Patrick John Dunleavy: Patriot, Philosopher, Family Man: A Burst of Poetry

By Mary Rita Donleavy

Cover: The only flag that counted in the life of my father Patrick John Dunleavy was the American flag with its forty eight stars. The flag with the harp is not the British one under which my father may have grown up. Rather it is a flag design used at different times to express Irish nationalism. It was created in the United States by a group of Irish volunteers who joined the Mexican side in the U.S.-Mexican war from 1846 to 1848 as the Los San Patricios or Saint Patricks Battalion. The motto Erin Go Bragh underneath the harp means Ireland Forever. The current Irish tricolor flag was flown in the Easter Rising in 1916 and officially adopted in 1919 by the Republic during its War of Independence. Photographed by Niall Mackey, the flags are a framed gift from Nora Geraghty, purchased during a Harris Auction sale in Delgany, County Wicklow, Ireland, in the 1960s. Nora thought it belonged in my home nearby, Carriglea, in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477132807

Mary Rita Donleavy

Mary Rita Donleavy

Book preview

PATRICK JOHN

DUNLEAVY

Patriot, Philosopher, Family Man

A Burst of Poetry

Mary Rita Donleavy

Copyright © 2013 by Mary Rita Donleavy.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012911369

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-3279-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-3278-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-3280-7

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Contents

Dedication

Illustrations

Family Names and Nicknames

Preface

A Burst of Poems

Tradition of Poetry

Inspiration

Making the First Poem

Buying Houses

Going for Rides

Lord of the Castle

Lifestyles

Living Upstairs-Downstairs

Living on the Estate

Visiting Cemeteries

Location, Location

   Wars   

Making More Poetry

A Special Letter

More Poems

Navy All the Way

Different and Significant

Loving

Being in Love

Who Was His Muse?

The Lovers

Paternal Love

The Light of Life

Making a Mistake

Who Was Patrick?

Coming to Family

Having Heritage

True or False?

Proof of Royalty

What’s in a Name?

Making a Living

Working with Flowers

Dawn

Having Jobs

Visiting the Firehouse

Being a Family

Three of Us

Getting Educated

Environment for Learning

The Protestant/Roman Catholic Divide

Family Life

The Five of Us

Raising Children

Parenting

Friendships

Neighbors, Friends, Relatives

Traveling

On the Road West

Father Edward J. Flanagan

The Last Journey

Philosophy of Life

The Meaning of Life

Love of God in All His Glory

Loving God

Living Tradition

Epilogue

The Good, the Bad, and the Different

Pilgrimage

Different Views

The Trial

A Puzzlement!

The Wrong Will

Sadness Comes

No Regrets

Bibliography and References

Acknowledgements

Dedication

This book commemorates the life of my beloved daughter, Marita O’Hare, who loved my father, loved poetry, and encouraged me to make this book. She was always a bit bored when I wanted her to read my working manuscript. A friend did read a few pages aloud to her when she was in rehabilitation after a brain tumor operation. She wasn’t really able to say no to the reading. For sure, she loved my father, Patrick John Dunleavy. I found the frontispiece photograph of him among her personal effects after she died on August 2, 2011. He certainly loved her.

Illustrations

Source: Most illustrations are from my collection of photographs. Others are credited where possible. Every effort has been made to locate and contact the copyright holders. Mistakes will be corrected in any future editions.

Family Names and Nicknames

My brothers and I spell our surname differently from our parents. When I was being registered for school for the first time, my father mentioned to the Roman Catholic nun that the correct ancient spelling of Dunleavy, was Donleavy so she changed it. My brothers and I are the only ones in our branch of the Dunleavy family who spell the name with an o. Immediate family members are known by different first names they have selected or have been given as nicknames:

Patrick John Dunleavy, my father, was known as Pat, Paddy, or Paddie.

Margaret Dunleavy, my mother we always knew as Margaret. On the ship’s manifest coming to the United States as a sixteen-year-old, she is listed as Maggie and may have been called that by her immediate family and friends before we knew her. She never used her maiden name of Walsh.

