The Philadelphia Freedom Trail, Irish style

If you think it’s been hot so far this summer, you should have been in Philadelphia 234 years ago.

Not only did the temperatures soar into the 90s during the summer of 1776, it was, of course, also the year Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and even one (but only one) Irish Catholic revolutionary faced some serious heat from the British.

Earlier this month, I drove my wife and four kids to the City of Brotherly Love to walk those very same (and still hot!) streets where independence was declared over two centuries ago.

What I discovered is that Philadelphia remains a city of mysteries. Forget about why the famous Liberty Bell is cracked. It’s difficult to figure out precisely how many Irish-born people actually signed the Declaration of Independence, or even when that famous document was actually signed.

We first got our Irish up at the National Liberty Museum, a more modern and international take on the themes of freedom and resistance which have made Philly as famous as its cheese steaks.

Alongside American stalwarts of freedom and democracy such as Martin Luther King, you can also see exhibits and displays featuring John Hume and David Trimble, the Nobel Prize winners credited with bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Folks with a strong sense of Irish history, however, might also find it curious that Winston Churchill -- who negotiated on behalf of England with Michael Collins over Ireland’s future -- is also included in this display, which is entitled “Peacemakers.”

Less famous, but no less fascinating, is a section on U.S. Medal of Honor winners which includes the brave exploits of Father Joseph Timothy O’Callahan, a Boston native who was serving as chaplain aboard the USS Franklin in the Pacific when, on March 19, 1945, Japanese forces launched an attack.

O'Callahan bravely ministered to the wounded and assisted as sailors dumped bombs over the sides of the ship. He is believed to have helped save the lives of over 700 crewmen.

Among the artifacts at the National Liberty Museum are White House dishes from the Kennedy administration, which are festooned with shamrocks, while a display entitled “Coming to America” explores the impact of immigrants throughout American society.

This exhibit does, however, contain at least one error. New York Governor Al Smith did face intense bigotry when he became the first Roman Catholic to run for president in 1928, but he was not the “child of Irish immigrants.” His father was of mixed European ancestry.

The real mysteries of Philly began with the famous Liberty Bell. It remains unclear how or even when the famous crack appeared in the bell, which still draws long lines of visitors.

Meanwhile, after you cross Market Street and visit Independence Hall, you really start asking some questions. July 4 is considered America’s birthday, since it is the date the Declaration of Independence was announced from these very steps.

However, it remains unclear when exactly those 56 famous people actually signed the document. Some of them were not even in Philly in July of 1776!

In fact, some historians believe only the famously ostentatious John Hancock and Derry-born Charles Thomson signed the first version of the document. And yet, Thomson the Irishman is not considered among the 56 famous signatories because he served as a record keeper rather than delegate.

Meanwhile, there might not have been a Declaration to sign if not for Tyrone native John Dunlap, the printer who produced the first copies of the document.

Three Irish-born revolutionaries did sign the Declaration -- Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith. All of these men, however, were Presbyterians.

Only one Catholic signed the Declaration, Charles Carroll, whose family had been persecuted for religious reasons in Ireland, England and the U.S.

Don’t weep too strongly for the Carrolls, however. They were the Kennedys of their day, a multi-generational political dynasty with humble beginnings who eventually amassed a huge fortune.

At the end of this stroll through the historical streets of Philly, I was, first of all, very hot, but also amazed that great events unfolded in these very buildings. I was amazed, further, that we are still working on pinning down the details of precisely how those great events unfolded.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Remembering a True Hell's Kitchen ‘Gentleman’

I never met Mickey Spillane, the so-called "gentleman" gangster who ran the infamous Westies for decades. But I did have the privilege and pleasure of knowing his son, Bobby Spillane, who died this past weekend following what by most accounts was a terrible accident on the Hell's Kitchen Manhattan streets he knew so well.

According to police, Bobby had been leaning out the sixth floor window of an apartment building, perhaps calling after his brother Michael, when the screen gave way. Family members have noted that Bobby had been wearing a sling. This may have prevented him from properly balancing himself.

