After forty years my heart hasn't changed

 

 

 

                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 40^th 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.

If you want to order it, let me know - I can point you in the right direction. And something to know - all proceeds from the book go to help Ireland's homeless.

 

Forty years later.....remembering the 1981 hunger strike and Patsy O'Hara

            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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