SEATTLE-IRISH NEWS - MAY 2009
 THE GALWAY RAMBLERS, an Irish traditional session band from Galway, will be performing in the Seattle area for 10 days starting May 21, including at the May 25 Memorial Day Mass at St. Patrick Cemetery. For details and a schedule of performances, visit www.GalwayRamblers.com. |
 THE HAYES FAMILY gravesite at St. Patrick Cemetery in Kent. The patriarch of the family was Patrick Hayes from Co. Limerick, a miner, gold prospector and logger before becoming a hops farmer in 1860 in O'Brien, an area south of Seattle. That's where St. Patrick Cemetery was started in 1880. |
 THE SEATTLE GAELS hurling season is back in full swing and already they have several practice games under their belt. Here, the ageless Liam Boyle, who captained the Antrim team when they won the All-Ireland U-21 Championship in 1969, shows some of the young bucks how the game is played. |
 CO. LAOIS-BORN Father Bill Treacy with Ireland's Attorney General Paul Gallagher at the Matt Talbot Dinner in Seattle on March 13. Father Treacy celebrates his 90th birthday on June 7. |
By JOHN KEANE
RECENT DEATHS - Condolences to the families and friends of the following who passed away this past month:
• Bridget (Roche) Topalian, 88, from Co. Kilkenny, who died in Seattle.
• Catherine "Kate" Larsen, 86, a Dublin-born resident of Centralia, who died in Seattle.
• John Mangan, 94, from Co. Limerick, who died in Wenatchee.
• Mary Carroll, 91, from Co. Carlow, who died in Seattle.
• Gertrude Lobsinger, 96, the Co. Louth-born mother of Maureen Keane of Seattle, who died in Detroit.
• Margaret Moore (formerly Sr. Rita, CSJP), who died in Seattle and is survived by six siblings in Ireland.
• David McGarry of Seattle, the 57-year-old brother of former Friends of St. Patrick President, Tim McGarry, who died in Seattle.
• Florence Taylor, born in Belfast in 1917, who died in Seattle.
• Marie Borelan, 79, a native of Northern Ireland, who died in Bellevue.
• Kathleen Boyle, 81, a long time active member of the Seattle-area's Irish community, who died in Federal Way.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha - May their faithful souls rest at the right hand of God
MEMORIAL DAY MASS - An open-air Mass with hymns and other prayers in the Irish language will be offered at the Seattle area's Irish pioneer cemetery, St. Patrick Cemetery in Kent, at 10:30 AM on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25.
The concelebrated Mass will remember in a special way all who are buried there and also all the Irish buried in cemeteries around Seattle. Booklets with the hymns and prayers in both Irish and English will be provided.
The Galway Ramblers, a group of traditional Irish musicians visiting from Galway, will perform and provide accompaniment for a local Seattle Irish Choir.
Established in 1880, St. Patrick Pioneer Cemetery is located one half mile east of Exit 152 off I-5, on Orillia Road at 204th Street in Kent, just east of Sea-Tac Airport.
Most of the Irish-born who were buried at St. Patrick in the early years spoke Irish, including undoubtedly all of the Irish-born Christian Brothers who are buried there.
The idea of having parts of the Memorial Day Mass in Irish will serve to honor in a special way the Irish history of the graveyard and we're hoping that Seattle's Irish community will attend in droves to honor those who came here from Ireland before us.
In 1880, Richard and Sarah O'Connell (who were from Counties Clare and Galway) set aside four and a half acres on the family farm to establish a cemetery which they named for St. Patrick.
The O'Connells also allowed their cemetery to be used by other Catholic families in the area, most of whom were also Irish. There are numerous gravestones (or were - there has been a great deal of vandalism over the years) listing people as being born in Ireland, many also listing the county.
In several cases, the county names are misspelled, e.g., "Co. Donnegaal Ireland", "Co. Claire Ireland", "Corrick, Ireland", and "Tiparri Ireland." For more information, contact GaelicMass@irishclub.org or call (425) 290-7839.
GAELIC HEADSTONE - An Irish language scholar who viewed a photo of that 1860s headstone on Whidbey Island with the Irish language inscription, wrote that he had never before seen anything like it inscribed in stone
He wrote, "The person who (inscribed) this was a master of the Irish bardic tradition going right back into the middle ages. The writer/carver who made this used medieval manuscript shorthand which went out of use as the Irish finally gained ready access to the printing press in the middle of the Nineteenth Century."
The headstone, which can be viewed at www.irishclub.org/headstone.htm, was sculpted and engraved in Ireland before being erected on Whidbey Island in the 1860s.
