, their fiddler, looks at us with surprise. ‘Your son is DidgeriDrew!’ We ran into Joanie Madden of Cherish the Ladies and she said the same thing. Turns out Drew had backed up Cherish the Ladies. That’s when I realized that I was no longer important.” He laughs.

Also on the bill this year are rockers Rathkeltair of Florida and Hadrian’s Wall from Ontario; the McLeod Fiddlers (an amazing group of young musicians from Canada); the Paul McKenna Band from Scotland; Scottish folkies, the Tannahill Weavers and Annalivia, a fiddle band drawing on musical traditions from Appalachia, Cape Breton, Scotland, Ireland and England; and local talent Seamus Kennedy, Charlie Zahm, Jamison Celtic Rock, and the Hooligans.  There are also plenty of workshops , including dance classes with Rosemarie Timoney on the Irish side and Linette Fitch Brash on the Scottish end; fencing lessons; Irish lessons; a didgeridoo-making class, and a session with Hadrian’s Wall (bring your own instrument). There’s even a workshop called “What the heck is a bagpipe?” for those inquiring minds who’ve always wanted to know and, as always, Scottish and Irish whiskey tastings. And, of course, vendors—about 40 of them, hawking everything from fine Celtic jewelry to rude t-shirts.

You’ll also see Bill Reid running around, putting out fires and occasionally starting some. He’s sharing emcee duties next weekend with Dennis Carr of the Brigadoons of Canada.

And he assures us that most of the “snowbergs” are gone from the parking lot so there are plenty of spaces. Planning a festival whose first name is “midwinter” can be fraught with anxiety. “I got an email today from someone who asked me if I was worried about the weather,” says Reid. “I said, ‘Did you have to bring up that word?’”

The 19th Annual Mid-Winter Scottish-Irish Festival kicks off on Friday, February 18, with an evening concert with Albannach, the Young Dubliners, the Hooligans and Jamison, and runs through Sunday at the Valley Forge Convention Center at Gulph Road and First Avenue in King of Prussia, just off the Valley Forge exit of the Pennsylvania turnpike. Check out our calendar for details or go to the East of the Hebrides website.

Check out some of the action from past festivals.

February 11, 2011 by
People

A Compelling Story, a Great Honor

Liz and Pearse Kerr

Liz and Pearse Kerr

As a Catholic and a nationalist living in the Cliftonville neighborhood of North Belfast in the late 1970s, young Pearse Kerr was accustomed to being treated with suspicion and contempt—and often brutality. Orangemen forced his family out of their first home, threatening to burn it down. Out on the streets, British soldiers frequently stopped, questioned and searched him, even though they knew him by name and had stopped and questioned him many times before. Once, on his first day of high school, a soldier struck him with a rifle butt, knocking him over a wall.

He wasn’t even surprised when, in the early morning hours of August 18, 1977, British soldiers smashed the door of his house at 233 Cliftonville Road, rousted him out of bed and hustled him off to Castlerea Interrogation Center. Nor was he surprised by his treatment once he got there. “It might sound bad, and it was,” he says. “”They broke my wrist, dislocated my neck, fractured a rib, choked me unconscious, and generally pushed me around… It was nothing out of the ordinary at the time. They beat me pretty good … but they didn’t kill me. It was well-known what was going on. It wasn’t shocking or anything. It was just part of life over there.”

Kerr spent three months in custody.  He was in Castlerea Interrogation Center for seven days, then transferred to Crumlin Road Prison.  All told, he was incarcerated from August 18 to November 26. Unlike many prisoners of the time, Pearse Kerr—named after the Irish nationalist and leader of the 1916 Easter Rising Pádraig Pearse—was an American. His parents Brendan and Betty Kerr, originally from the Falls Road in Belfast, had moved to Philadelphia in 1957. Pearse was born not long thereafter at Temple University Hospital. Given his status as a U.S. citizen, Kerr’s imprisonment triggered a huge backlash in the Philadelphia Irish community, and he was released thanks to the intervention of Daily News columnist Jack McKinney and Northeast Philadelphia Congressman Joshua Eilberg.

Kerr’s harrowing story, together with his continued activism here after his return to the States, rarely fails to move people who come to know him. Evidently, Kerr’s experience caught the attention of the committee organizing the 2011 Burlington County St. Patrick’s Day Parade. They recently named him their grand marshal.

Arguably, given that St. Patrick’s Day represents all things Irish, it was a good choice. Few local people could better symbolize Irish pride.

In Kerr’s household, that pride always came first. While living in the States, his father was one of the founding members of Irish Northern Aid and was active in Clan na Gael, another Irish republican organization.

