Forty years have passed since I visited Thomas and Nora Lernihan. I was in County Clare last week, and thought I'd see if I could find any trace of them or their families. I drove to the little town of Connolly, stopped at the petrol station/convenience store, and asked if they knew of any Lernihans in town. I told them the story (scroll down to see my blog post entitled The Tractor, the Bicycle, the Song) and the two young men behind the counter said they'd never heard of them. The middle-aged man, a customer, also said there were no Lernihans living nearby. I was about to give up, thinking that in such a small town of course everyone would know everyone else.
However, one of the young men, possibly a teen-ager, suggested I stop at some of the houses along the main road and ask. If there's one thing I've learned about Ireland, it's that networking is extremely powerful there. I took his suggestion seriously.
The very first house I stopped at I struck gold! The middle-aged woman I spoke to went in and asked her father to whom I told the story and asked about the current whereabouts of any Lernihans. He didn't seem to know but then his wife came to the door and said that she remembered Thomas and Nora. They had both passed on and had never had children. However . . . Thomas had a niece and she currently lives just three houses down the road!
I went straight there and met Marie Clarke, the daughter of Thomas' brother, and we spent well over an hour talking about family and reminiscing about Thomas and Nora and how friendly and outgoing Thomas had been. She said that she had vague memories of Thomas' mother, who had sung to him when he was a child and that she was always loving and supportive. The most interesting thing she revealed was that her father had gone with Thomas, his brother, to the matchmaker's house, back when they were young, to meet his prospective bride. That evening was the first time the husband and wife had met. They were married soon after. Yes, they had an arranged marriage, and it was indeed a good match, for they had a good relationship all the rest of their lives.
And decades later, back in the early 80s, I was the recipient of their hospitality. And then four decades after that, a week ago, I experienced the hospitality of Thomas' niece. After all, hospitality is one of the central qualities of the Irish character, as illustrated by the first wave Thomas gave me when he passed on his tractor so many years ago.