Minister Ahern added

Over the past ten years, the Government has also dramatically increased funding to those organisations in the US who assist the most vulnerable Irish immigrants, including the undocumented. Last year, these groups received almost $1.3million in Government funding and a further significant allocation will shortly be announced. I am particularly proud of the structured and strategic approach to our emigrants implemented by this Government and look forward to further strengthening and deepening this commitment in the years to come.

Minister Ahern added,

Over the past ten years, the Government has also dramatically increased funding to those organisations in the US who assist the most vulnerable Irish immigrants, including the undocumented. Last year, these groups received almost $1.3million in Government funding and a further significant allocation will shortly be announced. I am particularly proud of the structured and strategic approach to our emigrants implemented by this Government and look forward to further strengthening and deepening this commitment in the years to come.

According to ILIR from their website www.irishlobbyusa.org:Under the current immigration system, neither Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy's Irish ancestors or relatives could come to America legally today. The Irish will stop coming to America if Congress does not support comprehensive immigration reform.

Another obstacle faced by the Leadville Irish was the nativist and anti-Catholic Vigilance Committee, a secret group of local men who saw it as their duty to keep Irish newcomers in their assigned social place. They pinned notes onto the clothing of the dead as a warning to Irish immigrants.

Life for Irish miners was extremely dangerous. The average age of death in 1880 in the Annunciation Church records was 33. Every week, newspapers printed sensational stories of mining accidents:

Mangled in a Mine. William Kelley killed at work in Howell mine.when a large quantity of rock broke loose and killed him instantly.

Irish women in Leadville included Molly Brown and Baby Doe Tabor, but life for women was equally difficult. Nearly three fourths of Irish women in Leadville in the 1880s worked as domestic servants. Others were washerwomen, seamstresses, nuns, or prostitutes. The 1880 census lists a 19-year old Irish woman named Helen Donovan working as a miner.

Leadville was the destination for numerous Irish nationalists such as Michael Davitt. Irish bare knuckle boxers and personalities also made a point to visit Leadville when crossing the nation by train. In 1883, Oscar Wilde spoke to a packed Tabor Opera House. His topic: Aesthetics and the Ethics of Art. Newspaper accounts have Wilde being lowered into Tabors Matchless Mine following his talk, where, according to Wilde, "I had supper, the first course was whiskey, the second whiskey and the third whiskey."

Today, remnants of this once-thriving Irish community in east Leadville survive. Annunciation Catholic Church still serves a largely Irish congregation. Old St. Vincent's Hospital is now being converted into lofts. In the 'Catholic Free Section' of old Evergreen Cemetery, you can find acres of unmarked graves, holding the remains of many of these Irish immigrants who chased their dreams all the way to Leadville.

The book is still available directly through the author at www.bornagainarish.com (signed copies and discount shipping). It is also available, at the Tattered Cover book store in Denver, and will soon be available at independent stores and major chains such as Barnes and Noble and Borders.

Dancers from the Bennett School have won the State Championship in adult team dancing for the past two years.

The Foundation for Celtic Arts and Studies, a 501(c)3 organization, was established in February of 2007. Our mission is to support students of Celtic dance, music and art, with the intent of fostering a long lasting appreciation and study of the Celtic arts.

The Foundation will grant scholarships for Regional, National, and hopefully one day, World Championships. FCAS support and enrichment will include, but not be limited to, financial aid for qualified dancers to attend competitions, subsidizing workshops and the St. Patrick's Day parade. Long term plans include funding an annual performance at a state of the art theater. The Bennett School of Irish Dance is supported through this effort.

The Spirit of Ireland, Performances by The Bennett School of Irish Dance & Last Night's Fun, Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S Allison Parkway, Lakewood, Sat. May 12, 7 p.m.. Tickets: $12.50 For tickets call: 303-987-7876.

Bartenders Aileen Kenny & Julia Farkas from the Irish Snug wait their turn to pour.

The Irish Rover Representative, Brendan Dorney was the first contestant up to pour

Beer Beer Beer

and the Winner is Celtic Tavern's Patrick Balai

The Ring

THe next morning, Jack Leonard called Mike and told him to go to Chicago's O'Hare airport, to meet the incoming flight from Phoenix. Jack had talem tje romg to the airport in Phoenix and entrusted it to one of the flight attendants on the flight. No names were exchanged, no contracts drawn up, just a trusting soul of a fther, a willing courier, perhaps touched by the romance of the situation, and a young nam not sure what was happening, waiting across the country.

Mike hung around the gate, watched all the passengers disembark, and waited some more. Finally, one of the flight attendants walking off the plane saw him standing there, come over to him and said, You must be the boy". She handed him the ring, gave him a hug and said, "Have a wonderful life". With that, she turned and went along on her way.