Spillane fell out of the window and was later pronounced dead. He was just 45 years old.
Looking at this unjust turn of events, there is a temptation to simply note that another member of one of the most infamous Irish clans in New York history is gone. There is a temptation to note that another slice of Irish Hell's kitchen has been lost.

There is even, for me, a great sense of exasperation because some people have confused Bobby's crime boss dad with the famous crime writer Mickey Spillane.

But what must be said, first and foremost, is that Bobby Spillane was as much of a gentleman as anyone else you will ever meet. This even though it was not always easy growing up in the Spillane household.

"I was born in 1964," Spillane wrote in a 2002 Daily News front page article about his father. "My father, Michael John Spillane, a man the papers would later refer to as the last Gentleman Gangster, was at this time boss of the Midtown rackets. Dark Irish and movie-star handsome, he had already been shot and stabbed and had served three years at Sing Sing by the time I arrived."

Bobby recalled playing in a park with his dad when he got into an argument with another boy. In the end, Bobby's father confronted the boy's dad, who himself was left laying on the ground.
When Bobby later wondered about his Dad's job, all Mickey Spillane said was, "Son, I'll answer all your questions when you get older."

That day never came. The Westies -- the gangsters who claimed they had to be crazier than everyone else because they were Irish -- had ruled the West Side for decades, but the times were a'changing.

Rival gangsters with a stake in the West Side declared Mickey Spillane's day had come and gone. One evening, Bobby has recalled, the intercom box in his apartment buzzed.
Mickey Spillane went out into the Hell's Kitchen night and was later gunned down by a killer who is still unknown. Bobby was 12 years old.

He could have spent the following years struggling to match his father's exploits, injuring himself and others along the way. He could have exploited the political connections on his mother's side of the family, the famous West Side McManus political clan.

But Bobby Spillane became a Teamster and also was bitten by the writing and acting bug.
He appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, from The Thomas Crown Affair to Rescue Me. He also wrote an off-Broadway farce entitled All Dolled Up about a cross-dressing mobster.

“You have to keep it wild," Spillane told me when we talked about the play a few years back.
Most importantly, along the way, Spillane made friends. Among them, fellow New York Irish comic and actor Colin Quinn, with whom Spillane was working on another show at the time of his death.

The show's status is up in the air now. Which is sad because we need personal New York stories like these now more than ever.

Why? Because some people are so ignorant of New York's recent past they confused Bobby's Dad with the famous writer of the Mike Hammer crime stories.

One L.A. Times reader commented: "Identifying author Mickey Spillane...as a notorious New York mobster is like calling James Joyce a famous Irish terrorist."

Then again, as Spillane friend and Westies historian T.J. English noted in his book Paddy Whacked, Bobby himself once excitedly ran home with a copy of a Mickey Spillane book.

"Hey Pop...Have you read his stuff?" Bobby asked.

"I tried," Bobby's Dad replied. "Too much sex."

With Bobby's death, we have been robbed of so many more memories as funny, poignant, ironic and tragic as these.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

An Irish Bernie Madoff

Quinn's horse Grey Swallow won the Irish Derby

Before Bernie Madoff, there was Thomas F. Quinn.

Who was also known as Robert Dzigi, Pele Lechien, Tasos Douros, among other aliases quite exotic for an Irish kid from Brooklyn.

Back in November of 2009, just four months after the world famous Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, Thomas Quinn was spending time in Ireland. This was not unusual. Quinn, after all, owned a racing horse named Grey Swallow, which won the 2004 Irish Derby (pictured above). When he flew into JFK airport last November, federal authorities greeted Quinn.

They were charging him with crimes related to a telecommunications fraud ring which may have fattened Quinn’s bank account by as much as $50 million.

