Memory Served

The Aisling Irish Immigration Center Launches "While Mem'ry Brings Us Back Again"

By John Mooney

For their first assignment, the trigger phrase was: I remember...
I remember the first time I saw myself in the mirror . . .
I remember my first day at school . . .
I remember the awful snowstorm of 1947 . . .
I remember coming to America on the boat . . .

The last suggestion ignited a torrent of recollections from around the table - "I came on the SS America... the SS Washington... the Britannica... the Olympia... the Queen Elizabeth... the SS United States.

Each Friday at the Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers, Frances Browner conducted a Creative Writing workshop for the organization's "Young at Heart" senior citizens group. An adjunct professor at New York University, Browner realized she had struck a mother lode of golden memories. The project later expanded beyond the participants in the seniors group, predominantly residents of Yonkers and the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, to include immigrants who moved to Philadelphia, Miami and other areas.

The result is While Mem'ry Brings Us Back Again, a book recounting the personal histories of 35 Irish immigrants who arrived in America between 1927-1964. It is a moving, 295-page publication that chronicles the extraordinary stories of ordinary people who made the journey from their homeland in search of a better life.

The memoir details first impressions of America, the social life upon arrival - usually revolving around Sundays at Gaelic Park or Saturday evenings at dance halls, such as The Jaeger House. The men recounted landing their first jobs as bus drivers, subway motormen, police officers, musicians and banking professionals. Meanwhile, the women recalled jobs they took as domestics in the homes of some of New York's richest and most powerful families. They also worked as telephone company operators, sales people at B. Altman's stores, and waitresses at Schrafft's restaurants.

A number of the men wrote about their experiences in the U.S. military. Frank Bergin, a Sunnyside, Queens resident and former president of the Irish Business Organization of New York, recounts being shot in the wrist during World War II, not long before the conflict's end. Band leader Sean Fleming described parachuting into Vietnam, playing guitar for wounded troops, and the smell of napalm.

At a time when debate is rampant about immigration policy, this new book provides insight into the heartache of leaving one's own home for a strange land. Each participant recalled memories of their childhoods and the families, villages, towns, and parishes he or she left behind.

Has anyone ever written more poignantly about the finality of leaving Ireland in the mid 20th century than Eileen Moran, who emigrated from Cork City?

I wonder if my mother ever missed having me around when she got sick. Did she regret sending me off that day, her little girl in ankle socks, on a journey from which I would never return?

"Far from their families, friends and everything they were used to. Every one of them overcame homesickness and the challenges of a new world and built fine lives for themselves in this great country," said Tim O'Connor, Consul General of Ireland, who hosted the book launch party at the Irish Consulate last week. "These stories will delight, absorb and uplift you. They also underline again the amazing story of the Irish in America and just how good this country has been to millions of our people."

One of the most intriguing individuals in the book is Joe Cunningham, the 94-year old entertainer, who opened the Jaeger House on September 29, 1953, and filled dance halls from Manhattan to the Rockaways. He remembered DeValera's first election and the assassination of Michael Collins. The former bandleader also wrote about cousins who were beaten and burned by the Black and Tans and about being a messenger boy during the Irish Civil War.

"I was only 8 or 9 years old. Mrs. Harte from our village (whose husband was on the run), would give me a mug of milk and a cut of bread, and she'd put a note in my shoe," recounted Cunningham, recounted. "I'd be shaking past the barracks."

War Stories

Other war stories - from a much different conflict - are equally compelling. Kerry native Sean Fleming recalled his early success as a musician and how being shipped to Vietnam disrupted his career, which included seven national TV appearances on the Merv Griffin Show. In Vietnam, Fleming picked up an old guitar and played a few tunes for injured soldiers in the M*A*S*H hospitals. A woman from the Pentagon happened to see him one day, and helped arrange for him to entertain the troops to help raise morale, rather than fight in the field.

Fleming also wrote about the camaraderie in Vietnam, an American public that he felt was unappreciative of the soldiers putting their lives on the line, and the children he saw burned by napalm.

"The thing that I sometimes find really hard... every time I think about the kids," the bandleader wrote. "To see a small child's body melt away... that's the one thing that hit me the hardest. When it (napalm) hit them, the only way I can describe it really is that it melted them away."

• Jimmy Clarke, a 100-year-old former subway motorman who is the fourth of 13 siblings to reach the century mark;
• Country Bank president and 1988 St. Patrick's Day Parade grand marshal Bill Burke, who tells of how he got into the banking business following a chance meeting in a Chinese laundry;
• Michael Browner, a retired English professor at the University of Miami whose daughter, Carol, became head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Clinton;
• Agnes Delaney, chair of the Aisling Center, who came to America, in part, to find out what was beyond the mountains she knew growing up in Ardnagall, Co. Galway;
• Denis Mulcahy, the founder of Project Children, who detailed his experiences as a long-haired, "Swedish" undercover policeman in the 1970s;
• Pat Sheehy, a woman for whom September 11 is incredibly significant - it was the day she was married, the day her husband died in 1990, and the day her only son escaped from the World Trade Center.

Editor Frances Browner organized the project and interviewed each of the participants. During the process, she felt as if she had been transported back 50 years and plunged into a place that was already forgotten by the time of her own arrival in 1987.

"Why did I not know all this before? Putting this book together may help keep these memories alive for future generations of Irish Americans to know what it was like to be a new arrival," Browner said. "A story does not need to have an elaborate plot, intricate language or sophisticated vocabulary -- a story should simply come from the heart. All of these memoirs come from the hearts of the people who lived them."

With the publishing of While Mem'ry Brings Us Back Again the memories once in danger of being lost have been preserved forever. The book is available for a donation of $20.00 plus $5.95 shipping & handling by sending a check to Aisling Center, 990 McLean Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10704. It can also be ordered online at www.aislingcenter.org. The proceeds will support the Aisling Center's community outreach programs.

"We tried to include as many compelling personal histories as we could without making the book too overwhelming," said Agnes Delaney, chairman of the Aisling Center. "The book presents a representative sample of the experiences of 35 individuals from 18 different counties who arrived in America from 1927-1964."