(EDITOR’S NOTE; Eileen Hall, who now lives in Melbourne, Florida, is a former resident of Atlanta and contributor to the BULLETIN. This updated article was originally written in 1944 when Mrs. Hall and the people about whom she writes were parishioners at Saint Anthony’s.)

By Eileen Hall

“An Irishman dies every time they’re short an angel in heaven.”

Pat Gogan told me so, many years ago, when I was a young reporter questioning the Irish in my neighborhood in preparation for writing a St. Patrick’s Day story.

“Sure, and everyone loves the Irish,” Pat declared. “No matter what other interests they may have, you’ll hear them boasting of having a little Irish blood too.”

As Pat Gogan warmed to his subject, his eyes sparked, his hearty laughter rolled spontaneously, and the angels sing.”

“A lady once sent me a little postcard,” Pat told me. “It had the sentence on it: ‘An Irishman dies every time they’re short an angel in heaven.’ I put it up on the wall of the place where I worked. Many people came in and commented on it.

“Then one of the city’s leading newspapermen appeared one day with a large poster under his arm. He said the cord was too small to attract the attention it deserved, so he’s had the words printed in large green letters. The poster was decorated with little Irish colleens and things, you know. And he had it framed. All that he did for me.”

A poster still remained where Pat once worked, when I was interviewing him long, long ago. He hadn’t been to work for several years, but “now and then,” he said, “I meet someone who mentions it, and I laugh and laugh because I know how it got there.”

Another Irishman whom I interviewed for the long-ago story was Thomas J. Griffin, who came form Dublin in 1930 and remembered St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the old homeland. He was enthusiastic in describing the colorful customs with which the national holiday was observed in Ireland.

“Irish stores and business places always close, of course, for the holiday,” he told me. “Members of every faith attend services at their respective churches in honor of the great missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland 1,500 years ago.

“The remainder of the day is given over to sports and games, with the various districts, or parishes each entering its own band in a lively competition.

“Gay costumes add color to the scene, open air concerts and parades are the order of the day. The evening calls for dances with both young and old taking part in jigs, reels, hornpipes, and all the other traditional figures.”

I called on another Irish couple, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Doonan, before going back to my typewriter to shape up my story. Mrs. Doonan was making tea when I arrived. “It’s the first thing they do in Ireland when a caller comes,” she explained. “They put the kettle on and make some tea.”

While we drank tea and ate sweet cakes, she showed me an array of Irish curios which she had accumulated in visits to her homeland in the years since she first came to America.

“This is Beleek ware,” she said, exhibiting several beautiful specimens of a fine grade of china. “It’s made of a special Irish clay.” Daintily raised and painted shamrocks decorated the lovely vases and other articles.

She showed me a tiny souvenir kettle and pot which were made, she told me, of “black Irish bog oak. It’s dug from the peat marshes.”

She handed me a brooch of gold, inlaid with green shamrocks. “This is one of my favorites,” she said softly fingering it lovingly as I returned it to her. “It’s reproduced from an ancient museum piece which belong to princes of Tara.”

She also displayed an unusual ring which came form the Claddah fishing village outside Galway, and a number of little glazed pitchers of a dull gold with contrasting band. “These,” she said “are family heirlooms, 200 years old.”

Pat Gogan and his wife Josie, Tom Griffin, Richard Doonan and his wife whose name I have forgotten- all of them, no doubt, have long since tested the truth of the words on Pat Gogan’s poster. I was young, back then in 1944, when they told me these things, and they were what we now term “senior citizens.” Since I too “boast of having a little Irish blood,” some day I’ll test the words too.

One thing I can’t help wondering. What do those who joined the ranks of the angels in heaven think of the fratricidal strife now raging in northern Ireland? Too bad, too bad! Enough to make the angels weep, isn’t it?