A marriage made at the New York St Patrick’s Day parade
Ballinakill native Mike Dunphy has been the president, head bottle-washer, main man in the Laois Association in New York for a long number of years.
And over that time he has inveigled all sorts of hardy souls to carry the Laois banner on St Patrick’s Day. They’ve literally walked in hail, rain and snow over the years but he’ll tell you that the wind is the worst.
You can only imagine what it’s like with the wind whistling through the streets of New York and trying to hold up that massive Laois flag. It’d be like a sail.
In 1998, a young man from Portlaoise, Barry Kavanagh, did the honours. At one point in the parade, Mary Miller from Timahoe who was living and working in New York at the time, recognised him and shouted over at him, as is the norm in the parade.
Carrying that big banner it wasn’t too easy go over and chat so he shouted back the name of bar they could meet for a drink after.
It was an in an age before mobile phones and messaging apps, but did they did manage to meet up, they started doing a line, as they say, shortly after, duly got married a couple of years later and their three kids are now in their late teens and early 20s. Rory, the oldest, was born in New York.
Barry was an eye witness to 9/11, working a short distance away and his story and account of it was front page news that week in the Leinster Express.
Himself, Mary and Rory moved home for good in 2003, settled in Timahoe, and he hadn’t been back to New York in the 22 years since.
For a couple of years after, Mike Dunphy used to write to Barry’s address in New York inviting him back to the parade. He didn’t know that Barry had moved home for good.
On Monday they met for the first time since and Mike Dunphy got a great laugh out of Barry’s St Patrick’s Day love story!
Barry and his brother Damien, as well as cousin Paul Brown, are all in the Timahoe Male Choir. All of them lived in New York at one stage or other in the past and they’ve been having a great time going back to look at their old haunts.
New York – an expensive auld place
“Fifty dollars isn’t worth a sh**e out here,” remarked one of the Timahoe Male Choir members. And you couldn’t disagree.
A euro will buy you $1.09 at the moment so it’s not an overly-complicated calculation to figure out.
A pint of guinness? $11 or essentially €10. You wouldn’t get an Irish breakfast for any less than $30, with one place adding $6 for a slice of soda bread. A small bottle of water could be at least $5.
Then there’s the tips. Two bottles of beer in one place was $16 – but if you gave in a $20 note, a lot of bar staff would take the remaining $4 as a tip.
But spare a thought for the poor divil who gave in a $20 tip in one place when he meant to give £2.
He won’t be as careless the next time.
The New York farming scene
There isn’t a whole lot of farming to see in New York – but there’s plenty of farmers among the Timahoe crew.
Relief milkers and every family labour unit available have been brought in to ensure that the show can go on at home.
One lad even delayed letting the ram at the ewes so his lambing season wouldn’t interfere with the trip. Another is keeping up with the cows calving on an app on his phone.
We haven’t heard of anyone buying cattle on an online mart yet but you’d never know.
Even more relations
Not content with meeting one distant relative we’d never come across before in the Irish American Historical Society, we came across another on Monday morning just before the start of the parade.
We were just after arriving at East 44th Street when we met Jim Miller from Coolderry who lives and works over here. We had met his sister Maire Kennedy on Saturday.
Jim and Maire’s dad Charlie is from Rathcrea, Vicarstown, and was a senior championship winner with Annanough in the 1950s before moving to live and farm in Offaly.
We went to look at a New York Rangers ice hockey match in Madison Square Garden on Sunday night and it was interesting to see that there were two players bearing the Miller name on the Rangers team.
We haven’t checked it out fully yet but we don’t think that K’Andre Miller and J.T Miller are any relation. And we certainly can’t say what side of the family they got the ice hockey from.
Laois man leads out the Meath group
Michael Rainey as Council CEO and Padraig Fleming as its Cathaoirleach were among those leading out the Laois group in the St Patrick’s Day parade in New York.
The Laois grand marshal was a New York man called Matt Journalist, who has marched many times with his friends in the Dunphy family. His wife, kids and mother were all there bedecked in green for the occasion.
Also in the official part of the parade for Laois were Padraig Fleming’s wife and daughter and Eoin Delaney from Crettyard, who was previously part of Sean Fleming’s ministerial staff.
Doing a similar role for Meath was their Council’s CEO Kieran Kehoe from Killenard, who was previously in a managerial role in Laois where he was a colleague of Michael Rainey’s.
Meath had a much later time slot in the parade than Laois had at 2pm – but by pure chance he was spotted by our photographer Paul Dargan.
“Come on Laois,” he roared as he made his way down 5th Avenue. We hope none of the hardy Meath footballers of the 1990s heard him.
SEE ALSO – Check out all our other New York diary pieces here
