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AOH Comes to the Aid of a Friend in Need

Andy Redmond

Andy Redmond

Andy Redmond has been there for the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish causes when they needed him. Now the Irish community is returning the favor.

Redmond, who has been fighting prostate cancer for several years, is a member of the Philly-area Irish band Na’Bodach. A painter by trade, Redmond has been unable to work due to his illness, so the Monsignor Crean Division of the AOH is hosting a beef-and-beer bash to help him deal with mounting financial challenges.

Patrick Jockel, president of the Crean division, first came to know Redmond four years ago. Jockel runs the annual Smithville (N.J.) Irish Festival. “His was actually the second band we booked for the festival,” says Jockel. “We became friends afer that. He’s just one of those good souls. He doesn’t put on airs. He’s very intelligent, very funny. He’s just a good guy to know.”

Aside from friendship, hiring Na’Bodach also turned out to have been a wise business decision.

“They’re our headliners. The festival used to stop when his band played. The audience would just stand in front of them and watch them play. Bad for beer sales, but good for everybody else.”

Because of Redmond’s illness, the band was unable to play last October.

Over the years, Redmond and his bandmates have lent their services to many worthy causes, including local AOH fund-raisers. In fact, Redmond has proved to be one of the best friends the Irish Catholic fraternal organization has, Jockel says, even though Redmond himself is not Catholic.

Jockel is also a New Jersey state board member of the AOH, and he brought Redmond’s situation to the attention of Sean Pender, the state president. “As soon as I said ‘Andy has a problem,’ the first thing Sean said is, “We gotta do something for this guy.”

That something is a big benefit Saturday, January 14, starting at 7:30 p.m. at Monsignor Crean AOH Hall, 2419 Kuser Road, Hamilton, N.J. Tickets are $30, available at the door. Entertainment is by the Bogside Rogues, who are donating their time and talent.

There’ll be plenty of good grub, including roast beef, french fries and salad, draft beer and wine, and coffee and soda. You can also aid the cause in other ways, including a 50/50 and a raffle of a basket of cheer. There will also be a drawing for a guitar signed by Redmond’s band.

For more information, contact:

  • Patrick Jockel at patrickaoh@hotmail.com
  • Sean Pender at paddyspeed@yahoo.com
January 13, 2012 by
Music

Irish Musicians Launch a New CD to Benefit Mercy Centre in Bangkok

Gabriel Donohue

Gabriel Donohue

Gabriel Donohue won’t soon forget his visit to the Mercy Centre in Bangkok, Thailand.

A couple of years ago, Donohue joined fellow Irish musicians Mick Moloney, Athena Tergis and Niall O’Leary to play for—believe it or not—the Asian Gaelic Games, which were being held in Bangkok. Mick Moloney, well-known folklorist and multi-instrumentalist, has had a long association with the Centre, which provides services for orphans, street kids, and children and adults with AIDS, so he asked his traveling companions to join him there in an impromptu concert.

“Mick made sure we got down to the orphanage to play for the kids,” Donohue recalls.”I saw the work Father Joe (Maier) was doing there in the slums. It’s an amazing place. It’s in the worst neighborhood in Bangkok. It’s the Slaughterhouse District, which is a Catholic neighborhood. Buddhists won’t kill animals, so Catholics run the slaughterhouses. These kids have lost their parents to AIDS, and they have it too. Father Joe just wants to make sure they have a good quality of life.”

Donohue is far from the only Irish musician to come away impressed by Father Joe and his mission. A few years ago, he says, fellow musician Donnie Carroll met Father Joe at a benefit, and he resolved to raise funds for the Centre. The project that emerged from that resolution is a new CD, “Irish Musicians for the Mercy Centre,” produced by Donnie Carroll and mastered by Donohue. Nearly 20 Irish musicians and ensembles, including Donohue and partner Marian Makins, Moloney, Tergis, Joanie Madden, Larry Kirwan and Black 47, contributed tracks.

