Those We Lost

Those We Lost: Recent passings in the Irish and Irish-American community

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FILE - In this Oct. 21, 1975 file photo, New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey, right, and Felix Rohatyn, chairman of Municipal Assistance Corporation, press members of a House economic stabilization subcommittee in Washington, to enact legislation to aid deficit-ridden New York City. Carey, who led the rescue effort that brought New York City back from the brink of bankruptcy during its 1975 fiscal crisis, died Sunday, Aug. 7, 2011. He was 92. (AP Photo/Charles Gorry, File)

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Molloy was the 34th and last doorkeeper who held this position, which was created in 1789. He lost his job after the 1994 election when Republicans gained control of the House and eliminated the job. The duties of the doorkeeper, which included supervision of the House document room, the press gallery, the photography office and 400 employees, were redistributed in attempt to save money. The duty of introducing important figures was passed onto the sergeant of arms.

In his youth, Molloy paid his way through Canisius College working at the Buffalo Fire Department until he graduated in 1958. A third-generation Irish-American, Molloy was honored with an Outstanding Citizen Award from the New York State AFL-CIO, the President’s Award from NY State Federation of Police, and the U.S. Senate Youth Alumni Association Outstanding Service Award. In 2006, he received a more personal honor when his local post office on South Park Avenue was renamed the James T. Molloy in 2006.

Paddy Murphy

1941-2011

Paddy Murphy, whose persistence through a seven-year battle with a degenerative disease enabled a TV documentary on an Irish famine ship to be broadcast, has died. He was 70.
Patrick Bernard Murphy was retired from a marketing career when he picked up the tale of the Irish famine ship Hannah sinking in 1849. He was a descendant of Bernard Murphy, who was saved from the icy water as a child.

Paddy had MSA, Multiple System Atrophy, and raced against its progression to tell the story of the sinking, in which many Irish immigrants perished on the ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada.

Paddy’s research led to a documentary, Famine and Shipwreck: An Irish Odyssey  on BBC Northern Ireland and the CBC in Canada. An article in Irish America in Aug./Sept. 2008 was a key link to getting the story told. The great-great-grandson of William Marshall, the captain of the ship which saved Hannah passengers, found the story on the Internet and connected with Murphy. It proved to be a vital link in getting the documentary made.

“Paddy left us on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of his illness,” said his wife Jane. “His four loving children were with him.” Daughter Kathy Pugliese said her father was a man who packed a full life into his 70 years.

Murphy’s ashes were interred in Westport, Ontario on July 30 following a prayer vigil at the Mission on the Mountain, the site of the area’s first Roman Catholic Church. He was instrumental in getting the location designated a historical site.
– John Kernaghan

Eamonn O’Doherty

1939-2011

Irish artist and sculptor Eamonn O’Doherty passed away in Gorey District Hospital, Co. Wexford on August 4, 2011 at the age of 72.

Known primarily for his popular sculptures throughout Ireland and the United States, O’Doherty was born in Derry in 1939 and studied architecture at University College Dublin before continuing his studies on scholarship at Harvard University. His most widely recognized works includes Fauscailt (Co. Wexford, 1998), Crann an Oir (outside the Central Bank in Dublin, 1991), and Anna Livia (widely known as the “floozie in the Jacuzzi”), which the city council controversially removed from Dublin’s O’Connell Street in 2002, and has since been placed near Heuston Station. His most notable work in the Americas is the Great Hunger Memorial in Ardsley, Westchester County, New York, completed in 2001.

Also an academic, painter, architect, and musician, he taught at several universities throughout the United States and Europe and was scheduled to open a new exhibition of drawings in Dublin this September. Fellow artist Mick O’Dea remembered him in the Irish Times as “a maker, shaper, [and] lover of life,” and remarked, “his contribution to Irish artistic life has been enormous.” O’Doherty leaves behind his wife, Barbara, daughters Aisling, Medhan and Rosie, and son, Eoin.

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