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Those We Lost

By
BRIDGET ENGLISH
,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 4:05 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:54 PM
Read more: William Butler Yeats, William Murphy, June Levine

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DANIEL CASSIDY

1943-2008

Writer, musician, college professor and Irish America Top 100 honoree Daniel Cassidy died on October 11 at his home in San Francisco. The author of the book "How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads" succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dan Cassidy boasted Irish heritage on both his parents' sides.

Emigrating to Brooklyn at the end of the 19th century, Cassidy's father came from a family of native Irish-speakers. Irish roots on Dan's mother's side can be traced to famine Irish immigrants who landed in New York in the 1840s and 50s.

"How the Irish Invented Slang," tracing the Irish influence on American slang in the 1800s, was the masterpiece of a language devotee whose writing also appeared in the New York Times, The Chronicle, the New York Observer and Atlantic Monthly. However, Dan's legacy extends well beyond his writings into music and film.

For several decades Cassidy was a professional musician with gigs at Carnegie Hall, the Tonight Show and the Los Angeles Civic Auditorium.

Nominated in 1996 for an Emmy award, Cassidy's film "Civil Right and Civil Wrongs" documented the troubled political situation in Northern Ireland.

Dan Cassidy founded and co-directed the Irish Studies program at New College of California as well as directing the Media and Films Studies program, teaching courses in storytelling, the American newspaper and broadcast history.

News of his death was met with great sadness by the Irish-American community. Author Peter Quinn told the San Francisco Chronicle, "It was a privilege to know him; a great grace to have his friendship. His legacy to the Irish-American community is inestimable. We are so much poorer for his passing."

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Those We Lost | Entertainment in Ireland and Around the World | IrishCentral


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