Browsing Tag

In Memoriam

People

Miltown Malbay’s Unofficial Mayor Tom Malone Dies at 92

The late Tom Malone flanked by his daugher Marian and his son, Fintan.

The late Tom Malone flanked by his daugher Marian and his son, Fintan.

By all accounts, if you knew Tom Malone you were probably a sportsman. Or a piper. Or a trad musician. Or a lover of a good pint. Or a dog-racing aficiando. Or a Republican, in the Irish sense.

When he died on April 1 at the age of 92 in the town of Miltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland, the local paper stressed his influence on local sports—it was he who set up the local GAA club in 1936, brought hurling and ladies football to the county, and launched a cycling race a la the Tour de France. But his son, Fintan Malone, now of Cheltenham, prefers to think of him as “a man of many hats.”

That’s an understatement.

“Firstly, he sold insurance starting out on a bike,” recalls Fintan, a musician who performs locally as part of the duo Blarney and at many sessions. His father also operated a bar in the Malone home on the main street. “But it was run mostly by my mother. He could never pull a proper pint, God love him. He ran horse races for a time. Next he bought a farm and we being townies, I found it hard to adjust.” It wasn’t so easy adjusting to Tom Malone’s next venture either. Terrier racing. “It’s like greyhound racing,” explains Fintan. “My job was to hook the artificial hare and take it back to the gate for the next race.”

When Tom Malone bought the Fair Green, he booked traveling circuses to come to town. “We never paid an admission into a single show.,” says Fintan. “We also traveled the countryside with amusements such as bingo, shooting gallery, and slot machines.”

Along with introducing hurling and ladies football to Miltown, Tom Malone was also the first to sell bottled milk and cooking gas cylinders. There were so many firsts,” says Fintan, “that I can’t remember them all.”

Though not a musician himself, Tom Malone loved music. “My mother was very much into both dance and music which is where I got my interest from.,” says Fintan. “I believe my father, when the house dances ceased, could see bigger and better things ahead and started to book traveling bands on their way from the North down to Kerry. Our house doubled as a boarding house and these musicians would stay with us and he, of course, would have clinched some deal to have them play across at the hall as part of their payment. I got a chance to see the singing tinker, Maggie Barry, along with the great Michael Gorman, Bridie Gallagher, Joe Heaney, and the hypnotist Edwin Heath who had the local bank manager under hypnosis, frantically looking for leprechauns up and down the Main Street.”

A number of ceili bands were booked into Malone’s venue, including the famed Kilfenora and Tulla bands. “I believe it was when he first saw the Tulla Pipe Band that he decided it was time for Miltown to have their own pipe band. “says Fintan. So he founded one—the Clonbony Pipe Band. “The first pipes that were brought into Miltown went to Willie Clancy and Martin Talty,” says Fintan. “Willie played the war pipes before he played the uileann pipes. My father told many great stories about cycling around the countryside to raise money for this endeavour as money was tight then.”

Uilleann virtuoso Willie Clancy was houseguest for several years. Born in Miltown Malbay, Clancy was such an iconic figure in traditional music that a trad festival held every July in the town was named in his honor. And Tom Malone’s pub has traditionally been a hub for festival goers, just the way his home was an inn for itinerants. Clancy was by far not the only houseguest, says Fintan. Some were even more. . .interesting.

“There were Ruari O’Bradaigh and Daithi O’Connell who escaped from the Curragh Concentration Camp; Van Morrison; Andy Irvine; Joe Cahill, chief of staff of the IRA at the time; Joe Cooley; Robbie MacMahon; the Liverpool Ceili Band; Tommy Peoples; even an elephant from Fossett’s Circus (with a drunken handler) and other numerous people on the run.”

Tom Malone’s political leanings—he was a 32-county Republican—also made him a controversial figure, says Joe O’ Muircheartaigh, reporter for The Clare People newspaper, who wrote a lengthy profile of Malone after his death. “He was very Republican at a time when it wasn’t popular to be a Republican. And he never made any apologies for this fact.”

