The View From Here . . .

By Bob Morgan, Jr.

In light of the prevailing gloom in the country right now, the arrival of St. Patrick's Day on Tuesday, March 17 will come none too soon. We truly need something to celebrate.

I will admit to a little bias about this holiday. I am 5/8 Irish (i.e., 5 of my 8 greatgrandparents were of Irish descent) and thus the St. Paddy's Day celebration did not go unnoticed when I was growing up. Coincidentally, my late wife, Maureen, had her birthday on March 17. She would have been named Patricia in honor of the day except that she already had an older sister of that name.

For a small country, Ireland has made a tremendous contribution to the history of the world. Irish prose, poetry and music are justly acclaimed and the country's epic struggle for independence stands as a monument to freedom. More recently, the willingness of both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland to settle their differences after centuries of discord speaks well of a new maturity in the country as well.

But we also celebrate on St. Patrick's Day the tremendous influence and success of the Irish in America. Starting with the potato famine in 1848, and even before, large numbers of the Irish emigrated to our shores. They were not always welcomed here, often discriminated against, and usually relegated to menial jobs. But, with their Catholic religion as an important unifying factor, they organized themselves and began to dominate municipal government (and not coincidentally, civil service employment) in many large cities. By the middle of the 20th century, the Irish immigrants and their descendants had growing influence in all strata of society. This progress was symbolized by the election in 1960 of an Irish American Catholic as President, John F. Kennedy.

The overall success of the Irish in the United States was illustrated in my own family, as well as countless others. My mother's father, a younger son living on a potato farm, emigrated to the United States from County Galway in 1906. He met my grandmother, a domestic who had emigrated from County Tipperary, Ireland in 1912 (ironically she was unable to secure tickets on the Titanic and had to take the next ship) in the United States and they were married in 1918. My grandfather had a series of rather ordinary jobs (trolley driver, museum guard, brewery worker, etc.) but he always was able put food on the table, even in the Depression. While my grandfather had about a fourth grade formal education (he actually was pretty well read, though) and my grandmother went to about the eight grade, both of their children (my mother and her brother) were college graduates. My uncle became a senior bank regulator and my mother, in addition to raising six kids, was an elementary school teacher and then a newspaper editor.

We are obviously going through a bit of a rough patch in the economy. But as the history of the Irish in the United States indicates (and of course many other nationalities have their own stirring tales of success), the overall story of our country is one of almost boundless economic and social opportunity and better days ahead. That is very much worth a toast (or two) on March 17.