St. Patrick's Day vs. Irish Day

You might say Long Beachers like Peggy Callahan have the luck of the Irish. She gets to sing her favorite traditional Irish songs in Long Beach on two different days — not just St. Patrick's Day, but also St. Brendan's Day, otherwise known as Irish Day.

Callahan's favorites to belt out are "The Patriot Game," a rebel song, and "The Galway Shawl," which she describes as "another pretty song."

Her fondness for Irish songs stretches back to her childhood, when her Irish immigrant parents would take their five children to relatives' homes in the Bronx after Sunday Mass in Manhattan, where Callahan's cousins gathered with fiddles to perform.

"I sing because I was brought up with the music," Callahan said. "My mother and father were both born in Ireland and my mother is one of 13 children, almost all of whom immigrated to America."

Her friend Carol O'Neill remembers marching up 5th Avenue in Manhattan on St. Patrick's Day when she was a girl. She played the drums in a pipe and-drum band at St. Sebastian Elementary School in Woodside. "It was just a lot of fun," O'Neill recalled.

These days, O'Neill is usually working on St. Patrick's Day, but she always manages to get out at lunchtime at the law firm where she works, at 55th Street and 3rd Avenue, and walks to 5th Avenue, even if for only a half hour, just to hear the bagpipers play.

"It's always necessary for me to do it, for me to have a full, good feeling for St. Patrick's Day," said O'Neill, who took off work one year and marched in the parade with the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish-Catholic organization.

When Callahan isn't working in administration at a Far Rockaway hospital or selling real estate in Long Beach or Island Park on St. Patrick's Day, she can be spotted marching with the AOH on 5th Avenue.

On St. Patrick's Day and Irish Day, held the first Saturday in October, both women like to start their day by attending an early-morning Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Island Park, after which they have breakfast at a Long Beach tavern. On St. Patrick's Day, after they return from the parade in the city, they try to find an establishment that serves both corned beef and cabbage and traditional Irish music.