It wasn’t easy being the son of a man like Tom Malone, says Fintan. “He answered to no one and marched to his own drummer. But I’d like to think he has made me the man I am today. He was among many things, a wheeler dealer and as an early teenager when I caught a religious bug, I went through a period when I feared for his mortal soul. I remember vividly going up to the local church to pray for his soul. But in his latter years he had made up for this as every time I would call my sister to check on him I could hear him in the background reciting the rosary. He always tried to cover all of his bases.”

Marianne MacDonald contributed to this story.

May 1, 2008 by
Music, People

Tom Munnelly, Ireland’s Greatest Song Collector, Dies at Home in County Clare

Tom Munnelly and his wife, Annette, peruse the book of essays written in his honor.

Tom Munnelly and his wife, Annette, peruse the book of essays written in his honor.

Tom Munnelly, called “Ireland’s greatest folksong and folklore collector,” died Thursday, August 30, after a long illness, in Miltown Malbay, County Clare. He was 63.Though a Dubliner by birth, Munnelly moved to this mecca of Irish music with his wife, Annette, in 1978, and became chairman of the Willie Clancy Summer School, the largest gathering of Irish traditional musicians in the world held annually the first week of July.

Referred to as “the last song collector” in a 2006 RTE Radio 1 documentary, Munnelly began collecting and recording traditional music in 1964 and had been a collector and archivist of Irish folk music at the University College of Dublin since 1975. He became well known for recording the music and stories of the travellers, Ireland’s itinerant ethnic minority. (One of the most familiar current traveler musicians is piper Paddy Keenan, who appeared several years ago at the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s annual music festival.)

 Munnelly co-founded The Folk Music Society of Ireland (Cuman Cheoil Tire Eireann) and was the first fulltime collector of the National Traditional Music Collecting Scheme, a project initiated by the Irish Department of Education, later folded into UCD’s Folklore Department.

After his move to Miltown Malbay, he started The Folklore and Folkmusic Society of Clare and was chairman and founder of the Clare Festival of Traditional Singing. He also recorded in excess of 1,500 tapes of folksong and folklore, which is the largest and most comprehensive collection of traditional song ever compiled by any one person. Not only that, he transcribed, indexed, and cataloged every note.

This May, many of the leading lights of Irish studies and music published a collection of essays celebrating in Munnelly, called “Dear Far-voiced Veteran: Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly.” It was presented to the frail Munnelly at a ceremony, attended by his wife and family, at the Bellbridge House Hotel in Spanish Point, County Clare. This June, Munnelly received the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature (DLitt) from the National University of Ireland at Galway in recognition of his contribution to Irish traditional music.

“He is the best collector of folklore that ever existed,” said musician Fintan Malone of Cheltenham who anchors the Tuesday night session at The Shanachie Pub in Ambler and who is a native of Miltown Malbay. “Tom was a good friend of ours. He was a very witty man, with a dry sense of humor. Very gentle, generous, very intelligent and dedicated to collecting folklore. He was very well-liked.”

Malone, who was in Miltown last July for “Willie Week,” said that he saw Munnelly then at Tom Malone’s, the pub Malone owns with his brother,  and he looked very gaunt. “I was taken aback. He had been ailing for a while,” Malone said.

Paul Keating, artistic director of the Catskills Irish Arts Week  first met Munnelly at the 1976 Festival of American Folklife produced by the Smithsonian Institution for the Bicentennial.

“The world of Irish traditional music lost one of its most dedicated academic voices today when Tom Munnelly left us,” Keating told irishphiladelphia.com. “I was aware of the high regard he had for traditional musicians and they for him because of his work on their behalf.  As a song collector and folklorist, he had the personal touch that separated him from the ordinary collector who thinks their job is to put things down on tape or print and so he will be fondly remembered for years for touching so many lives and helping to keep the traditional way of life alive.  His battles weren’t always easy but he was a fiercely determined Dubliner who wasn’t easily deterred and that was his way until the end. “

Irish studies teacher and traditional Irish singer, Virginia Stevens Blankenhorn co-taught song seminars with Munnelly (an passionate advocate for sean nos singing) at the Willie Clancy School for two years in the mid-80s.