James Patrick Donleavy, my brother, was always called James by my father, and Junior by my mother, by his brother Thomas, and me. In family correspondence, he would sign as James. His teenage friends did call him Pat or Paddy. Later on, at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, he was known by his confirmation name, which he had chosen: Michael or Mike. He may have become J.P. when he published his first fiction, a short story in Envoy Magazine in Dublin, in April 1950, "Party On Saturday Afternoon." He was definitely J.P. when he wrote his book The Ginger Man. My mother used to say he should not use the name Patrick until he was successful.

Thomas Joseph Donleavy, my brother, was always called Thomas by the family and Tiny Tim, Tim, or Timmy as a youngster and teenager by his friends and playmates. Later in life he became T.J.

Mary Rita O’Hare, my daughter, became Marita when a neighbor, Mr. Vincent Bonacorso Sr., gave her the name because Mary Rita was too long a name for a little girl.

Mary Rita Donleavy—I have mostly been called Rita and sometimes Reets by close friends. I was once known as Mary Rita O’Hare when I was married. I always like it when someone calls me Mary Rita. I have often wondered if I was named for my mother, because Rita is a diminutive of Margarita, which is Margaret in the Spanish language. My name in the language of Irish may be Maire Mairead Duinnshleibhe.

Preface

The artist Paul Cezanne said, Time and reflection… modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us. This has been true for me rereading the poems of my father, Patrick John Dunleavy, which he so often recited. They are embedded in my consciousness, bringing up stories and memories of people, places, and events in his life and mine. Getting to know him through his poems enables me to see and to understand his life, mine, and my family’s in a richer context, recognizing the themes and concepts that have shaped our days. Remembering houses in which we lived, people we met, trips taken, and places we visited also brings to mind what has been of the most value in our lives.

To experience the poems again is as if a time capsule were opened. Made at a critical time in the history of the United States, some of my father’s language is in the vernacular of the time, and more is in the language of the Victorians. His poems still have meaning for us in this digital Twenty-First century, where love, nature, and the human condition are still the essential elements of life. My father’s poems continue to contribute to how I experience events in my life, particularly the recent death of my daughter Marita, who learned about language and poetry from him.

It was often an embarrassment to me as a teenager that my father recited his poems. I was surprised by the first poem inspired on a family picnic and more surprised when he began to make and recite more poems during and after World War II, in 1944 and 1945. We did record him reciting his poetry when we knew he was dying, but I have yet to listen to the tapes. When he died on September 26, l957, his poems, which he had carefully typed and dated, were put aside. Then a friend and colleague, J.e Franklin, read an article that I had written about my mother for a college magazine. She was so enthusiastic about it that I resumed writing the companion article I had started about my father several years before.

Many years earlier, I had sent my brother James Patrick (Junior) copies of our father’s poems. He had him included in the book, Longford Poets: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary, where my father’s poems are described, probably by Junior, as mildly philosophical and simple in word and metre, treated of what he considered milestones in life, as well as everyday observations, and the verse often reflected back to his early association with Ireland.

A Burst of Poems

As far as I know, my father made poems for just a short period in his life, starting with Friendship for Freedom, perhaps in 1936, before World War II started on September 1, 1939. It was a time when all seemed right with his world. He had a steady job, owned two houses, drove a good car, and had an intact family still going on picnics. He began to make more poems about patriotism and about love a month after my brother, Junior joined the U.S. Navy on June 18, 1944, after the United States entered World War II. When the war ended August 15, 1945, my father shifted to philosophical and religious themes. He made his final poem, A Fond Farewell at Shannon, Ireland, on leaving Ireland after a visit to Junior and his new daughter-in-law, Valerie nee Heron, in October 1948.

My father’s thirty-six poems are listed in the order that they appear in this story. The dates may not always be when my father made the poems but the date when he made copies.