If you want to get a sampling of the tunes that made their way onto the disk, you can attend a CD launch party Sunday, December 11, from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Shanachie Pub, 111 East Butler Avenue in Avenue. Music will be provided by Timlin & Kane (Gerry Timlin is one of the pub’s owners), Donnie Carroll—and out own Donohue and Makins. Copies of the CD will be on sale, of course. Every CD purchase benefits the Mercy Centre. There will be a raffle, with special prizes donated by the musicians and Marianne MacDonald, host of “Come West Along the Road” Irish radio show.

And hey, remember Christmas is coming. An all-star Irish music CD makes a great gift.

December 9, 2011 by
Arts, Music

Craicdown 2011

Martyn Wallace, your emcee.

Martyn Wallace, your emcee.

The upstairs stage at World Cafe Live regularly shines the spotlight on talented musical artists. The actors, singers and musicians who headlined the 2011 Craicdown benefit for the Inis Nua Theatre Company on Tuesday night had to have been among the most creative.

Inis Nua presents plays from Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. The performers who took the stage Tuesday night were in one way, shape or form associated with the theatre company.

Some of the musicians, like actors Jake Blouch and Damon Bonetti, seized the opportunity to claim rock star status, replete with shredding guitar solos. Others, like New Zealander Rosie Langabeer, took a much more theatrical approach, at times verging on cabaret. (The Proclaimers’ “I Would Walk 500 Miles” on accordion—whoda thunk it?)

Presiding over the night’s festivies was actor Mike Dees in the guise of character Martyn Wallace from “Dublin by Lamplight.”

It was all good. Sorry to say we couldn’t stay for the whole show, but we’ve captured many winning moments.

December 9, 2011 by
News

They Danced All Afternoon at Division 39

Sister James and court

This year's parade grand marshal, Sister James Anne Feerick, is second from left. She's joined by Mary Frances Fogg, left, parade committee president Kathy McGee Burns, right, and Mary Patrick, right.

The AOH Hall down on Tulip Street was jammed to the rafters Sunday as Division 39 hosted a big fund-raiser for the 2011 Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Jamison provided the tunes, and both the girls of the Celtic Flame School and guests alike took to the dance floor often throughout the afternoon.

There was plenty to munch on (are meatballs Irish?) and the beer flowed liberally. (No, not too liberally.)

It won’t be the last fund-raiser for this year’s parade … but it will be remembered as one of the best.

Click here to see the photo essay with captions.

February 18, 2011 by
News, People

Tee Off for Ciara

Ciara Kelly Higgins: Indomitable and irresistible.

Ciara Kelly Higgins: Indomitable and irresistible.

She’s a tiny thing, with a mass of blonde hair swept up on top of her head and cornflower blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. You’d never know to look at Ciara Kelly Higgins that she was just a few weeks out from an operation where a drug pump the size of a hockey puck was inserted in her abdomen and her hamstring and calf muscles cut.

With her right leg in a cast (covered in pink with, she points out, precious Jonas Brothers autographs she got during a backstage visit), she can motor using just a walker.

But she’s had lots of practice. The fourth child and only daughter of Tom and Dee Higgins of Lafayette Hill, Ciara was born at only 26 weeks, seven years ago. But she was 2.2 pounds of fighter.

“She spent four months in the Jefferson Hospital NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] on a ventilator,” says her dad, a Galway-born realtor who is active in the Philadelphia Gaelic Athletic Association. “It wasn’t until she was almost two that she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. We just chose to fight it. Ciara has an indomitable spirit that wants to fight—just ask her brothers.”

That would be Tom, 16; Conor, 14, and Ronan, 11.

To help her along, her parents launched a golf fundraiser five years ago to help pay for some of her therapy and to support places like Jefferson and Shriners Hospital that specialize in children with disabilities. They also donate to Sebastian Riding Associates in Collegeville where Ciara gets an unusual form of therapy—hippotherapy, from the Greek word, hippos, meaning horse.