Believe it or not, for the 72 year-old Quinn, these charges were fairly minor. During a career that international authorities claim has spanned decades, conservative estimates suggest that Quinn has swindled people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“During his swindling career, Mr. Quinn helped run a giant boiler-room operation out of a villa overlooking the French Riviera, had a champion racehorse and was alleged to have helped former financier Martin Frankel pull off one of history's largest insurance frauds,” The Wall Street Journal noted in a March report.

“U.S. authorities say he stole an estimated $500 million total.”

The Journal added that Quinn’s record “includes three SEC injunctions and two federal criminal convictions,” adding that a federal judge once called Quinn "incorrigible" and that his professional life appeared “to be devoted exclusively to securities fraud."

However, while Bernie Madoff caught the attention of the world and was sentenced to a century and a half in prison, Quinn, thus far, has remained out of the public eye. He has also served only about six years in prison.

Following his arrest after his trip to Ireland, Quinn was taken to a prison near Dallas where he is awaiting a trial which is slated to begin in February 2011.

Quinn could face up to 20 years in prison. Given his colorful career, it should not be surprising that Quinn has pleaded not guilty. Quinn’s life of (alleged) international crime is all the more astonishing given his humble blue collar Irish American upbringing. He grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s. “The only son of an Irish-American truck driver,” as The Wall Street Journal put it.

Quinn attended Catholic grammar schools and eventually moved onto St. John’s University. This is the same path an entire generation of outer-borough Irish Catholics used to become upwardly mobile lawyers, politicians or other movers and shakers. Quinn was clearly ambitious, not to mention accomplished.

So, whereas many of Quinn’s fellow Irish Americans would have moved onto careers with the New York City police or fire departments, Quinn seemed interested in something on a much more grand scale. Quinn was admitted to the New York bar in 1962.

Within a few years, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into Quinn’s investment schemes. By the 1980s, Quinn was wheeling and dealing from a posh French villa complete with a waterfall and view of the Mediterranean Sea.

Authorities allege he was selling worthless stocks to naïve investors.
By 1985, Forbes Magazine was reporting that Quinn “was behind a scam” which brought “worthless companies public” in the Unites States and sold shares to “Europeans who can be as transfixed as we are by the American dream.”

French authorities arrested Quinn in 1988. A year later, The Economist magazine dubbed Quinn “the billion dollar brain.” It seemed like the end of the ride for Quinn. A 1993 conviction, however, resulted in no additional jail time beyond the time he’d already spent in French prison. In the 1990s, Quinn’s name was once again was linked to various fraudulent schemes, including the notorious case of Martin Frankel, a Connecticut businessman who “ran one of the biggest insurance schemes in history,” according to the New York Times.

Now, again in prison and awaiting trial, authorities must be wondering if this, finally, is the end of the road for Thomas F. Quinn. It is not the first time people have believed this. Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.

The Long Journey of Denis Leary's 'Rescue Me'

This may not be what you’d expect from a comic whose latest stand-up tour includes a goofy Irish drinking song which takes swipes at Michael Flatley and the Catholic Church. But Denis Leary’s Rescue Me is one of the most important Irish American cultural artifacts of recent decades, right up there with Angela’s Ashes, and, yes, even Riverdance.

Anyone interested in telling the history of Irish Catholics in 21st Century America could not possibly ignore all of the crucial themes – family, the church, 9/11 – the show has explored, at times with brutal honesty, dark humor and occasionally, with a bit too much goofiness.

Indeed, now we just have to hope that the show, which had its season premiere on the FX cable channel this week, goes out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Leary and the rest of the Rescue Me crew are officially done creating the show. The current season, the sixth, will wrap up later this year. The show will take a break from the airwaves before it returns with its seventh and final season, which will wrap up in September 2011 – which, of course, coincides with the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks which still haunt the firefighters in Tommy Gavin’s firehouse, and inspired Rescue Me in the first place.

The question, now is this: Why is Rescue Me more than just an entertaining television show? Well, for those with an interest in all things Irish, Rescue Me right now is the most prominent slice of popular culture which deals with the Irish American experience.

