Frank's daughter, Courtney, with her husband, Sam Cohen.
Her father, longtime Philadelphia Ceili Group member Frank Malley, knew he was dying, so Courtney Malley broached the difficult subject: his memorial service.
“He said that we could do something at The Mermaid,” said Courtney, referring to the tiny bar off Mermaid Lane in Chestnut Hill where Frank—and Courtney herself—frequently performed. “’I said The Mermaid? It’s too small.’ He didn’t expect that many people would show up.”
He was wrong. Courtney chose to hold the memorial service to her father at the Philadelphia Irish Center on Saturday, August 1, which bulged with more than 600 who came to say goodbye to the man they knew as father, friend, lover, grandfather, brother, neighbor, singer, story teller, and skilled artisan.
All around the Fireside Room, Malley’s family and friends posted family photos, scattered his architectural drawings, trademark hats, and tacked up a quilt, sewn by Malley’s longtime companion, Connie Koppe, made from his t-shirts, including those from the Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Festival he so often directed.
Musicians played and sang, and friend and family offered stories and poems to honor a man whom a friend said “didn’t always consider himself adequate.”
“He would have been stunned at the outpouring of emotion,” said Connie Koppe. And, she added, “he would be trying to figure out how to get that many people to come to the Irish Festival and pay full fare.”
