Dr. John Lahey, President of Quinnipiac University, was presented with New England Irish person of the Year at an event at the Irish Consulate in Boston last week.

The immigrant experience in America is about building a better tomorrow while giving back to society and to those who have helped us along the way. The driving force behind this endeavor is the pride of heritage brought to the US by new arrivals, a pride of heritage that is strong as it spans many generations and can touch countless lives.

There is a profound moment in Tom Murphy’s play Famine where John Connor, the Irish tenant farmer, pulls up the potato stalk by the root to see if the blight is back.
 
It is 1846, after a bad blight the year before there is hope that the humble potato, the only staple food of his country, will be back to normal.
 
Instead he pulls up a rotting plant and the awful truth dawns. He spreads his hand wide in a crucifixion moment. He knows he and all his people in the little village of Glanconnor are doomed.
 
It was a recreation of a moment when Ireland changed forever, and so did America. By the early summer of 1846 the Irish had hung on to the bitter end after a bleak 1845 hoping against hope that the crop would come good.
 
It was not to be. What lay ahead was 1846 and then Black ’47, the worst year of the Famine which would send a million to their graves and a million to the coffin ships. Ireland and America would never be the same again.
 
Thanks to Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut and its visionary president Dr. John Lahey, New York audiences recently enjoyed Druid Murphy, three plays created by Murphy and directed by the Tony Award winner Garry Hynes at Lincoln Center.
 
I saw Famine last Thursday night and it was an incredible theater experience.
 
Lahey, a former New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade grand marshal, is a college president who deeply treasures his own Irish heritage and understands the massive importance of entwined Irish and American history.
 
In September, Quinnipiac will open its new Great Hunger Museum in Hamden, making it the first museum in America dedicated to the Irish Famine.
 
That will be a magnificent accomplishment by Lahey, one that will create a permanent structure and monument to the most significant event in Irish history and, arguably, one of the most significant in the life of America as well.
 
Murphy’s play, written in 1968, takes the audience through the terrible famine times, the blight, the British indifference, the evictions, the forced migration and the starvation.
 
But there was a place called America where the descendants of such men and women, and their cousins who followed after, would remember those who died so horribly.  Lahey is among those.
His ancestral town of Camp in Kerry was ravaged by the Famine.
 
He has spoken up for generations of Irish who never had a voice, and by creating a Great Hunger Museum has ensured that future generations will remember that too.
 
From a great tragedy generations later comes a wonderful reminder in the Great Hunger museum why we will never forget.

There is no end to the areas in which committed, talented and bright Irish Americans excel. Irish America’s 26th annual Top 100 list showcases some of the most noteworthy of this year, from film producers to philanthropists, from athletes to world champion dancers. Leading the list is the 2011 Irish American of the Year Dr. John L. Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, who has tirelessly worked to raise awareness of and commemorate Ireland’s Great Hunger. The Irish in America have seized every childhood dream and succeeded in making them a reality - just look at astronaut Cady Coleman, actress Rooney Mara, writer Dan Barry and the President of the United States Barack Obama, who just finished his first presidential visit to Ireland, which included a sentimental visit to his ancestral town of Moneygall.

There is no end to the areas in which committed, talented and bright Irish Americans excel. Irish America’s 26th annual Top 100 list showcases some of the most noteworthy of this year, from film producers to philanthropists, from athletes to world champion dancers. Leading the list is the 2011 Irish American of the Year Dr. John L. Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, who has tirelessly worked to raise awareness of and commemorate Ireland’s Great Hunger. The Irish in America have seized every childhood dream and succeeded in making them a reality - just look at astronaut Cady Coleman, actress Rooney Mara, writer Dan Barry and the President of the United States Barack Obama, who just finished his first presidential visit to Ireland, which included a sentimental visit to his ancestral town of Moneygall.

When John L. Lahey was a boy, he once accompanied his father, a hard-working bricklayer, to a worksite. He wanted to see what his father’s job was all about, and to try it out for himself. His grandfather, Daniel Lahey, an immigrant  from Knockglossmore, Co. Kerry, had been a stone mason, so the craft was in the family.

As I write this, the sound from a lone bagpiper comes through my window. Not as unusual an occurrence as you might think. Irish America’s office is up the street from a church, the St. Francis Friary, the cornerstone of which was put in place in 1844, and where the friars still feed the hungry (what better way to remember your ancestors this St. Patrick’s Day than to give to a food program?) I don’t know if the piper is heralding a wedding or lamenting a death. Is he/she part of the annual celebration of mass for the laborers’ union, or just someone practicing for St. Patrick’s Day? There’s a fire station across the street from the church, perhaps it’s one of the FDNY Emerald Pipe Band making his pipes ready for the parade?

Major  changes at the New York St.Patrick’s Day parade committee will see long time chairman John Dunleavy step down after the 2010 event which is the 250th parade say sources.

As president of Quinnipiac University for the past 23 years, John Lahey has played a vital role in educating the public about the story of the Great Hunger. Through his appearances as Grand Marshal of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 1997 and the Great Hunger Lender Family Special Collection at Quinnipiac that came into existence soon afterward, Lahey has championed the need for the history of An Gorta Mór to be accurately and completely told. Quinnipiac’s trove is one of the most extensive collections of art and literature in America devoted to Ireland’s Great Famine.