Movies from The Gangs of New York to The Brothers McMullen get a lot of attention for how they portray the Irish in America. But a movie is never much longer than two hours. For six years, now, Leary’s show has mined the deep, dark soul of Irish America. The view is not always pretty.

Family, for example, is a crucial aspect of Rescue Me as well as the Irish American experience. Well, suffice it to say, the Gavin family is more than a little bit dysfunctional. As this season opens, Tommy Gavin is shot by his uncle following a long evening of cathartic boozing. Talk about a long day’s journey into night.

Which raises an inevitable question: Does Rescue Me dabble in stereotypes? Of course it does. It’s hard to find any book, movie or TV show about ethnic life which doesn’t.

After all, Frank McCourt’s dad was a drunk and Pete Hamill’s gleaming memoir was even entitled A Drinking Life. Does this make these books any less brilliant?

But moreso than the crazy uncles and excessive drinking, perhaps the most important part of Rescue Me is Tommy Gavin’s struggle with religion. It is here that Rescue Me most painfully mirrors Irish America’s broader struggles to reconcile its Catholic heritage with a harsh, modern world. Gavin pretty much has no use for religion. Which doesn’t matter because he still struggles to comprehend the ways of God, and why bad things – such as 9/11 – seem to happen to (relatively) good people. Season six even opens with Tommy’s vision of the afterlife. That this vision is grim and frightening rather than soothing matters little. Tommy is televised proof that there is no such thing as a lapsed Catholic. Even if Tommy Gavin – like not a few Irish Americans – is skeptical about religion, it is still in your cultural DNA.

In a recent interview, Leary discussed bringing Rescue Me to a close and he said he is aware that viewers will watch the show’s end with much scrutiny. After all, The Sopranos ending was one of the most analyzed moments in TV history.

Leary would not say much about the show’s ending, but did add that right before it concludes there is an important twist.

This sounds troubling to me. After all, Rescue Me is a very good TV show but over the years it has had its share of off notes. So, here’s some old fashioned Irish advice for Denis Leary: Don’t try anything too fancy! Stick to what you do best. After all, this has produced an unforgettable look into the Irish American soul right up there with Frank McCourt, Pete Hamill and even Eugene O’Neill.

Fighting Wrong Battle of the Sexes

Does Ireland have a set of laws that assist men, because women are becoming so successful? And should America copy these Irish laws?

You might think so, if you believe what you see on TV and in cyberspace these days.

Let’s start at the beginning. The cover of the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly declares that “The End of Men” in near.

The accompanying article, written by Atlantic editor Hanna Rosin, explores “how women are taking control of everything.”

Yikes! Not only does this seem like a frightening scenario that puts me and my fellow brothers on the express lane to obsolescence.

It’s also a rapid change from the days not too long ago when it was men, rather than women, dominating the world. So much so that serious people used to believe that various kinds of special programs, such as affirmative action, were needed to level the playing field for women.
Affirmative action basically encourages, without quite forcing, businesses and governments to hire folks who face distinct cultural challenges such as racism or sexism.

Rosin discussed her Atlantic article “The End of Men” last week on the comedy-news show The Colbert Report. When the host suggested we might now need “affirmative action for men,” Rosin said this may not be such a bad idea.

She went on to say, “In places like Australia and Ireland, they actually have affirmative action for men.”

Swiftly the blogosphere ran with this Irish angle on this gender debate. A blog about women’s issues at George Washington University commented upon Rosin’s appearance on The Colbert Report and added, “They also discussed that in Australia and Ireland they have affirmative action for men to help lift them up. Could this come to America?”

Is Ireland, like the U.S., also entering an age where men are irrelevant?

This seems unlikely. Just last year the Irish Independent published a report finding that gender inequality was “rife” in Ireland.

“Women in Ireland work less and earn less,” the newspaper noted, later adding, “Men, on the other hand, are over-represented in the Dail (Parliament) and Seanad (Senate).”

