Community 
Chris Burke
Tuesday’s Children After losing his brother Tom in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Chris Burke looked into the eyes of his four now fatherless nephews and made a commitment. He founded Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit organization that has made a commitment to every child who lost a parent in the terrorist attack. Burke, a former bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that lost more than 700 people in the WTC, wants to ensure that these kids don’t feel alone. Tuesday’s Children plans many activities and outings, which help the children realize that there are lots of kids out there feeling similar emotions.
Tuesday’s Children also has two pilot mentoring programs that match up a child with an adult. The pair then can go on outings where the child can have fun outside of his family, and have the beneficial influence of an adult involved in his or her life.
Whereas just three years ago Burke was in the biggest bond pit on Wall Street, he now spends his time taking kids to pop concerts, trying to help depressed family members and organizing activities where children can have fun instead of focusing on grief. He is an inspirational Irish-American who has turned a personal and national tragedy into a project of healing. Burke is proud to say that his family comes from County
Tipperary. 
Frank Durkan
Civil rights Advocate A stalwart of the Irish American community, New York based attorney Frank Durkan has long been involved in civil rights matters, primarily with regard to those Irish who have come into conflict with the law by reason of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
In that respect, the case which gave him the greatest satisfaction was the case of the Fort Worth Five, who were jailed for contempt in Texas for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating an alleged gun-running operation between Mexico and Ireland. His clients were released by order of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who determined that the U.S. Government was illegally eavesdropping on telephone conversations between Durkan and his clients.
Durkan also led the defense of Desmond Mackin who defeated Britain’s extradition request in 1981, and gained international headlines in his successful defense of George Harrison, one of the Brooklyn Five, in 1982.
Currently Durkan serves as chairman of A.N.I.A. (Americans for a New Irish Agenda), which worked with the Irish government, the White House and members of Congress to help shape American policy during the Northern Ireland peace negotiations.
A graduate of Columbia College and New York Law School, Durkan is an active member of the Mayo Society of New York, and presently serves as president of the Mayo Football Club of New York. 
Kathleen Callahan
Preventing Gang Violence Kathy Callahan, licensed clinical social worker, is a child psychotherapist who works in the department of behavioral health at the Beth Israel medical center in Newark, New Jersey. She specializes in attention deficit disorder and treats children, teens and adults. Callahan has been commended for her trailblazing work in gang violence prevention. She developed and founded a program to tackle this problem, and works with students, law enforcement, hospital staff and parents to help young people think before they act. She explains, “The goal is self-control. That way kids can learn how to use their energy and think creatively to come up with positive alternative solutions.” Extremely successful, it is also the first gang violence prevention and mental health program affiliated with a New Jersey hospital.
Callahan also has been greatly successful in individual rehabilitation with her patients. “Michael” was a seven-year-old homeless and parentless African-American boy she was treating this year and she managed to do the impossible – she found a mother who has adopted him. Today, Michael has a safe and loving home. Her colleagues have said, “Kathy saved Michael’s life more than once.”
Callahan is Irish on both sides of her family, and her paternal side is from County Cavan. She visited for the first time four years ago and hopes that someday she can lead some workshops in Ireland. 
William J. Flynn
Working for Peace William J. Flynn, a New Yorker who has played a prominent role in the peace process, is chairman of the Manhattan-based Mutual of America insurance company. Flynn traveled to Ireland numerous times for peace negotiations during the 1990s, and as the chairman of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, he was a key figure in brokering the IRA ceasefire.
Flynn is also the chairman of Flax Trust America, a charitable organization which provides, among other things, training for youths in Northern Ireland. He is a member of the board of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the Ireland America Economic Advisory Board, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation, and The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Foundation, Inc. He has also served as chairman of the Advisory Committee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, president of the board of the New York Foundling Hospital, and member of the boards of Boston University, Fordham University, and the U.S. Army War College.
In March 1996, Flynn was the Grand Marshal of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. He is the recipient of Brandeis University’s Distinguished Community Services Award and the Ubi Caritas Deus Ibi Award – the highest honor of Catholic Charities. And he was awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal from the Department of the Army for extraordinary service as an expert consultant on the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors. For his help in brokering the peace in Northern Ireland, Flynn was also among the honorees at the December 1999 Peace Links gala in Washington. He is the co-author (with George D. Schwab) of Journey to Belfast and London, which was published by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (1999).
A graduate of Fordham University, Flynn is a first-generation American with roots in Counties Mayo and Down. He and his wife, Peg, have four children and eleven grandchildren. 
Michael Golden
Allison Lynch
Battling Global Hunger The most immediate problem threatening people in the developing world is starvation. Over 840 million people in the world are malnourished. More than 153 million of them are under the age of five and six million children die every year as a result of hunger. Endeavoring to alleviate these problems, dedicated individuals like Professor Michael Golden and Allison Lynch have spent years working for aid organizations.
Golden, a Belfast native who lives in County Donegal, has a distinguished medical career. An active clinician and professor of medicine and nutrition, he is the former chairman of the International Scientific Committee of Action Against Hunger. In 1997, he was one of a group of three who invented the therapeutic milk formula F100 and improved the nutritional treatment protocol for acute malnutrition. In less than five years, F100 and the protocol decreased the mortality rate for children under five from 25 percent to 5 percent. At his suggestion, Action Against Hunger did not patent F100 in order for it to be open for universal use. Now almost all NGOs (non-governmental organizations) use Golden’s solutions.