“These weeks are among my happiest memories. Tom was such fun to be with, always looking for a laugh, always ready to skewer silly ideas, but always (at least in class) with tact and kindness,” said the California native, who now lives in Ireland. “It was no mean achievement to win the trust and regard of both the traditional communities in which he worked and the academic world – especially the latter, given his intolerance for hot air. Irish traditional song has been uncommonly blessed in having Tom as its chief champion and advocate, and I am so sad that heaven claimed him before I could see him again.”

Funeral services for Munnelly will be at St. Joseph Church in Miltown Malbay at 1 pm Saturday,September 1, followed by burial at the Ballard Road Cemetery.

August 29, 2007 by
Music, People

Farewell to “The Bard of Armagh”

In Ireland in 2003. From the Makem Web site.

In Ireland in 2003. From the Makem Web site.

“Tommy Makem was my hero and the reason I wanted to perform,” says Tyrone-born musician Gerry Timlin, co-owner of Ambler’s Shanachie Pub and Restaurant, who in June visited the man known as “The Godfather of Irish Music” and “the Bard of Armagh” for the last time at his home in Dover, NH.  Makem, 74, died Wednesday, August 1 and, after a three-day wake, was buried August 9 in Dover. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2006.

Timlin has shared the stage with Makem and The Clancy Brothers many times and Makem became his mentor when Timlin arrived in the US with his guitar, a beautiful singing voice, and irreverent humor in the 1970s.

“I loved his wit, his commitment, and his bravery. He came to the US and made a path for the rest of us and with the Clancy’s carved out a course for us to follow,” says TImlin, who was in Ireland when Makem died. “He created new venues for us and helped us all make a living doing the one thing we all loved. Without him the world of music will never be the same.”

Makem was “the consummate performer,” says Timlin. In fact, Makem died with gigs on his schedule stretching into November.  Though a solo performer, for much of his career, this banjo-playing baritone performed with friends Liam, Tom, and Paddy Clancy. He’d come to New York from Ireland with Liam, and  they initially both embarked on acting careers until fate and their love for music drew them together for the magic that was the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

Many people were introduced to Irish music by Makem and the Clancys and, at least among the listening public, they are perhaps known best for what every Irish performer thinks of as the crowd-pleasers, the drinking songs like The Jug of Punch, Irish Rover, and Finnigan’s Wake. But Makem was a trad musician at heart. “He sang all kinds of folk music,” says Timlin. His mother, Sarah, was a renowned folk singer who collected traditional Irish folk tunes that might have otherwise been lost.

Traditional purists have tended to be dismissive of the way The Clancys and Tommy Makem popularized Irish roots tunes, but in recent years, many have come to recognize that their rise and that of the Chieftains–during the nascent folk era in the US–helped create a resurgence in popular interest in Ireland’s own musical history which, at the time, seemed to be heading the way of the thatched roof.

As one trad musician wrote on a message board after Makem’s death, “I listened to Tommy, and the Clancy Brothers — kinda hard to separate them, even though he hasn’t played with the band for years — for a lot of my childhood, dismissed them in my late teens as hokey and cliche, then ultimately realized how much they’ve all meant to the music.”

Makem meant everything to Timlin’s music–and his life. ” I was proud to say he was my friend and I will miss him sadly every day,” he says. ” ‘Onward and upward’ he would say and so ‘Onward and Upward Tommy.'”

Here’s what others have to say about Makem. First, Liam Clancy, who first made note of Tommy’s passing on his message board:

“He was a friend and partner-in-song for over fifty years. We shared a great hunk of our lives together. We were a hell of a team. Tommy was a man of high integrity, honesty, and, at the end, courage. Our paths diverged at times but our friendship never waned. He was my brother every bit as much as my blood brothers.”

