Erin Go Braugh!!

Happy St. Patricks' Day!

Always gives me pause to remember those ancestors who came before me. The Leary's and O'Connors from Cork and Kerry. Typical American Dream stuff--hard workers, laborers, really. "Poppy" O'Connor, my grandfather's father, was an iron molder and "had a fist that was like a block of cement." The struggled, worked hard, raised their kids, and watched as the next generation prospered and moved up the rungs on the American economic ladder.

My grandfather was the first in his family to buy a house. He sent both of his kids to college. Always worked two jobs and every holiday to earn the extra pay. When I got an offer for my first job out of college at a law firm in Manhattan, his first question was "how much they gonna pay ya?". I told him ($25k/yr.--this was 1993). He whistled and shook his head side to side "Oh you handy man--I never made that much money in a year in my life".

We'll raise a pint of Guiness to them all tonight.