At 19, I wore blue jeans and bright colored blouses during the week and a dress on Sunday. I attended Mass, most often by myself and was a student at the small local community college. In the spring of 1981, I would graduate with a two-year degree in journalism in late May and the plan was to transfer in the fall to the larger college twenty miles up the highway. I had worked on campus in a variety of jobs, had a strong circle of friends, and life was overall sweet. The promise of the future lay ahead.
I had always been proud of my heritage, a blend of Irish, German, and English with a bit of Cherokee tossed in for variety. Even at that age I was devoted to tracing family history. At the time, that took far more research than it does now. There was not yet an easy to access internet so I grew up listening to the elders talk about the past, writing to them, documenting what I could and remembering it all. I had a green plastic file box – which I still have – filled with notes, a few photos and other genealogical items.
Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, one in 1943 and the other in 1945. Neither death had anything to do with the war at that time. Both of my grandmothers remarried and so I had two grandpas, just ones who didn’t share my DNA. Years later, I would learn to my delight that Pop, my Granny’s husband, was related to the Daniel Boone family and so I am through the Zumwalts, one of my great-grandmother’s, and so somewhere we are indeed linked. My Granny had always told me that I had the deep blue eyes of my late grandfather but my other grandmother talked little about the man she’d lost so young. She loved him, that much became evident in later years when she did speak of him on occasion but I had learned that my hair, an auburn shade, came to me from Pat Neely. I had asked all my life whose hair did I inherit and no one told me until I found a lock of his hair, saved in a cedar chest with his name and date. When I placed it on my head, it was impossible to tell where his ended and mine began. These days, my hair has faded and become heavily gray, however.
From my Granny, who in another life could have been a seanachie, I learned many of the old ballads and stories of how her family came from Ireland. After decades, I also learned that my ancestors who came from Ireland all came from what is now Northern Ireland, from Belfast and a small town named Keady and from Donegal. That explained, at least to me, why I’d always had such strong feelings about Ireland and about the Six Counties.
At 19, I could sing many of the old songs brought across the water. I could recite some of the poetry, often by heart. I dreamed of going to Ireland one day (haven’t made it yet but I’m still hopeful. I tell my kids, all grown now, that if I get there, I plan to stay for good and I believe that I would.)
That spring, I, like many others around the world, followed the ongoing Troubles and the Hunger Strikes that were taking place at Long Kesh prison. Bobby Sands was the first to die and I wore a black arm band – something I repeated for each of those who died. But then something happened I can’t explain. I was watching the evening news and saw footage of one of the hunger strikers, Patsy O’Hara. You can look up the images and see them now thanks to the internet but then, it was rare footage. It was taken not long before he died and he is emaciated, in poor physical shape, but the site touched my heart. I know it sounds crazy but when he raised his head in the film, I felt as if we exchanged glances, as if we connected.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of those hunger strikes. If I could have, I would have been there for some of the events of commemoration. Forty years ago, I did write a letter however to the O’Hara family. In it, I also sent a wee bit of money for flowers to be placed on Patsy’s grave. Eventually, his brother answered my letter which began a correspondence of several years. I have a poster of Patsy which hung in my bedroom for years, one that drew my grandmother’s attention whenever she came to visit. She would stand in front of it and stare, as if she too felt a connection. Other bits of memorabilia were sent, along with some photos of a band called Moonshine and a Gaelic book with cassette tapes. I still have that book and the letter in Gaelic I found much later tucked inside. By then, I could read it. I still have Tony’s letters tucked away.
When I moved to Missouri Southern State University, the letters went with me. I would read them over again in class and I had hoped to move to Ireland to stay.
Although the poem A Butcher’s Dozen: A Lesson In The Octave of Widgery by Thomas Kinsella is about an earlier event, Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972, I wanted a copy. Today it’s possible to just type it into a search engine and there it is but then, I had to get a copy via interlibrary loan. It took some time and the small chapbook I received was a professor’s personal copy. I took an advanced upper division poetry course and my thesis was all about that poem. I read it for the class – I’m not at all sure that most appreciated it. I am certain the instructor didn’t – but we won’t go into details.
I recently found this reading by Irish actor Donal O’Kelly for the Derry Free Museum on January 20, 2021. I’ve watched it several times and although he does it far better than I’m sure I did, I’m taken with how he uses the same inflections I did. The link is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bZfRb0aaso
Should you see me wearing my Free Derry t-shirt or my Saoirse t-shirt, now you’ll know why if you didn’t before. I wrote many poems back forty years ago about the hunger strikes and Ireland. As I aged, my writing focus turned to other things but I’ve found myself penning a new poem which I’ll share perhaps.
My son Patrick, in case you wonder, is named for Patrick Patsy O’Hara. I said I would name him after Patsy and did, years later. He’s well aware and in middle school, he did a presentation on the Irish struggles for freedom. The teacher, with some Irish heritage as well, was impressed and became the one local person who could understand me if I spoke Irish to him. Sometimes I call my son Padraig and often mo buachaill. And, my grandfather was Pat Neely but his name wasn’t Patrick. He was nicknamed Pat because, as my grandmother explained, he was young and Irish.
Forty years and I’ve never forgotten and never will. Earlier this year I received a copy of a book written by Patsy’s brother, Tony O’Hara or Antoin O’Hara. It is an amazing, brilliant, emotional, in depth read and I recommend it highly for anyone who wants insight and understanding into The Troubles, to Northern Ireland, or Ireland today.
The title is The Time Has Come.
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