Irish President Mary McAleese:

‘In life, Tommy brought happiness and joy to hundreds of thousands of fans the world over. Always the consummate musician, he was also a superb ambassador for the country, and one of whom we will always be proud.”

Singer-songwriter Eugene Byrne, quoted in the Dover newspaper Foster’s Daily Democrat:

“Not one of us who play a note of Irish music on a guitar today would be playing if it wasn’t for Tommy Makem, along with the Clancys. He gave us pride in our country and our culture. Bono (U2’s lead singer) was influenced by him. Michael Flatley’s new show, Celtic Tiger, has Four Green Fields in it.”

From Marianne MacDonald, host of the local radio show, “Come West Along the Road” (Sundays from noon to 1 p.m. on WTMR-800 AM):

“One of the bright twinkling stars from the constellation of Irish music faded today.  We’ve lost the great Tommy Makem.  I was fortunate to have seen him at Appel Farms, the Guinness Fleadh and, years ago, at the Holmdel Arts Center when my mother dragged me to my first Irish Festival.”

From Ed Ward of the Milwaukee Irish Fest:

“I spoke to him about two weeks ago, the day after he returned from Ireland. We talked for about a half an hour about his trip, how wonderful it was to see the parade of people who came to visit him in the hotel, relatives, old friends, the archbishop. He said he was very sad when he boarded a plane to leave Ireland, clearly knowing he would not see it again.”

“He desperately wanted to make it to Milwaukee this year so we discussed plans on what we would do as it was evident he would not be able to perform. But he planned to be there anyway. We are going ahead with these plans and Tommy’s slots will be billed as “Remembering Tommy Makem” and will be led by his nephews Tom and Jimmy Sweeney, Brian Doherty, Kevin Evans and Eugene Byrne and other close friends. The Makem and Spain Brothers will also be in Milwaukee so it should be a special celebration of Tommy’s life and love for the music of Ireland.”

From Ira Goldman, editor and publisher of the Trad Music News:

“Just about anything and everything that can, and should, be said about Tommy Makem’s music has been said since his death last Wednesday evening. The great and the not so great have been crowding the Tasker Funeral Home in Dover NH for his wake since yesterday and Thursday morning we will fill to overflowing St, Mary’s Church in that lovely New England village Tommy called home for decades.

Most people know Tommy as a balladeer and partner of the Clancy Brothers and especially of Liam Clancy. Many know him as the composer of fine songs, some of which have become standards of Irish music. Some of us have had the joy of knowing him as a fine ‘sean nos” singer and traditional musician on the banjo and whistle. His musicology as well as his music made him a true treasure of Irish Traditional Music.

Some of us have been blessed to have the invaluable, immeasurable, and lasting delight of knowing Tommy Makem as a person and as a friend. In the some 25 years I knew Tommy I never heard an unkind or angry word pass his lips. His countless acts of warmth and kindness will never be forgotten. For example, Tommy recorded a wonderful song, as delightful for “grownups” as for children, called “Waltzing with Bears.” When he was told two wee boys in Co. Carlow (aged 5 and 6) were learning the song from his cassette tape so they could entertain their Yank friend at Christmas, Tommy wrote each of them a note congratulating them for learning the song and thanking them for learning it from him.

And there was once a quiet, sunny afternoon in the empty bar of the hotel by the Sligo railroad station when Tommy played piano and let a Yank friend sing with him (much to the dismay of Liam Clancy who had to listen).

There are not enough tears to truly mark your passing, Tommy. There will always be the memories and the music and the love.

Slan, old friend.

Ar dheis De go raibh a anam uasal.”

August 2, 2007 by
People

R.I.P., Kathleen Gambon Erdei

Just posted on the Philadelphia Ceili Group Membership list:

Kathleen Gambon Erdei passed away Tuesday evening, July 31, after a two-week battle with what was diagnosed “raging cancer” at the Central Montgomery Medical Center in Lansdale, one month shy of her 72nd birthday. She had come down with Lyme disease two years earlier, and her system suffered greatly as a result.