This hardly sounds like a society in which women are so successful that men need legally-mandated advantages to give them a fair shake. It appears the people debating this issue have confused some very important matters.
The only well-known affirmative action program on the island of Ireland is actually on the books in Northern Ireland. As a recent report by four professors from the University of Oxford noted, “Historically, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland were typically highly segregated from each other in employment, with Catholics being concentrated in particular sectors of the labor market, and in particular firms, and suffering unemployment rates two to three times as high as those of Protestants.

“But for the last 20 years, Northern Ireland’s program of affirmative action has used detailed monitoring for firms’ composition plus agreed action plans, where necessary, to ensure for both groups ‘fair participation’ in employment, avoiding the setting of quotas.”

In the end, it is very dodgy to compare anything that is happening in Northern Ireland to anything happening in the U.S.

As Rosin makes clear in her article, there is indeed a crisis unfolding when it comes to men in America. Certain male-dominated jobs were decimated by recession in the 1990s as well as the 2000s.

Women now dominate U.S. college campuses, where just 40% of students these days are men.
But this is a very different context when compared to Northern Ireland. There you had a very clear pattern of historic discrimination based on numerous factors, including class, religion, political affiliation and even geography.

Whatever troubles (if you can pardon that phrase) facing American men these days, they are different from those that traditionally faced the Catholic men (and women) of Northern Ireland.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Great state of union (bashing) for workers around the country

When Michael Mulgrew became head of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) this year, he was entering some uncharted territory. As Harold Myserson noted in an August 2009 article about the waning influence of the Irish in the labor movement, the ascension of the Irish American Mulgrew ended “a 50-year succession of Jewish UFT presidents.”

This Wednesday, June 16, Mulgrew turned up the heat in the UFT’s ongoing battle with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg by spearheading a rally against education cuts at City Hall.

Mulgrew’s rise to the top of the UFT came around the same time Mary Kay Henry was named leader of the West Coast-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents over two million workers.

Henry, 52, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “the eldest girl among 10 siblings in an Irish-Catholic family in suburban Detroit.”

So if, as Harold Myerson suggested, Irish influence in organized labor is dwindling, it’s not going away anytime soon.

There’s one catch, however. These jobs might as well come with a bull’s eye, because unions have become a handy target for angry people and politicians in recent months.

Full disclosure -- I am a member of the UFT. So naturally, I am a little sensitive about some of the criticism aimed at New York City teachers by Bloomberg and schools chancellor Joel Klein.
I should add, though, that no one is more frustrated by ineffective teachers than teachers themselves. So it’s not that the UFT is above criticism.

The bigger problem is that, in tough economic times, members of nearly any union have come to be viewed as members of an elite class who are paid lavishly while doing little work.

An article in this past Sunday’s New York Post explored the “long lines” of applicant’s seeking the “cushiest gigs” at a number of local unions. These jobs included spots at Local 246 of the aforementioned SEIU, which represents auto mechanics. There were also applicants seeking jobs with Ironworkers Local 361.

Boy, talk about cushy gigs! What could be easier than learning how an automobile functions from top to bottom and getting the thing fixed.

Or how about those ironworkers! All they have to do from time to time is slice steel with a flaming torch, often several thousand feet above the bustling streets.

I remember less than a month after 9/11 talking to Jack Doyle, head of the heavily-Irish Ironworkers Local 40. Doyle had actually helped build the Twin Towers in the early 1970s, and was vowing to help build again at Ground Zero.

But only after the ironworkers completed the very dangerous task of clearing out the debris. What a cushy gig!

The king of union bashing these days is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. His stump speech for a long time was that New Jersey has “two classes” of citizens, -- “those who enjoy rich public benefits and those who pay for them."

Wow. We’ve certainly come a long way.

In the past, thundering populists and brainy prophets have warned that America was indeed split into two societies -- black vs. white, or the obscenely rich vs. the desperately poor.

Now, according to Christie, the only thing we have to worry about are the folks who dare to have a pension and a little stability. It seems to me we might want to work to get that for more people, not fewer.

Look, I understand that state governments are going broke. Taxpayers have a right to know their money is being invested in sound, productive employees. Unions should roll up their sleeves and help produce solutions.

