Everything Comes to an End

Fellow members of the Irish Cultural Society. We now have a personal connection to the old, but true expression "Everything Comes to an End." We are ending our 45-year run as the Irish Cultural Society. It has been a great run! We will end at the April meeting. Please join us at our March and April meetings, giving us a final opportunity to celebrate the talents of three of our most acclaimed guest performers. Did Martin Kelly, Tom Lee, Ray Coyne and other founding members know that they were planting seeds that would grow for forty-five years? Did they know that the Hedgemaster they created would become an encyclopedia of Irish history and culture? Their creation motivated members like Jim Hawkins, Joe McCormack, John Walsh, Jim Conroy, Anne Fitzgerald, Karen Boldizar and so many others to discover their inner scholarly researcher to add to the Hedgemaster encyclopedia. From 1983 through 2024, the Hedgemaster published over 154 essays. We learned a good deal from these essays. Did they know the writing contest they started would reach, in 2024, over fifty Nassau County high schools? Our member Bill Hayden introduced us to the Wilson Foundation. As we know from the announcement in this message of our final three performers, our meetings celebrated Irish history and culture. Our founders started well by in 1981 inviting Professor Maureen Murphy of Hofstra University to be our speaker. Dr. Murphy became a member and an advisor who set a high standard for our meetings and articles. Our founders could not have predicted the pandemic of 2020-21 which drove us out of the Garden City Library, our home from the beginning, into the Garden City Casino, a Clare Curtin discovery, for five years until Anne Fitzgerald and Mike FitzPatrick brought us back to the library in 2024. Nor could they have foreseen, 45 years ago, the effects of aging on the members, like reluctance to drive at night! Would they have predicted that a membership high of 196 would be reduced to 69 in 2025. Everything comes to an end!