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CENTER IN PHOENIX OFFERS
PLACE TO CELEBRATE HERITAGE Spectacular sunsets aside, Arizona appeared to be a cultural wasteland to Kevin King when he arrived two years ago to attend graduate school. CAPTION: Irish in Arizona CAPTION: 1) They left their
homeland of Ireland long ago and have lived in Phoenix for half a century,
but Pat and Nora Lawlor still enjoy afternoon tea, bake Irish soda bread
in the morning and speak with a brogue. 2) Kevin King bought a brick in
the Irish Cultural Center to honor ancestors who emigrated during the
potato famine. King embodies a new generation of Irish-Americans in Arizona. Descendants of the early immigrants, they come now to study, to seek jobs in high-tech industries, and to keep alive their heritage. A beacon of that heritage and its future, the Irish Cultural Center, opened in August on Central Avenue. The center is home to classes in dance, music, art and other Celtic studies. On Saturday, the Arizona Irish Festival comes to the center, not only for the more than 10 percent of the state's population that claim Irish ancestry, but for all the non-Irish who favor the verve of Irish music and food. King plans to be there, playing his ancient Irish drum, the bodhran. By teaching the bodhran at the cultural center and playing at Irish pubs, King says he stays connected to his Irishness, though it's a couple of generations away. His great-great-grandfather Michael immigrated in 1848 to the Eastern United States. Kevin, though, is the first in his family to emigrate West. He moved from his hometown of Kensington, Md., where the Irish community was deeply entrenched for generations. "Here, the generational culture just doesn't exist," he said, "My dad and his dad and his dad played the accordion." Being Irish was part of his everyday life in Kensington. Like King, Eileen Connell, 38, also grew up with strong ties to her culture in Denver. Her mother emigrated from Ireland in the 1950s. "When I first moved here," she recalled, "I was heartbroken in Tucson." It was St. Patrick's Day and she couldn't find a parade or the Irish. "It was so sad to me ... there was hardly a crowd out at all." Though the Irish community in Arizona is deeply committed, it had no central core to bring together everyone who shared the heritage. The center helps fill that gap. Center Director Patrick Cunningham, 49, has lived here since 1976. He said he had little involvement with the Irish community until two years ago when he was invited to the Irish Foundation of Arizona, an Irish social club. There he spotted member Pat McMorrow, jolting his memories. "I went back to my childhood in Chicago," he said. "I stared at him (white-haired, blue-eyed and ruddy face who spoke with a brogue) and he looked just like my grandfather John Joseph Houlihan who died when I was 9." When the Irish began moving West in the 1800s, many of them were mavericks; they traded the safety and tradition of the East for the West, where they gained clout economically and socially. Take Nellie Cashman, who was called the "Angel of Tombstone" after she solicited cash to build Sacred Heart Catholic Church and Hospital and organized the town's first St. Patrick's Day celebration on March 17, 1881. Born Ellen O'Kissane in County Cork, she fled the Great Hunger in 1850 with her mother, landing in Boston. As a young woman, she sought fortune in the West in 1878 when she arrived in Tucson for the big silver strike. She worked mining claims, bought boarding houses, restaurants and mercantile shops. Cashman moved to fast-growing Tombstone, where her restaurant fed the likes of other Irish-Americans - the Earps, the Clantons and the McLowery gang. The Irish were among the first to settle in the Arizona mining camp of Jerome, where they built roads, linked the town to the railroad and cut the first mine shafts. Many ascended to affluence as they left the mines and opened businesses. After the Depression and World War II, the heart of Irish society in Jerome left for the promise of a different boomtown: Phoenix. Pat Lawlor, 82, grew up where the Shannon River meets the Atlantic Ocean in County Kerry. Nora Lawlor, 82, is the daughter of farmers from County Mayo. They have never looked back. There is little about their central Phoenix home that links them to Arizona, just a metal cut-out of a coyote howling at the moon hangs on the front door. Inside, there are watercolors of Irish landscapes, Waterford crystal and loaves of Irish soda bread that Nora bakes every day. The Lawlors and other Irish-born and Irish-American families in mid-century Arizona cut the path for today's new center and Kevin King's generation to connect to their culture. For King, it won't be just the sunsets that keep him here. It is his connection to his Irish community. If he does leave, he will have left a piece of himself here. An outline of Ireland has been sandblasted into the red bricks outside the Irish Cultural Center. King bought a brick engraved with his parent's names. "It's a nice way of leaving my family's mark here." |
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