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Health & Fitness

Growing Up Irish-American in Jersey City

We all have stories to tell, and tell them we must.

One weekend this past spring, I attended a one-man show at the Lauren K. Woods Theatre on the Monmouth University campus entitled “Growing Up Irish-American In Jersey City”. Sponsored by the university’s Center for the Arts and the Irish Studies Program, it featured local poet and author (and family friend) Jim Flanagan as Seamas O’Flannagain, an Irish "seanchai", or storyteller, talking about the days of his youth growing up in Jersey City during the 1940’s and 1950’s.

I had been wanting to catch Jim's show for the past couple of years, but one thing or another prevented me from doing so. Two years ago, his show at the Brookdale Community College got cancelled due to a snowstorm. Last year, tickets were sold out before I could get to the box office. This year, I purchased my tickets early and online. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing him this year.

The show opened up at 7PM with a few songs from singer Tom Brennan, a local musician who set the tone for the evening with a few Irish tunes. Then out walked Seamas, and he began to spin tales of days gone by -- how people in Jersey City were identified by which parish they belonged to, hanging out with his fellow Irish street pals in Leonard Gordon Park (better known by its nickname, Mosquito Park), going shopping with his parents on Newark Avenue, and saying prayers with his father every night before going to bed.

The school that Seamas attended as a young lad, an all-boys academy, had a school for the blind attached to it. He told the tale of the head sister there who finagled a shrine from one Jersey City political faction and got a paved parking lot out of the other at a time when Frank Hague was trolling for votes in 1949, only to be denied another term as mayor by John V. Kenny, who it seemed was equally corrupt but more inept in office than Hague ever was. She told both factions on Election Day that the school’s voting bloc was so thankful for their generosity that they would split their votes in appreciation for all the hard work they had done. Very shrewd, indeed!

As the second half of the show started around 8:30, I began thinking about how Seamas’ tales could relate back to my father and uncle, who were also born and raised in Jersey City. I remember stories about how my dad and uncle used to build giant igloos in the winter by piling up mounds of snow in a small field nearby their house, spraying it with water from a local hydrant, letting the snow turn to ice on the outside, then hollowing out the middle.

My dad spent his entire life's educational experience in Catholic institutions – St. Bridget’s Parochial School in Jersey City, Red Bank Catholic High School, St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, and finally the Seton Hall/Monmouth College master’s in education program. As for myself, I attended Catholic grammar school at St. Jerome School in West Long Branch for nine years.

After I graduated from St. Jerome and started attending Shore Regional High School, I’d complain about how I had to walk to school every day. My father had his own version of the “when I was a kid, I walked X miles to get to school every day” story. He’d tell me “When I was going to college, I took the train from Long Branch to Newark, then a tube train (a PATH train) from Newark to Journal Square, then a bus from Journal Square down Kennedy Boulevard, got off the bus and then walked six blocks down Kennedy to St. Peter’s. . .and I did that five days a week, coming and going, for four years!”

My half-mile walk to Shore didn’t seem so bad after hearing all that.

One of the things that struck me was Seamas’ respect for the nuns who taught him at the academy. I got the impression he didn’t think much of the priests but did think the world of the nuns. My dad had that very same respect for the nuns just like Seamas did. I remember how sad he was when he found out his old principal at RBC, Sister Alma, had passed. It was pretty obvious to me that she had quite an impact on his life.

I guess you can say that my dad’s admiration for the nuns was passed on to me as well. Every once in a while, I would see my old principal, Sister Laura. She lives on the campus of St. Mary’s in New Monmouth, right next door to where my son attends high school at Mater Dei Prep. And my fifth grade teacher, Sister Angelina, is currently the principal at St. Jerome School and has been in that role there for nearly 30 years. I still treat these two women with the utmost respect whenever I see them. Outside of my parents, they both played a major role in how my life has turned out.

At around 9:10 when the show ended, Seamas’ last words to the audience were that we all have our own stories to tell and to go ahead and tell them -- no matter where you came from or what nationality you were.

The stories of our lives are the fabric that makes us who we are.

(You can also follow Kevin Cieri’s blog on his Facebook page, “Jersey Shore Retro” as well as on Twitter at @jsretro).

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