But there is an ugly side to this. As much as anyone else, the Irish built the American labor movement with blood, sweat and tears. This was no “cushy” task.

Politicians know there is a deep insecurity in America right now. So rather than devise bold ways to alleviate that insecurity, they target “elite” union members and their “cushy” jobs.

Meanwhile, children need to be educated. Cars need to be repaired. Steel must be sliced.

The vast majority of people doing these jobs now do them happily and effectively. Smearing these workers may make the next generation think twice about entering the profession.
But it doesn’t make the work itself any less vital or necessary.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

It’s Soccer…uh, Football Time!

This is a plea to my fellow Irish Americans. It’s time to start giving a damn about football.

And I don’t mean the Giants or the Jets. I mean soccer.

As the rest of the globe knows -- as opposed to most Americans -- the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is about to get underway. This Saturday at 1:30, the U.S. -- led by two stars with distinctly Hibernian names -- takes on England.

Does a true green-blooded Irish American really need another reason to get hyped up for this game? (I mean match.)

Okay, so even if you have no love for the Brits, you might still need to be persuaded to tear yourself away from the other sporting events on tap for this weekend.

After all, the Yankees and Mets and every other Major League Baseball team will be playing this Saturday. Hockey’s Stanley Cup title will finally be decided by the weekend, and the Lakers and Celtics will be squaring off as the NBA’s basketball championship series continues.

So, for those of you still baffled as to why soccer (I mean football) never quite takes hold in America, there’s reason number one -- an embarrassment of athletic riches.

There are so many sports -- not to mention other entertainment options -- available to even the casual fan that it seems like you’d have to invent a third day of the weekend to take them all in.

But it seems to me Irish Americans have a particular interest in rooting hard for the Americans when they take the field (I mean the pitch), and not just because the U.S. is taking on the Brits.

First and foremost, let’s get this ugly bit on news out of the way -- Ireland is not playing in the World Cup this time around. Which is an interesting bit of news for Irish Americans to keep in their back pockets on the off chance that some Irish-born friends or family start running America down.

Second, two of America’s brightest stars are the Irish Americans Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. Yes, yes, England has superstar Wayne Rooney, whose parents are Irish. But when you take all things into account, I think we know which country has done more for the Irish over the centuries.

Third, if the Irish truly do love an underdog, even a lost cause, soccer (I mean football) remains one of the few places the Americans can be seen as underdogs.

Military dominance. Financial dominance. Entertainment dominance. America has it all.

But soccer remains one of the few endeavors during which the Americans can view themselves as struggling upstarts among giants.

That’s exactly why last year’s FIFA Confederations Tournament in South Africa was so thrilling. (That sentence alone might seem downright bizarre to an average American, but I’ll move on.)

The Americans entered that prestigious tournament as an afterthought, with traditional powerhouses such as Brazil or Spain expected to dominate.

Fittingly, the Americans started off slow, losing two matches to Italy and Brazil by a combined score of 6- 1.

But from this modest start came what was nearly the defining moment in American soccer history. Dempsey and Donovan led the Americans in a dominating win over Egypt, which put them into the next round. Then came a stunning win over Spain.

Suddenly, the Americans were in the finals, facing Brazil. What happened? They were only up 2-0 over Brazil -- as in Pele’s Brazil -- at halftime.

Can you imagine what would have happened if the U.S. topped Brazil? Well, that’s all you can do is imagine it.

The Brazilians seemed to field 25 men for the second half, relentlessly attacking and, by the 85th minute, scored the go-ahead goal.

But that was last year. This is the World Cup. In a way, it is understandable for the rest of the world to root against America.

After all, the thinking goes, you Americans dominate everything else. Leave the football glory for the rest of the world.

And yet, the Irish have played such a big role putting America in such a position of dominance.

So they have a right, perhaps even a responsibility, to revel in a little football glory on the pitch.

Besides, who else are you gonna root for? The Brits?

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)