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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Get all the education you can

 

 

                When I graduated from high school, like most graduates, I received many gifts from family and friends but there was one gift that stands out among the rest. 

                My great-aunt Mae, like her brother, my maternal grandfather, was Appalachian born in the southwest corner of Virginia. He came to first Kansas, then to Missouri as a young man but Aunt Mae’s family ended up in Ohio. Many folks from Appalachia went elsewhere to make a living. Some returned home, some didn’t. My grandfather wanted to but died before he could.

                Aunt Mae sent me a pretty graduation card but it had one difference from all the rest – she had sewn a $5 bill to it.  She was never a wealthy woman and lived a frugal life by necessity.  For her, five dollars was a large enough sum that it may well have affected her budget for that week or month. But the money alone wasn’t the most memorable thing about the card – it was what she wrote inside it.

                “Get all the education you can,” she wrote. “It’s something no one can ever take away from you.”

                Those profound words made a deep impression on my 17-year-old self.  They spoke volumes because my great-aunt, like her brother, had an 8^th grade education. In fact, of my grandparents, only my maternal grandmother finished high school. She had plans to go on to college, to MU, but the Great Depression destroyed those dreams when her father lost all the money he had in the bank, his business, and their home.

                I was already enrolled at Crowder College prior to graduation and I had a work/study job for the summer. I had, however, had some qualms about whether or not I should go to college. My generation was the first to go to college with a very few exceptions. One of Aunt Mae’s sisters, Aunt Orpha, had gone to college thanks to a New Deal program and became a teacher. One of my dad’s cousins had gone to college in the 1940’s and became a G-man, working for the FBI.  But other than that, my generation was the first with some who went to college.

                Granny had already made me promise that I wouldn’t get married until I finished my education and if I went to college, that included it.  Her theory was that if I married, I wouldn’t focus on finishing my education and it was a sound one.

                My great-aunt’s words resonated with me and still do.  A woman born in Appalachia, who raised a family and had a husband that worked two jobs as long as I could remember, knew that education held a vital key.  I haven’t become rich thanks to my education but I gained knowledge that has been invaluable throughout my life.

                As a small child, I visited Aunt Mae in her humble, small home that lay in the center of cornfields in Ohio. I ran through those fields with some of my cousins and ate a simple “poor folks” treat called “sugar bread”. I met my great-grandmother there as well, a woman I have never forgotten, whose children called her Mammy growing up. I called her Grandmammy and by the time I met her, Aunt Mae called her Mother.

                Education gave me a boost toward becoming a writer and I value it. In this season of graduations for both high school and college students, Aunt Mae’s advice rings loud and true still.

                Get all the education you can – it’s something no one can ever take away from you.

 

 

Teacher Appreciation Week - Remembering Mr. Gary Sims

 

 

                If I could turn back time’s clock for just a brief span I’d love to share a particular moment about on teacher and his role in my choice to become a writer.  I believe I was sixteen, in my bell bottom Levi jeans with embroidered bells on this day that I recall so very well.   Then as now I had long hair although as a teenager, I wore it loose and free more often than today when I’m likely to have it swept up into a bun for simplicity.  The Neosho High School halls I moved through during an average school day were not so different than some of the halls today and the English hall – as it is now known – remains mostly unchanged.

                As a sophomore I spent more than one period in Room 20 for both composition and literature classes.  Even then I scribbled stories, a few poems, and essays.  Most were for my own enjoyment and I was more than a little shy about sharing at the time.   Mr. Gary Sims was one of my favorite teachers, both as an English instructor but also just as one of my top teachers.  Somehow, he came across to classes and to me as more “real” than some of the other faculty members.  He understood how we thought in a way that many adults didn’t seem to do at the time and he understood that if we wore faded blue jeans or worn-out shoes, we weren’t necessarily bad kids without a future.  He saw through our facades and our teen attitudes into our hearts.

                I wrote a lot of compositions in sophomore English that year but when our assignment was to write a descriptive essay about a person, I decided to write about my Granny.   I poured out my heart into that assignment, using the best descriptive terms I could conjure up and turned it in.   Once done, I didn’t think much about it until a few days later when Mr. Sims announced he wanted to read one of the essays to the class.  I figured it would be someone else’s until he read that first line and I recognized it as mine.  My heart pounded harder as I struggled not to blush tomato red and failed.  I stared down at my desk, excited and pleased and yet almost afraid what the class might think when he told them who wrote it.   His calm voice read my words aloud and gave them power.  The class grew silent long before he finished and at the end, he asked if they could guess who wrote it.   Several names got tossed out but no one mentioned me.

                Mr. Sims told them who wrote it and praised me.  His smile melted away my bashfulness for a moment and when he handed back the papers, I saw my grade – 100% “A” with his comment, “Beautifully written!”  That paper hangs on the wall of my little office corner today as a reminder of his encouragement and inspiration.   Although Mr. Sims was not the only teacher in either high school or college to encourage my writing, his impact hit me hardest.  His praise came first and it reached through my prickly teenage skin to touch me.  Because he believed in me, I began to learn to believe in myself as a writer.  He made me believe I just might become a writer one day.  That one essay wasn’t the only time Mr. Sims offered up a word or two to keep me going.

                Although Mr. Sims passed away some years ago, when I sat down to write the dedication for one of my novels, I knew just who I wanted to dedicate the work to – Mr. Sims.

                This is the dedication:

                For the late Gary Sims, my high school English teacher who knew I could write long before I did and who encouraged me in every way. This one's for you, Mr. Sims.

                But, in a way, all the novels I have written are.