A Rush to Be Irish: Central Ohioans Embrace Heritage ? Even If Only for a Day
By Kevin Joy, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Mar. 18–Her plate was piled high with egg rolls and spicy noodles, but her choice of food didn’t make Grace Langstaff any less Irish.
She joined almost 6,500 other Irish — some full-blooded, others temporarily so — in filling Veterans Memorial yesterday for the 70th annual Irish Family Reunion, sponsored by the Shamrock Club of Columbus.
“I’m Japanese-Irish today,” said Langstaff, who manages a floral shop in Grove City. “You see a lot of the same people every year.
It’s a great time.”
Not Irish? No problem. Yesterday, you were family.
While it promised a social event for various Irish groups, the “reunion,” as always, welcomed everyone. The windowless concrete room didn’t evoke the Emerald Isle, but it hardly dampened spirits.
With cups of beer and paper plates of home-cooked food on folding tables covered in white linen, the scene resembled, well, a family reunion.
Dozens of children — some had the day off; others cut class with their parents’ permission — moved about in packs, clad in a sea of whimsical green apparel.
Not only the young sons and daughters of Erin were having fun.
Every turn found another couple of old friends delighted with their chance meeting, relatives fawning over new baby pictures or gentlemen engaged in a hearty handshake.
For pals such as Rick Winn and Anna Herbert, the event provides an annual opportunity to catch up.
“This is the only time we see each other,” said Winn, who grew up with Herbert in the 1970s on the West Side. “And I love the music.”
The opening ceremony featured a Marine color guard from Lima Company.
Meanwhile, the Columbus Pipes and Drums marched to the staccato beat and shrill bagpiping of traditional songs (plus a stab at Carmen Ohio).
And students from the Richens/ Timm Academy of Irish Dance and the Shanahan School of Irish Dance displayed a variety of hard- and soft-shoe steps.
Sashes, top hats and even a few kilts could be seen. A leprechaun wandered about, as did a talkative St. Patrick.
Merchants sold wooden crafts, Celtic jewelry and Irish-themed T-shirts.
Business was booming for Terese Marinelli, who helped her sister run a booth selling green feather boas, glow sticks and blinking necklaces.
“Irish people have a deep spirit,” she said. “Today, it’s all about being Irish.”
St. Patrick’s Day just wouldn’t be complete without an oversize foam hat and a squeaking plastic trumpet.
“Everyone’s in top form today,” Maryellen O’Shaughnessy of the Columbus City Council said while snacking on Irish soda bread and corned beef. “We all tell stories and remember what Columbus was like back in the old days.”
The Irish Family Reunion has changed with the city.
Once a breakfast in the sincedemolished Neil House hotel, the event moved to the state fairgrounds and the former Sheraton hotel Downtown before settling at Vets Memorial in 1990.
The Shamrock Club was once limited to Irish-Catholic males but in the early 1990s opened membership to anyone.
Today it has about 1,700 members _ one-fourth of them not Irish.
Club President Tom Byrne has attended the reunion for 39 years.
“It’s so neat that it’s still going on,” said the 47-year-old, an electrical supervisor for Franklin County.
“There are people who have been coming here for over 50 years; they’ve got these St. Patrick’s Day war stories. In these times, there’s so many other things going on, people get caught up. But today, the Irish come together.”
kjoy@dispatch.com
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