Tradition of Poetry

My father, Patrick John Dunleavy, born in Ireland, made a burst of poems, giving his thoughts and feelings about family, love, faith in God, war, patriotism, friendship, humor, philosophy, the meaning of life, and heritage. Like the ancient Irish fili (poets) he recorded important events in our family’s life and in his own, particularly during World War II. Rediscovering his poems makes it possible to tell, not only my father’s story, but the stories about our family, relatives, friends, and others not so friendly, whom my two brothers and I encountered growing up and living free in a stable, safe environment provided by him and my mother, Margaret Walsh Dunleavy. During their marriage, they bought real estate; they always lived in their own house and always owned a car, which brought us to places where we encountered people that were interesting, entertaining, and sometimes educational. Later in life, when we were grown, our encounters were sometimes scandalous. The question might be asked, How far have my brothers and I traveled from the way we were reared?

Poetry was an important ingredient in my father’s life, memorized in youth and composed in midlife, about people, events, and ideas, ordinary and special, viewing the events of life from the vantage point of his Roman Catholic faith and his personal beliefs. My father loved the poetry of Thomas Moore of the Vale of Avoca fame, and that of Oliver Goldsmith, playwright and poet reputed to have been born near my father’s birthplace in Granard, County Longford, Ireland. My brother Thomas remembers my father speaking often of his admiration for the poems of John Donne (1573-1631), which he may have learned in school in Ireland. In reviewing some of Donne’s poems, there are similar themes in my father’s poems, such as a spirit of humor and concern for the human condition.

It was natural for him to make and recite poems, as it is so for many persons of Irish origin. My father and mother may not have known of the role of the fili or tradition of poetry in Irish culture . As described on the Internet:

The fili maintained an oral tradition that pre-dated the Christianization of Ireland. In this tradition, poetic and musical forms are important not only for aesthetics but also for their mnemonic value. The tradition allowed plenty of room for improvisation and personal expression, especially in regard to creative hyperbole and clever kenning. However, the culture placed great importance on the fili’s ability to pass stories and information down through the generations without making changes in those elements that were considered factual rather than embellishment.

I was never conscious of my parent’s repertoire of memorized poetry, one of my mother’s being The Wreck of the Hesperus by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1840), which to my surprise, she recited in its entirety at a party in Ireland. One of my father’s favorites was the Lament of the Irish Emigrant by the British Lady Helen Selina Blackwood Dufferin (1807-1867). His choice of poem is interesting to me in light of a later connection between his family and the Guinness family of brewery fame. Lady Helen Selina Blackwood Dufferin was the mother of the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness, fourth marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who in turn was the mother of the late Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, who became well-known as the author Caroline Blackwood. Lament of the Irish Emigrant was also a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln.

Both parents, born in 1891, attended an Irish national school made compulsory by the British government in 1893. Patrick and Margaret may have been taught American and English poetry as part of the British curriculum. They were not being educated to be Irish, to speak their own language—Irish—or to pursue the traditional Irish cultural arts of storytelling, poetry, music, and dance. They traveled on British passports when they came to the United States. My parents lived the Irish culture at home, where stories were told around the hearth fire. In the Dunleavy home songs like the Rising of the Moon, recalling the Irish Rebellion of 1798, were sung. It was rumored that earlier members of the Dunleavy family took part in that rebellion of 1798, and were exported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania, now part of Australia). Two of my father’s brothers were perhaps involved in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at the time of the Irish War of Independence in 1919. One of them spent time in a Dublin jail for his activities, the other came to the United States in 1923.

On summer evenings, dancing took place at crossroads with young people meeting and enjoying themselves in the Irish countryside. My father and his brother James took dancing lessons probably from an itinerant dancing master. He often entertained us with a lively tap dance or occasionally demonstrated his skills in ballroom dancing of the waltz or fox-trot or did an Irish reel.

In my earliest memories of my father, when we lived in the Wakefield section of The Bronx, he wore a dark blue uniform