Category Archives for People

The Best Of…Old Tales of Ireland Add Comedic Dimension to Concert

Published March 11, 2002, Pawtucket Times

            Some people just know what they want to do in their professional careers.  But like many others, world-renowned Irish Storyteller Jimmy Kennedy fell into his chosen trade.

            Kennedy became a comedian by accident.  The 77-year-old, Dublin-born Kennedy chuckled when he was asked to remember an event that took place at the beginning of his career — an event that played a key role in changing his life.  The budding singer was asked to replace a comedian who failed to show up at a variety show.  So like a trooper, Kennedy went onstage and told a few traditional Irish stories.

           “I had a few stories that I had told around the table at the local pub,” Kennedy said. “I simply told those stories, he said, explaining in his heavy Irish brogue, this accident had pushed him into a life-long career of comedy.

           Kennedy known as “Ireland’s Master of Mirth, comes to Pawtucket next Saturday on St. Patrick’s weekend to perform with the internationally renowned Three Irish Tenors. The trio is comprised of Tom Cregan, from the Royal Opera Convent Garden; Claran Nagle from Riverdance: The Show; and Anthony Norton, from La Scala Milan.  Joining Kennedy and the Three Irish Tenors is Soprano Jacqueline Whelan and her Irish harp, as well as a  host of dancers and musicians.

           The Irish performers come to the Tolman High School auditorium in Pawtucket on a three week nationwide tour of the United States.  The Pawtucket stop is their only appearance in Southern New England. This is Kennedy’s fourth tour with the Three Irish Tenors.

           During the two-and-a-half hour show, Kennedy will dress as a Seanchai, and an old storyteller who wears and old suit and cap, holding his walking stick.  He will sit next to a turf fire and spin this tales.” It’s a family oriented show that provides great entertainment for both seniors and their grandchildren,” said Kennedy, who explains that shows like this usually play in Irish hotels during the summer throughout Ireland.

          Neither Kennedy’s father, who worked in the whisky business, or his homemaker mother, who cared for her 11 children, ever showed any inclination of going into show business.  But he young Kennedy did. At age 11, he was a “boy soprano” in the church, belting out our songs to his congregation.  Three years later, he would win a talent competition at Dublin’s Queen Theatre, fanning his love for appearing before audiences.

           Add these early experiences with daytime jobs on radio and in television, and Kennedy was ready to  hit the road to perform.

          “I have been on the road touring for most of my life,” said Kennedy, who noted that show business had enabled him to travel to many parts of the world that he could not afford to see.  His performance tours began in 1943, later taking him throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, the Far East, the United States and Canada and to Bermuda, the Caribbean and Alaska on cruise ships.

          During World War II, a patriotic Kennedy entertained American troops in Germany with his Irish songs and comedy routines.  One such tour led him to meeting a dancer who would become his future wife. Of course, his two children and grandchildren are musically inclined.

          With more than 60 years invested in show business, Kennedy said he has played with some of the names in the Irish entertainment industry, specifically the Irish Rovers, Dame Vera Lynn, who was known as the “armed forces sweetheart,” Paddy Noonan, Noel henry, Jimmy O’Dea and Stanley Hollway, the famous British actor who played in “My Fair Lady.”

          Kennedy also played at the Gaiety Theater in Dublin in the early 1950s, which was one of the highlights of his career..  At this widely respected theater, he went on stage with the late comedic actor Jimmy “Odea.

           “To play the Gaiety in Dublin was considered to be a feather in your cap,” he quipped.

           During his career, Kennedy has recorded his comedy routines on a number of albums including “Innisfree,” “Green Isle, Sounds of Ireland,” and “A Little Bit of Irish.”

          What’s the secret to his success of being a “Seanchai?”

           Kennedy said his routines concentrate on good, clean Irish humor. “It is stories of Irish life and situations,” he noted.

           Kennedy Does not plan to retire soon, saying, “the great thing about show business is that there is no retirement as long as people want to see you.” He added, “I often say to people that when I walk up in the morning, ‘this may be my last day.’ Someday I will be right.”

             Now that’s humor.

              The event is being sponsored by the Northern Rhode Island Council on the Arts and Convergence Pawtucket. 

                Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

WWII Vet Reflects on Terrorist Attacks

Published in Pawtucket Times on September 17, 2001

Using hijacked plans as deadly weapons, terrorists have brought death and destruction to the shores of our nation. Not since the American Civil War has this nation seen bombed out buildings or civilian causalities in its cities and towns. The United States may never be the same again.

Television has brought the horrors of a terrorist war up close to the American public, states 75-year-old World War II veteran Owen Mahony. In that war the nation was never directly hit, except Pear

l Harbor, he said.  The former Rhode Island assistant director of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals and former executive director of the United Way Organization in Rome and Niagara Falls, New York, saw extensive military action oversees from 1943 to 1946.

“During World War II civilians had little and no direct awareness of what was happening to the soldiers in the battlefields,” says Mahony, a long-time Warwick resident. “Of course, my family in Woonsocket lived through gasoline and food rationing. Those suffering the death of a loved one would signal this with a flag with a gold star, hung from their window,” he said.

The veteran of the Normandy D-Day landing saw a lot of terrible things in battle that his family did not   experience, Mahony told All About Seniors.  “They could look at the battles in the Pacific and Atlantic from afar,” he said, adding that at this time Americans really had little fear that the mainline would be attacked.

Today, it is a different world, Mahony quipped. “Everybody has either seen or visited the World Trad Center or the Pentagon. Or maybe they have flown on American or United Airlines,” he added. But through television, the vivid images of the horrific bloody acts of terrorism in New York City and Washington, DC, the way we view our world will forever change. “The terrorist war is here.”

Mahony, the father of 12 children, a grandparent to 29 very young grandchildren, many of whom are elementary school age, notes that it is most difficult to make sense of last week’s terrorist attack. With such a large family, he was on the phone for six hours tracking all his family down to make sure they were safe. “I was like the center of the communication hub, bringing the latest information so that everyone knew each other was safe.”

Meanwhile, some of his adult children took their youngsters out of school immediately after the attack so they could pray for those who lost loved ones. Throughout the evening, Mahony’s family and circle of friends, from their respective homes, offered prayers of Thanksgiving for those who made it safety out of the bombed-out Pentagon or World Trade Center, or to those who died and to their surviving loved ones.

“The biggest problem my children had was how to interpret their young children what is going on,” Mahoney stated, noting that several of his grandchildren were upset and crying at what they saw during the intensive news coverage. “How do you explain to young children how the hate of a terrorist brings the individual to plow a plane into a building.”

“The surprise attack will bring out the best of our people,” Mahony predicts, just like it did after Pearl Harbor.” Millions of other Americans are bringing comfort to their children and grandchildren, assuring them that even with evil people willing to kill innocent strangers for a fanatical cause, most people are good, he says. “We all know that love absolutely subdues evil.”