“I was brought up with an Irish nationalist mindset, he says. “There’s no taking that away.” He also knew well that his first name stood for something. (It certainly meant something to the British in Belfast, he says. “When that’s your name, spelled like that, they know exactly who you are.”)

For Kerr, his time in prison left no lingering scars, but it did affect the way he looked at life: “It was maybe a solidification of what I was always taught.”

He also knows how lucky he was. Many prisoners were not nearly so fortunate. Even at the time of his release, he was uncertain what fate had in store for him. His jailers entered his cell, tossed a bag at him and ordered him to pack his clothes.

“Nobody said to me, you’re getting released,” he recalls. I thought I was being sent to Long Kesh (site of the 1981 Hunger Strike). They took me to a court in the city center. When I got to the courtroom, I was standing in the dock and, out in the foyer, I could see my father. And I knew I was going to be released.

“We got a taxi and we went to my grandmother’s house. The following day I flew to Philadelphia for a “Free Pearse Kerr” rally … which I had the pleasure to attend.”

Even though he has been in the States for years, the experience still resonates, and his Irish pride continues to make itself known through his many local activities, including Ancient Order of Hibernians Division 25.

That’s why the Burlington County honor means so much to him.

“I had no idea. I didn’t know I was in the running,” he says. “I was shocked, I really was. It’s such an honor to be chosen. I love Ireland and I love the AOH and I love the Irish republican movement. To be able to represent all that means the world to me.”

February 4, 2011 by
News, People, Sports

Help Some Kids Get On Base

Help get a team ready for spring season.

Brian McCollum wants to get his mitts on your mitts. And if you have a baseball to go with them, all the better.

For the second year in a  row, McCollum is collecting new and gently used baseball and softball equipment for use by kids who might not have the money to buy their own. This year’s beneficiary of the “Mitts for Kids” drive is the Hunting Park Indians Youth Baseball Program.

“When Hunting Park is open for play this spring, we want to make sure that every child who wants to play baseball has a glove,” said McCollum, owner of McCollum Insurance in Manayunk. “If you have unusued baseball equipment lying around your house, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a new life and help a child.”

McCollum, an avid sports fan and community volunteer, started the “Mitts for Kids”program so that less fortunate kids would have the same opportunity he had as a child to play Little League baseball. Last year’s drive netted over 150 mitts that were sent to youth ball players around the world. McCollum was also named one of Erie Insurance’s 2010 Giving Network Agencies of the Year for his community service work with “Pitch in for Baseball” and his decade-long commitment to the annual MMA Research Ceili for Kayleigh fundraising event.

You can bring your equipment to McCollum Insurance Agency l at 4109 Main Street in Manayunk until March 15, To make arrangements to have your equipment picked up, please call the agency at (215) 508-9000 or visit them online at www.mccolluminsuranceagency.com.

February 4, 2011 by
History, News, People

Remembering “Those Persecuted for Righteousness”

Liz Hagerty Leitner leads the group in a response.

Msgr. Joseph McLoone had to look no further than the latest CNN report on unrest in Egypt to find an analogy for his sermon on “Bloody Sunday,” the incident that occurred on January 30, 1972, when British soldiers opened fire on protesters in Derry’s Bogside neighborhood, killing 13 and touching off decades of fighting in Northern Ireland.

“We see what’s happening in Egypt, we see people standing up for their rights, for democracy,” he told the 60 people who gathered in the Irish Center dining room for a Mass of remembrance on Sunday, January 30. “We see what happens when people are in power for so long that they forget the human person.”

The men who died on Bloody Sunday are unlikely to be forgotten. Although there will no longer be marches on January 30 in Derry, Bill Donohue, president of the Philadelphia-based Sons and Daughters of Derry (called “the Derry Society”), said that this annual religious ceremony in Philadelphia will continue “in perpetuity.”

One of Philadelphia’s last large waves of Irish immigrants come from Northern Ireland, many fleeing the violence and religious bigotry that dominated the landscape in places like Derry, Belfast, and Tyrone.

Just last year, the British government, after 40 years, released the Saville Report in which they admitted that the shootings that day in Derry were, as British Prime Minister David Cameron put it, “unjustified and unjustifiable.”

Most of the people killed and wounded were teenagers. On Sunday, their names and ages were written on white crosses placed around the wall of the Irish Center dining room.

“Let us remember,” said Msgr. McLoone, referring to the eight beatitudes of Christ, “that those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness will be received in heaven.”

See photos from the Mass here.

February 4, 2011 by