By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
My grandfather Don O’Brien (1891-1963) was a writer too. For roughly the last decade of his life in the mid-1900s, he wrote a newspaper column several times each week about life and living in his home of Burlington, Vermont. The columns often reminisced about his boyhood there, as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth.
Here’s his memo to his city editor boss trying to get St. Patrick’s Day off, published in his Burlington Free Press column on March 17, 1954:
A Reporter’s Holiday:
Even Those Born Far from Erin Will Salute St. Patrick Today
Memo: Bob Beaupre, city Ed.
Look, boss, I’ve been put on a spot where I got to ask you something. Could I be having Wednesday off?
No, it isn’t just on account of my name being what it is and Wednesday being the feast of St. Patrick. There’s more to it than that. Anyway, the whole business is your fault, sort of.
Listen – I’ll try to explain it But it’ll take a little time.
You’re such a one for those symposium things that I says to myself: This St. Patrick’s day I’ll symposy him right out of his chair. So all by myself I thought up a question:
“Why is it that on the Day of St. Patrick, the Irish – representing one of the smallest nations in the world – are honored by the people of all nations who make up America?”
I could answer the question all by myself, of course, but that wouldn’t be modest and you know me – shy, soft spoken, retiring.
In fact, I figured you’d be better pleased if no Irishmen at all, had a part in my symposium. Then nobody could be accused of tooting his own horn.
You with me so far, boss? Okay, then mark you well – here’s what seven fine, upstanding non-Irish gentlemen had to say about the Irish:
Morris Wilcox (Yankee, for sure) – Why do we salute the Irish? Because they’re the poets and press agents of the human race.
They see beauty in mugs and mountains, in cats and cathedrals, in ankles and apiaries – in fact, in everything – and they sound off about it. A hardy people, they will live on potatoes alone if seasoned with either a little love or hate.
They are so sentimental that if no colleen is handy, they will kiss the Blarney Stone for practice. Dauntless in love and doughty in war, they are irresistible with their tall tales, their gallant braggadocio, their pride and zest for living.
This would be a dull world indeed without the Irish.
Frederick J. Fayette (Far Land of Lebanon) – St. Patrick’s Day strictly for the Irish? Of course not! All the nations make claims on St. Patrick but the Irish have developed their claim into possession.
So, we must of necessity join with them. But we do it gladly because in so doing we not only pay tribute to St. Patrick but, also to the biggest small nation in the world – a people with humor and with a heart!
Samuel R. Rothman (A gracious Jewish tribute) – Most people take delight in the joy of their friends and want to associate themselves with that joy. That spirit certainly pervades the air on St. Patrick’s Day.
We see a proud people, and rightfully so, in full splendor and we become more aware of the many fine qualities that are so typical of the Irish – their sympathetic understanding, their deep sensitivity, their great capacity for joy and the happy faculty for giving expression to it.
Lucas (Lou) Pierratos (from Classic Greece) – Everybody loves the Irish! Who could help it? They laugh and they sing – and they make the rest of us laugh and sing and we Greeks will laugh and sing with our Irish friends this St. Patrick’s Day!
Holger C. Petersen (Dauntless Dane) – We hail the Irish because they are conquerors – and we love them because their conquests are human hearts.
There’s a truly contagious quality to the pride and the joy which an Irishman always takes in the fact that either he or his ancestors came from the Emerald Isle. His emotions are deeply rooted in the history and the folklore and the traditions of Ireland even though he may be generations removed from actual contact with its soil.
The loyalty and the faith of the Irish arouse our imagination and our enthusiasm to the point where we are always eager to join him in his lifting Irish songs.
Salvatore J. Lanzetta (Sunny Italy’s Son) – All the world is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. The contributions which the immigrants from that nation and their children have made in the building of our own great United States would fill volumes.
The sons of Ireland have left a glorious record as statesmen, writers, artists, clergymen, craftsmen, toilers, businessmen. I feel that the least we can do is to congratulate them and join with them and make their day or day – in the true spirit of the saying that all the world is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.
Russell F. Niquette (In the true Franco-American tradition) – Vive L’Irlandais! Yes, we French take our hats off to the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, brush aside racial rivalries and gladly and openly join the Irish in celebrating the great feast of St. Patrick, a man revered by all alike, whatever their nationality may be.
Of course, St. Patrick has become the patron saint of the Irish and his feast is a “Great Day for the Irish” as it has been for many years and always will be. We French fall in line with the endless parade of jubilants and we display the shamrock and much of the Irish smile as well!
More To It
There you are, boss, there’s a symposium to warm your heart. Hold on a minute, now, there’s more to it than that.
You see when I went to call on them, every one of these intellectual and distinguished gentlemen put a question, in one form or another, right smake up to me:
“O’Brien,” they asked. “what will you be doing this St. Patrick’s Day?”
Boss, I blushed a deep orange (Heaven forgive me!) when I told them I’d have to be working.
“Working!” they says, “And what kind of a boss is it that would make the likes of you work on the feast day of St. Patrick? Shame on him – and shame on you, too, O’Brien. Are you a mouse or a man?”
You see what I mean, boss? There’s no such thing as an Irish mouse!
So, I’m asking you again in a nice way – can I have the day off?
Or would you rather fight it out with my own private United Nations?
(Editor’s note: I am not 100% certain, but I think his memo worked and my grandfather got the day off.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his bookMonastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