BOOK CLUB - Patricia Monaghan, author of the Red-Haired Girl From the Bog, will be in Seattle the second week of June and a reading is being arranged by the Irish Book Club. Keep your calendars open between June 8-12 or e-mail hudit@comcast.net.
BLOOMSDAY - The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will perform a staged reading of Circe, chapter 15 of James Joyce's Ulysses, on June 13, 1:30-4 PM at the University Bookstore, 4326 University Way NE, Seattle.
Donations are welcome to cover costs. In Joyce's version of the Circe chapter of Homer's Odyssey, Bloom will have hallucinatory encounters with the denizens of Nighttown, Dublin's red-light district, and confronts some of his deepest fantasies and fears, before emerging victorious.
Because of the length of the chapter, only the first half will be performed this year. The Wild Geese have been staging readings of Ulysses and other Irish literature in Seattle since 1998.
They are a diverse group of people with an interest in Irish literature, most of whom are either Irish-born or have Irish connections. For more information, visit: www.WildGeeseSeattle.org.
'LÁ GAEILGE' - A full day of Irish Language Activities at Marylhurst U, 20 minutes south of Portland, on May 30, the Saturday after Memorial Day. Visit www.marylhurst.edu/irish for details.
TALBOT BREAKFAST - Matt Talbot Center's Annual Downtown Business Breakfast will be held on May 21 from 7:30 AM - 9 AM with University of Washington football coach Steve Sarkisian as the Keynote Speaker. All are invited and there is no charge, although donations to the downtown homeless program will be solicited. For reservations, contact (425) 290-7839 or Talbot@irishclub.org.
GAA TELECASTS - All televised Gaelic Football and Hurling games in Ireland will be telecast live at Fadó Irish Pub, First and Columbia, downtown Seattle. Visit the Fadó website at: www.fadoirishpub.com/seattle for weekly updates on teams, telecast times, annual or individual game fees, etc., or call (206) 264-2700.
CONCERTS/CÉILIS - For the latest information on all the Irish/Celtic events in the Seattle area, visit www.hoilands.com. Upcoming highlights include the opening of a new Irish pub called Mick Kelly's @ Full Throttle at 3701 East Valley Road in Renton (near IKEA); Celtic Women in concert May 15-17 at the Paramount Theatre; and the Folklife Festival (which besides great music also includes a Céili, a set dance and sean-nós dance workshop) on Memorial Day Weekend, May 23-25 at the Seattle Center.
CONGRATULATIONS
• To former Seattleite Ann Gill who was married in February in Westport, Co. Mayo, to Niall Delaney from Carlow.
• To Fr. Bill Treacy, the Seattle area's senior Irish priest, who was born near Borris-in-Ossory, Co. Laois, and who will shortly celebrate his 90th birthday.
Best known for the hugely popular interfaith televison program, Challenge, which ran on KOMO-TV from 1960-1974, Treacy was a permanent panelist along with Rabbi Raphael Levine and a rotating Protestant minister.
In 1967, Treacy and Levine founded Camp Brotherhood (www.campbrotherhood.com) near Mount Vernon to foster harmony among different faiths and races. That's where Fr. Treacy will celebrate his 90th birthday on June 7!
MISCELLANEOUS IRISH EVENTS
• AS GAEILGE - The local conversational Irish-speaking group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month at 7:30 PM at Mosaic Coffee House in the Wallingford District. For information, contact james@banshee.com.
• The 10th Annual Pacific Northwest Irish Dance Championships Feis will be held at the Seattle Airport Hilton on May 16-17.
• An Irish Language Immersion Week offering credit and non-credit courses will be held July 11-18 in historic Butte, Montana. For details, visit www.irishmontana.com.
• The Helena Hibernians, the Thomas Francis Meagher Division, plan to memorialize their namesake with a bronze monument at Fort Benton. They invite contributions to the project for which more information is available at www.hibernian.org.
• Irish Day at the Races at Emerald Downs in Auburn is June 14, with the first race at 2 PM. Free admission tickets are available for the whole family - just contact (206) 223-3607 or Races@IrishClub.org.
• Seattle's Irish Community Picnic is July 19, at St. Edward State Park in Kenmore. Free admission, games and fun for the entire family, and all are welcome.
• Irish Night at the Seattle Mariners is August 12, 7:10 PM, vs. Chicago White Sox. Reduced price tickets ($40 tickets for $25, $20 tickets for $11) include a Mariners cap with a shamrock design, Irish stepdancers and bagpipe music! For more information and to purchase tickets, visit: Mariners.com/Irish.
| 