Hippotherapy usually takes place in a controlled environment where therapists use the movements of the horse to help children improve their balance, posture, mobility and function.

“It’s really worked for Ciara,” says Higgins. “It’s keeping her core muscles strong and helping her stay upright. She hunches over on the walker and the crutches and this helps her stand upright. It’s also made her more confident.”

At first, Higgins said, he thought having four people surrounding Ciara while her horse walked around the ring “was overkill.”

“Then one day she got thrown, and by thrown I mean 10 feet in the air, and one of the women caught her,” he says. “I never thought of it as overkill again. They put her on another horse and she never said anything about it. When they say you should get back up on the horse—she did.”

This summer’s operation should nudge Ciara further along towards her goal—to walk unaided or virtually unaided.  The pump in her stomach will send a constant dose of Baclofen, a drug used to treat spasticity, to her affected leg to keep the muscles and ligaments loose.

“She’s very tight and she couldn’t get her heel on the ground to walk properly,” says Higgins. The operation appears to be successful: Ciara’s heel does touch the ground. “She just won’t put it down,” he says. “She hasn’t been able to put it down so it must feel funny to her. But now it can also be manipulated in therapy.”

The other half of the operation—cutting her hamstring and calf muscles—sounds like torture, but it too will relieve the tightness.

Her prognosis, says Higgins, is anyone’s guess, and the experts aren’t making any guesses. “They say that no two cases are alike and they’ve never seen her exact condition before. Technically what she has isn’t cerebral palsy, because that usually affects two legs and only one of hers is affected.”

But if anyone is going to walk, Ciara is. “She’s very stubborn. Even in the hospital when they were measuring her for a wheelchair she was saying, ‘No, don’t do that. I’m not going into a chair.’ They finally convinced her that she would be able to go more places and she went for it,” says Higgins, laughing.

But when you’re facing a tough battle, as Ciara is, stubborn is just another word for determined. And that’s a good thing.

The Fifth Annual Ciara Kelly Higgins for CP Fundraiser is scheduled for Monday, September 20,  at the Plymouth Country Club at Belvoir and Plymouth Roads, Norristown. Breakfast starts at 7:45 AM and tee times follow throughout the morning. Dinner is at 6 with music provided by Paddy’s Well and some comedy from Joe Concklin. There will be both live and silent auctions.

If you can’t make the event, you can send a donation to Ciara’s parents, Tom and Dee Higgins, 4027 N. Warner Road, Lafayette Hill, PA 19444.

September 15, 2010 by
News, People

Dance Fever!

Father Ed Brady picks up a few steps from one of the Timoney Dancers.

Father Ed Brady picks up a few steps from one of the Timoney Dancers.

There sure was a lot of dancing at Sunday’s “Spirit of the Fallen” fundraiser at the Philadelphia Irish Center. And how appropriate—dance photographer Brian Mengini planned the event to raise money to produce a calendar featuring some of the region’s finest dancers who volunteered their time to pose wearing angel wings to commemorate the city’s fallen policemen. Proceeds from the sale of the calendar will benefit the Philadelphia Police Survivors’ Fund.

Rosemarie Timoney brought her Timoney School dancers who not only performed but taught a few step dance steps to audience members. They included musicians Joe Hughes and his wife, Laine Walker Hughes, of Paddy’s Well. With a friend, the Hughes provided the music, along with Mark O’Donnell, a piper with the Emerald Society Pipe Band. Father Ed Brady of St. Ignatius Parish delivered the invocation—and he danced too.
Representing the Philadelphia Police Department was Joseph Sullivan, chief of the department’s counter-terrorism unit and a police academy classmate of Officer Chuck Cassidy, who was shot to death in 2007 when he interrupted a robbery at a West Oak Lane store.