Beloved in Philadelphia’s Irish-American community for her work toward peace in Northern Ireland since the 1970s, Kathleen turned on two generations of young folks to the music of Ireland, and often partied with people a third her age in places like Fergie’s or The Plough and the Stars. Her friend and Oak Lane neighbor Maryanne Devine said, “With the British troops beginning to leave Northern Ireland right now, Kathleen’s work here is done.”

Before his own death, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jack McKinney once said of Kathleen, “Spending an afternoon with her is like stepping into a James Joyce novel – fascinating, deep, and layered with complicated characters”.

Raised on farmland in Camden County, NJ, Kathleen attended Camden Catholic High School, then explored California and the West Coast as a young woman, before settling down to raise a family in the 1960s.

A former parishioner of St. Genevieve’s Parish in Flourtown, PA, Kathleen’s home there overlooked the sheep farm of Fitz Eugene Dixon. She was a devout Catholic who never toed the party line, which was manifested in her many demonstrations against the Vietnam War, protests for clean air, water and lower utility fees for poor and working people, for peace in Northern Ireland, and against the closing of poor parishes in Philadelphia. She once participated in a public rite of exorcism in front of the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul to root out, she said, “the corrupt practices of the Archdiocese’s policy regarding those parish closings.”

But her public persona belied her gentle touch with everyone she met. In her neighborhood of Philly’s Oak Lane, to which she moved in the 1980s, she helped organize neighbors in their Arbor Day celebrations and tree-plantings. She gathered local children to treat them to outings they might not otherwise afford, she volunteered at radio station WXPN, and was an exceptional afficionado of culture and literature.

“Kathleen knew the lyrics to 100-year old operettas, to songs of the Great Depression, folk tunes from here to Europe and South Africa. Her mind was all-encompassing, and she never stopped learning. And as big as her brain was, her heart was even bigger. She read several newspapers daily, and listened to people with their problems the whole world over, whether face-to-face, on the BBC or NPR”, said close friend Marybeth Phillips.

For the past dozen years, Kathleen lived in Center City Philadelphia (Wash-West), and rode a bike all over town while working for PennPIRG, the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group. With them, she found a career already in line with her causes, and fought hard from Philly’s City Council to Harrisburg to D.C.

She often had her bicycle stolen when she parked it at a train station, but taking a Zen approach to everything, refused to worry.
She would find it on another occasion and steal it back. She was an avid urban gardener, planting in every inch of soil she could find on Lombard or South Streets, and once turned down a week’s vacation in Florida so as “not to miss anything that begins to bud in Philly”.

In addition to PennPIRG, Kathleen also worked for the Dominican Sisters in Elkins Park, helping sick nuns recover or pass through to the next life, at St. Katherine’s Hall.

Ms. Erdei is survived by her former husband Abdon Erdei, daughter Stephanie Scintilla, and sons A. Andrew, Daniel, and James, and her first grandchild, Daphne Erdei.

In her always-altruistic fashion, Kathleen donated her body to Jefferson Medical College. A memorial service is scheduled for her at The Irish Center/Commodore Barry Club, Carpenter Lane and Emlen Streets, Philadelphia, on Saturday, September 15, at 5 p.m. Donations in her memory may be sent to the non-profit Heart of Camden Housing Corporation, Broadway and Ferry, Camden, NJ 08104.

For more information, please call daughter Stephanie Erdei Scintilla at 215-350-5412, or Marybeth Phillips at 610-436-4134.

July 30, 2007 by
News, People

A Great Loss

Father Kevin Trautner

Father Kevin Trautner

The Reverend Kevin C. Trautner was so proud of being Irish, he didn’t like being called Father Trautner because it wasn’t an Irish name. “Call me Kevin,” he would say. Years ago, his Irish mother told him that she had named him for Kevin Barry, a Dublin medical student who became one of the early martyrs to the cause of Irish independence in 1920.

