When I was nineteen years old, I looked into the eyes of a dying man halfway around the world via the magic of television and made a connection that has endured now for forty years. His name was Patsy O’Hara and he was twenty-three years old, on a hunger strike at Long Kesh prison, known as HM Maze Prison. After 61 days, on May 21, 1981, he died. He was one of ten who died that year and I have never forgotten. As I said I would then, I named my son Patrick in his memory – for him and also for my grandfather Pat Neely.
I never met him in person – that connection was made through television, a blurry moment caught in time. I had already, with an Irish heritage and a rebel’s soul, been following the hunger strikes but somehow that moment created a connection.
When Patsy died, I mourned as if I’d known him. Through photographs and news coverage, I learned about the life he’d led. And, laboriously and with effort in those pre-internet days, I tracked down an address so that I could write a sympathy letter and send a few dollars to buy flowers to put on his grave.
That letter was answered by Patsy’s brother, Tony, who had also been in the Maze prison at the time of the hunger strikes and began a correspondence that lasted for a few years. I treasured every letter and the photos. One of the items that was also sent was a book and tape set to learn Irish. Over the long years I’ve learned a little and I still have the book. It took some time before I could translate the letter in Irish tucked between the pages and when I did, I wept a little.
For a very long time, a poster I had of Patsy hung on my bedroom wall when I lived at home with the family. My grandmother, who had married Pat Neely in her youth, would come and stand before it for long moments. She was quite taken with Patsy O’Hara and his sacrifice. Although she passed away in 2006, when my son was born and I named him Patrick, I called her from the bed where I delivered my son. She said, “I’m so glad you named him Patrick. There’s no better name for a man than that.” She always called him Pat, as she had her beloved husband who left her a young widow at the age of 28 with four children. My son – who I sometimes call Padraig or mo bhuachaill – is now 20 years old. He’s midway through a community college course in auto mechanics and is working full time for a small shop
Now these many years later, Tony has written a book – it’s called “The Time Has Come” and as the cover states, it covers civil rights, Bloody Sunday, hunger strikes, and the freedom struggle through the eyes of one man who live through it. It’s a brilliant book – an intense read that is gut level open and honest. I ordered a copy and received it, then started reading and kept reading until I finished it. And yes, there were moments when once again I wept a little.
In that 1981 hunger strike, ten men died. They were Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Patsy O’Hara, Raymond McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michasel Devine.
I wrote a lot of poetry that year and for a good while following. Back then, when I was young, I wrote a lot of poetry. If I can find it among the many, many papers and writings and files I’ve saved, I may share some of the poems in the near future.
What I didn’t know then and now do, after reading “The Time Has Come” was that Patsy had smuggled a camera and microphone in – had he not, there would have been no image to see.
After that May, when I graduated from community college, I went to university and wouldn’t have been able to finish except that my dad cashed a savings bond he’d bought for my college the last year because by then I was broke. After those two years, I worked for a while as a substitute teacher and also in food service. Then I gained a job as an advertising copywriter in radio.
And along the way, through many other jobs in a lot of different fields, I married, had children, and managed to get some of my scribbling published.
My Irish roots and heritage often show up in stories like “Forty Eight Hours A Year” in the Jack-O-Spec collection of stories, in some of my novels like Quinn’s Deirdre, Ronan’s Blood Vow, An Emerald Heart, and the new one, due to come out sometime in May, A Cure For Love. Even my American heroes have names like Callahan, Slattery, and Brennan.
In tracing my family history, I’ve learned that most of my folk who came across the water came from what is now Northern Ireland, from near Keady, from Armagh, and such. I also have an ancestor whose journey to America took place after he slew the English Lord and fled for his life. My Granny’s grandfather and his father were the two survivors of their family who fled the Famine.
I was a young woman then – now I am a widow with grown children but my heart and my core self hasn’t changed.
It’s been forty years – almost impossible to believe – since ten young Irishmen including Patsy O’Hara died in the 1981 Hunger Strikes. I’ve never forgotten nor will I. I still listen to Tommy Makem, Mary O’Hara, the Clancy Brothers and others. And I still hope that maybe someday I will make it to Ireland and if I do, I’d like to lay a bouquet on the grave of Patsy O'Hara in Derry City Cemetery.
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