Cathy O’Brien accepted Mike’s proposal along with Bridget O’Halloran’s ring, and Mike returned to college, with the $1000 he’d planned to spend on the ring now tucked away in his pocket, but not for long. For reasons he still can’t explain today, Mike spent the money on a movie camera. “I always have felt like time is going by too fast”, Mike says. “I bought the camera partly as my way of slowing down time, or stopping it, even if just for a moment. At the time, it was a completely illogical thing for me to do but now, I see it was one of the most practical things I ever did.”

Mike and Cathy were married following his college graduation, and moved to Phoenix. Three children, Matt, Megan and Kerry, arrived over the next few years, and provided plenty of material for the budding moviemaker, while a series of dead-end jobs never quite paid the bills. (A fourth child, Brendan, arrived several years later).

“What I really did best was what I did just for fun: making movies with my Super 8 camera. The subjects, for the most part, were the members of my family. By capturing the fleeting moments of childhood on film, then splicing the scenes to a music soundtrack played on a separate tape recorder, I had found a way to slow down time. And I was being creative. Nothing suited me better.”

Leonard was 30 years old, with a nose that had been broken half a dozen times, long curly hair, and no television experience when he took the advice of a friend and decided to pursue a career on the small screen. He lugged his projector and tape recorder to news directors at all three Phoenix network affiliates as well as the independent station. All cited his age, lack of experience and lack of journalistic background in their rejections. But the news director at the PBS station gave him a tryout, which led to a part-time job as a feature reporter. The catch: his new position wasn’t included in the budget, but forty bucks a week could be cadged from the petty cash fund. This worked out to less than a dollar an hour. “With a wife, three children, a mortgage, a car payment, and a bunch of other bills to pay … how could I refuse?”

Within three months, Leonard was hired as a part-time sports reporter at the CBS affiliate. That job soon evolved into a sports anchor job. Soon thereafter, NBC Network News offered him a job as a feature reporter on the Today Show. Less than two years after beginning his television career, Leonard had achieved great success at what he’d always envisioned: being creative with his movie camera.

“I think the urge to tell stories was the Irish in me coming out. As a second generation Irishman, I didn’t feel that “Irishness” until I saw a cousin in Ireland that looked just like me. He had 30 cows, no computer, and a humble farm life. Because my grandfather left Ireland and his brother stayed, their children had very different lives. But we share the same looks, the same humor and the same outlook on life.”

The Journey
“The Ride Of Our Lives” chronicles Leonard’s spin around the country with his mother, father, and several of his children. The idea for this journey came to him one night as he worried about his aging parents. Their recent move into a retirement village had been a mistake; they were bored and lonely and lacked the resources to move again.
With his eldest daughter Megan expecting the clan’s first grandchild in just two months, Leonard decided to take his parents on a month-long trip across the country to revisit the important sites of their lives. The goal: to make it back home to Chicago before the birth of his first grandchild, his parents’ first great-grandchild. The resulting adventure is a rollicking, energetic romp that is poignant, memorable and always entertaining. The adventure begins in Arizona, derails half an hour later with a screech and a crunch of metal, and then proceeds East, through more than a dozen states, meetings with memorable characters, visits to sites both grand and humble, and always, the entertaining wisdom and commentary from Mike and his irrepressible parents.

Caravaning in two RV’s, the trip spans not only the country from coast to coast, but a century’s worth of family history. Their story runs from deeply funny to deeply moving, and reminds us all that at the beginning and at the heart of every journey is a family with its own richness, lore and memories. Leonard discovers a great deal about the lives his parents lived. He sees glimpses of his mother as a nine-year-old girl, armed only with a dining room chair as her alcoholic father badgers her frightened mother. He sees his father as a 12 year old, sent back to Ireland by ship, alone, to visit family left behind there, just after the deaths of his brother and baby sister. Along with the happier moments and visits to places his parents never dreamed they’d see again, this once-in-a-lifetime ultimate family reunion creatively weaves together their stories along with Leonard’s own engaging memories of growing up and becoming the man so well known and admired by millions of television viewers today.

“The Ride of Our Lives” is a national bestseller, but it has also struck an especially high note within the Irish community. It is a must-read for anyone who enjoys great storytelling about family, adventure, journeys of the road and journeys of the heart. The original hardcover book includes a DVD with footage chronicling the trip, a bonus that helps to bring the reader along for the ride and greatly enhances the entire experience. And the new paperback edition promises to be one of the most talked about books of the summer.

Today, that fateful ring that Bridget O’Halloran bequeathed to her descendants is worn by Megan Leonard. And what about Megan’s baby, due to arrive as the clan completed their journey? You’ll have to read “The Ride Of Our Lives” to find out.

Amy Wasserstrom Cummings is a free lance television producer with Camera-logic, Inc. and a former producer for NBC’s “Today Show”. She can be reached at cameralogic2@comcast.net.

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