Michael K. Miggins, my father, immigrated from Ireland in 1924. He was a 17-year-old orphan from Athboy. His father had encouraged his seven children to escape the violence of the Easter Rebellion against imperial England in 1916. A subsequent civil war resulted in the violent division of Ireland into Protestant and Catholic counties between the North and South.
My father was landless, impoverished and disenfranchised – the norm for Irish Catholics in his homeland under the control of the British Empire. The latter expected Ireland’s poorly educated, native people to work for a meager share of crops they grew on the estates of Anglo-Protestant landlords who saw their presence as a civilizing influence on what they perceived as a barbarous, superstitious country. Potatoes were the mainstay of the native Irishman’s diet. If the crop failed as occurred in the Potato Famine of 1845, Irish Catholics starved (1 million) or fled (1.5 million), mainly to America.
My great-grandfather had his own self-sufficient farm in County West Meath, one of Ireland’s breadbaskets. He tried to feed the droves of starving people, vomiting green grass, who passed his cottage but was warned not to give away his crops, even during a famine. He owed them to creditors in England who wanted to have cattle and large commercial farms replace the overcrowded, native population of 8.5 million people who mainly lived in small cottages as sharecroppers on Anglo-Protestant estates.
Police knocked out my great-grandfather’s teeth during an altercation. His children suffered the curse of impoverished landlessness until a son (my grandfather) married a widow with a small parcel of land. He supplemented his meager income by cutting down trees. His children knew that he had arrived home, dead asleep, from the creaking noise of his wagon’s axle and carried his often rain-soaked body to the family’s hearth. They watched steam rise from his frozen, wet clothes. The cold, damp climate caused greater tragedy: the death of their mother from tuberculosis. Their father soon followed after his appendix burst in his field. No medical help was available.
Jack, the oldest son, left for America and, dressed in his fireman’s uniform, gladly welcomed his brothers and sisters at Ellis Island in New York City’s harbor to inspect and, in rare cases, deport foreign newcomers. More than 20 million immigrants passed through its gates between its opening in 1892 and closing in 1954. Today, more Irish people live in America than the current population (4.5 million) of Ireland.
My father worked as a welder in New York’s Riker’s Island Prison and Brooklyn Shipyards. We lived in a rent-controlled ($48-a-month) apartment at the beautiful, northern tip of Manhattan between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. We were surrounded by bucolic parks, the Cloisters Museum, hills, the stunning Henry Hudson bridge, stores, Irish pubs, churches, excellent schools, three major public transit systems, physical and psychic security, and, above all, hope.
My irrepressible father cashed his paychecks into dollar bills and threw them into our living room. His screaming children scurried to gather and hand over the reward for our father’s hard work to our mother. A radio quiz show picked out my father in a crowded audience because his children were dressed in green on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. He “broke the bank” (the name of the program) and won $4,800. Our family appeared in a photo in the New York Post. My jealous friends told me that I looked like Howdy Doody.
My parents saw their children’s education as paramount. We were not allowed to become slackers. We would prove the British Empire wrong as we excelled and relentlessly practiced the Protestant “work ethic”. My two oldest sisters went to Hunter College for free and became teachers and successful businesswomen. The youngest became a distinguished nurse and drove all over New York State, even through snowy blizzards, to train the next generation. Their youngest, spoiled brother took an easier route and became a college professor at Cuyahoga Community College.
We are a nation of immigrants (almost 10 million in the 1990s). Foreign newcomers bless us with their talents and hard work. The venomous snakes that St. Patrick, a missionary, supposedly drove out of Ireland will arrive in America if we don’t become more intelligent by acquiring a multicultural education. I celebrate St. Patrick every day by trying to accomplish this mission.
Edward M. Miggins received a Ph.D. in history from Case Western Reserve University and now lives in the central coast region of California.