My father was wanted by the F.B.I. Specifically, by J. Edgar Hoover himself. ℘℘℘ The founding director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had heard of Tommy Connor’s prowess on the baseball field. A star player in Washington, D.C., in the 1920s, Dad had graduated from high school at 15, put himself through college by 17, and went on to play Triple-A 3rd base for the old … [Read more...] about Photo Album: Playing Ball With the FBI
Issues
Those We Lost
Ivan Cooper (1944 – 2019) Irish civil rights activist Ivan Cooper died in late June, aged 75. A founding member of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour party, Cooper is best known for his leadership of the anti-internment march in Derry that erupted into 1972’s Bloody Sunday. Born in Killaloo, County Derry, to a Protestant family, Cooper started out as a unionist, … [Read more...] about Those We Lost
The Last Word: Things Fall Apart
The failure to stay young. ℘℘℘ The greatest failure in America is the failure to stay young. It is a failure of imagination, the inability to grasp the alternatives offered by surgery, cosmetology, and pharmacology. It is a failure of will, the indiscipline that results in flagging energies, flabby bodies, and clogged arteries. It is a failure of financial planning, the … [Read more...] about The Last Word: Things Fall Apart
Irish Power, U.S. Politics U.S. Rep. Richie Neal Talks to Niall O’Dowd
Richie Neal’s extraordinary journey from a working-class neighborhood in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C., and one of the most powerful jobs in American politics as the chairman of the Ways & Means Committee. On November 7, 1960, Mary Garvey Neal, who had roots in Ventry, County Kerry, took her son to the Springfield, Massachusetts, town hall. It was very … [Read more...] about Irish Power, U.S. Politics U.S. Rep. Richie Neal Talks to Niall O’Dowd
First Word: A True Friend of Ireland
My first home in America was in the Bronx, a basement apartment on Briggs Avenue off Fordham Road. It was a happy time. We were a revelry of young Irish immigrants caught up in the glorious freedom of having shed parents and small towns and farms for apartments and subway trains that we took down into the city to work as waitresses and bartenders. At the end of the day we’d … [Read more...] about First Word: A True Friend of Ireland