So it is excruciatingly ironic that Father Kevin, 57, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Norristown and, for 30 years, chaplain of the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association of Philadelphia, will be laid to rest on St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, 2007, after a funeral mass conducted by Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali at Father Kevin’s parish church at 600 Hamilton Street.

“Last week he called me every day to go over details of the parade,” parade director Michael Bradley said Friday. “He gave me a big hug on Sunday night and told me I did a good job. And today, I’m carrying his coffin into church.”

Father Kevin, who was a jogger, died of a massive heart attack while in Valley Forge Park on Tuesday.

“He was a great guy, a great priest, and a lot of fun to be around,” said Bradley. “He loved being our chaplain. He used to say, ‘The only way to get rid of me is to put me over at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery. Every once in a while someone would say, ‘That can be arranged,’ and he would laugh. You could tease him and he would really laugh.”

Like about his cats. He had three and treated them like family. “During the Mass when he became pastor of St. Francis, he had them all in the front row in a box,” recalled Bradley. “I said, ‘I guess you couldn’t have had one in one row, and another in another row. You didn’t want to slight one so you put them all together up front.’ He made a face, then burst out laughing.”

He took being the shepherd of the St. Francis of Assisi parish seriously. Every year he held a blessing of animals at the church. In 2005, he led a parish-wide project to collect pet food and pet supplies for the Montgomery County SPCA and was able to deliver a van full to the facility in Norristown in memory of his late cat, Bridget, and in honor of St. Francis, patron saint of animals. When the rectory caught fire a few years ago, Father Kevin expressed his gratitude to the Norristown Fire Department, where he also served as chaplain, not just for saving the building, but for saving his cat.

“He was a very gentle, sincere man,” says Kathy McGee Burns, second vice president of the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association. “He was very affectionate. You felt that when he saw you he really liked you. He was just glad to see you. It’s a great loss to us.”

He also loved the kids of his parish. “He was really proud of those kids,” says Bradley.

“Wherever the children gathered, Father Trautner was there. He loved
his kids and was so proud of all that they did,” says a note on the parish website, where you can view a slide show of Father Kevin with his young parishioners.

On Friday morning, the guest book at www.philly.com was filling not only with condolences but with memories of a compassionate priest who always had time for whoever needed him. He would bring communion to the dying, comfort to the grieving, and even made time to bless sick pets. The entries also reveal a fun-loving man who loved his summers at the shore and dancing to the oldies.

“Father Kevin, When you were around, everyone was happy,” reads one from a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. “We will miss your thoughtfulness, jubilant expressions and willingness for a good time.”

Said another: “I miss Father Kevin so much already… my heart is truly saddened. I first met Father about five years ago at the Lighthouse Point on a Thursday night listening to the Geator… He truly amazed me when I found out he was a priest… and dancing priest no less! One immediately sensed his warmth, kindness, loving way and what a sweet smile… We quickly became friends and I couldn’t wait till summer time came around so we could hang out, laugh, twist (he liked the twist) and just talk… How I will miss him so…”

Father Kevin was also the chaplain of the Norristown Police Department, Ancient Order of Hibernians of Norristown-Notre Dame Division, and the LAM Valley Forge Council of the Sons of Italy. He was affiliated with the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor, NJ, where he had a summer home. Son of the late Christopher R. and Eileen M. O’Donnell Trautner, he is survived by his brother, Eugene K. Trautner and his wife, Judith.

A parishioners’ mass will be said tonight, March 16, at the church. A funeral mass will be conducted by Cardinal Rigali on Saturday at 11 a.m. at St. Francis of Assisi, where friends can call from 9-10:30 a.m. Internment will follow at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery. Contributions can be made in Father Kevin’s memory to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, 100 East Wynnewood Road, Wynnewood PA, 19096 or St. Francis of Assisi Church.

March 16, 2007 by