The 2011 calendar will go on sale after a release party at Finnigan’s Wake in Philadelphia on October 2, starting at 7 PM.

Mengini didn’t make his goal at the fundraiser, although, he says, “we had a blast.” To make a donation, buy an ad in the calendar, or become a sponsor, go to the calendar Web site.

We also have videos: 
September 2, 2010 by
People

Got Time for a Pint? Donate Blood on Sunday!

The man himself, Emmett Ruane.

The man himself, Emmett Ruane.

Remember Emmett’s Place fondly? For that matter, dontcha miss Emmett?

Well, you can get together with one of our best-loved (retired) publicans and his family, and help a good cause at the same time.

Emmett’s son Michael and favorite nephew Sean King are bringing the old gang together (and maybe drafting some new gang members) for a very ambitious American Red Cross blood drive on Sunday from 9 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon at the Perzel Center, 2990 St. Vincent St., in Mayfair. It’s the second annual drive, organized in honor of Raj S. Shah, the late husband of one of Michael’s first cousins, Joanne. Shah died of leukemia in 2007.

Last year, the Emmett’s crowd collected 36 pints. It was part of a nationwide effort, including a drive organized by Shah’s wife in Satellite, Florida, and another put together by friends in Austin, Texas, that collected 76 units in total.

Joanne Shah is also running her second annual drive on Sunday.

Michael recalls how much Raj Shah came to depend on the generosity of blood donors. “He was just a great guy,” Michael says. “It was as if he was one of our own family. He had actually been diagnosed with leukemia 17 years before he passed away. He was treated, and his leukemia went into remission for quite a long time. The last year, it came back, and they just couldn’t get it under control again. He received transfusions almost on a daily basis for most of that year.”

In all, 45 people donated at the Philly event last year. Based on early interest, Michael expects to top that this year.

“Facebook has really helped this year,” he said. “We think we’re gonna have more than last year. I have a feeling it’s gonna be a much bigger response.”

Of course, it’s a gathering of friends as well. There’ll be Irish music, and lots of treats, including homemade scones. (Much more than your basic Red Cross doughnuts, for sure.)

So if you have time for a pint, Michael asks, why not drop on by?

Scheduling a time slot is strongly encouraged so the Red Cross can have plenty of staff available to collect donations from everyone who wants to donate. Pick your time slot at the American Red Cross Web site using Sponsor Code 14357. Here’s the Web address:

August 18, 2010 by
People, Sports

Bowling for Hunger

Hibernian bowlers in action.

Hibernian bowlers in action.

It must have been a little painful for Jim Donnelly to watch the 40 bowlers on his Hibernian Hunger Project league roll games with scores that might be great out on the gold course, but in a bowling alley. . .not so much.

“They ain’t the greatest bowlers,” deadpanned Donnelly, the bowling team coach at Father Judge High School, “but. . . “

But, over the past 12 weeks, these bowlers, dropping $5 into the kitty every Tuesday night at Thunderbird Lanes in the Northeast, have raised about $2,500 for the Hibernian Hunger Project (HHP), a program that feeds thousands of needy people in the Philadelphia area and, since it’s been adopted as an official charity of the national Ancient Order of Hibernians, tens of thousands around the country.

Founded in 2000 by former AOH Div. 87 President Bob Gessler, the program delivers food—usually packaged meals prepared fresh by volunteers during the annual “Cook-in”—to senior centers, homeless shelters, churches, and service agencies such as Aid for Friends which provides meals to the elderly and shut-ins.

“The bowling league is illustrative of what we envision the Hibernian Hunger Project to be,” says Gessler. “Jim Donnelly on his own initiative decided that he could combine fun with helping others. He had a great idea, put it out there and like-minded people joined together and made a real difference. That is the HHP, the power of people joining together to help those in need.”

We went out to Thunderbird Lanes this week and saw what it looks like when you combine fun with helping others.

August 13, 2010 by