Golden also serves on the advisory board of Action Against Hunger in the U.S. and the U.K. Recognized worldwide as a leader in the fight against hunger, Action Against Hunger delivers programs in over 40 countries, specializing in emergency situations of war, conflict, and natural disaster emergency aid and longer-term assistance to people in disaster areas.
Educated at Queen’s University, Belfast, Golden is a professor emeritus at Aberdeen University in Scotland. A passionate man of science, Golden says, “Nobody who has experienced terror, war, death, destruction and the absolute human misery they bring can remain unchanged and without empathy of the plight of millions in the world today. We are a global village. What happens in Mexico, Congo, Angola or Iraq will affect you, whoever you are.”
Allison Lynch is a research and communications associate at the Hunger Project in New York. All of her grandparents are from County Donegal and she holds both Irish and U.S. citizenship. Being both Irish and American helped her at a young age take an interest in the wider world, and she has been working for non-profit organizations for about 10 years. With an accomplished background in finance and communications, her work is both rooted in getting the message of world hunger out, and ensuring that people part with their money to aid the effort. Says Lynch, “Making any positive change in society, you have to address how people think and how they look at the world. Then, they need to be moved to take action, and that’s what communications is all about – to open people’s minds to what is going on.”
The Hunger Project is a strategic organization and global movement committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. It believes in empowering local people to find solutions to hunger in their own communities. Lynch is currently focusing on research to pinpoint the key issues that maintain the problem of hunger. She says, “I can’t see myself working in a field without social relevance. I like working in partnership with people to create social change. I like producing concrete change and being part of a process of transformation.”
– By Louise Carroll 
Loretta Brennan
Glucksman
Cultural Chieftain It has been said of Loretta Brennan Glucksman that she brought American-style charity to Ireland and Irish culture to America. She is the co-founder, with her husband, Lew, of Glucksman Ireland House, the center for Irish Studies at New York University, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2003. “I think the name is hilarious,” she said, “An Ireland house with a Hungarian Jewish name.”
After the Glucksman Ireland House was established with a $3 million gift from the Glucksmans, Tony O’Reilly (who knew Lew Glucksman through business) approached him saying The American Ireland Fund (AIF) would like to honor his wife. That was the beginning of her involvement with the AIF. Today she is the Chairman of the AIF, which encourages peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland through culture and the arts, education and community development.
Glucksman, who has enjoyed a diverse career, which has included teaching, television and running her own public relations firm, grew up in Pennsylvania in a totally Irish community. Her maternal grandparents, McHugh and Murray, immigrated to America from Leitrim in famine times. “They were coal-mining people, so when they went to the United States they went to the anthracite areas of northeastern Pennsylvania,” she says. Of her paternal grandparents, all she knows is that they were from Donegal.
The Glucksmans have been married for 18 years. It was a second marriage for both. Lew has two grown daughters and Loretta has two sons and a daughter. 
Donald Keough
Irish Studies The Donald R. Keough Endowed Collection in Irish Studies was established by Notre Dame University in 1992 to honor Don Keough as he stepped down as chairperson of the Board of Trustees and became a life trustee.
A 1949 graduate of Creighton University, Don joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1950 and worked in a variety of positions before he was named president, chief operating officer, and a director of The Coca-Cola Company in 1981.
Don and his wife, Marilyn, generously donated $2.5 million to endow a chair in Irish studies, and establish a center for Irish Studies at Notre Dame and The Keough-Notre Dame Centre in Dublin.
The Donald R. Keough Endowed Collection in Irish Studies provides for the acquisition of major resources in 18th-century Irish Studies. Works on the origins of Ireland, bibliographies, biographies and autobiographies of Irish Catholics living and deceased, works relating to the social, economic, cultural, and religious history of the Irish, Irish immigration history, Irish women’s studies, and works on Northern Ireland are being acquired with funding from the Keough Endowment.
Don’s love of Ireland and all things Irish led to his involvement in its economic development. He led several delegations of American business people on trips to Ireland and he is a member of the Taoiseach’s (Irish Prime Minister) Economic Advisory Board.
The recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, and the Notre Dame Laetare Medal, the highest award given to American Catholics, Don was born in Dubuque, Iowa, the son of a farmer and cattleman. He serves on the boards of numerous national charitable and civic organizations. Upon his retirement form Coca-Cola in 1993, he became chairman of Allen & Company, a New York investment firm. 
Sheriff
Michael Hennessey
Educating Inmates “The traditional approach to jails and prisons doesn’t work.” So says San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, and he has spent close to 30 years as a prison reformer leading the movement to change the way America thinks about criminal justice. His innovative approaches to prisoner rehabilitation may be controversial, but time has proven that Hennessey’s nontraditional programs are some of the most effective crime prevention measures in the nation.
After earning degrees from St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of San Francisco School of Law, Hennessey became the only California sheriff who is also a lawyer. In 1975 he took his career in a new direction by founding the San Francisco Jail Project, a legal assistance program for poor prisoners. Since then he has gone on to implement several nontraditional programs in the San Francisco jail system, including acupuncture, GED classes, organic gardening therapy, yoga, and Tree Corps, a project that offers former prisoners employment planting and tending trees in and around the city.
Hennessey’s most effective program to date has been RSVP – the Resolve to Stop the Violence Program, an anti-violence course for prisoners convicted of violent crimes. Developed by the sheriff in association with victims’ rights organizations, the program has seen the re-arrest rate for its graduates drop from 55 percent to 14 percent. Sheriff Hennessey is not only making San Francisco a safer place to live, he is changing the lives of prisoners and ex-offenders with his resourceful innovations and determination. 
Dorothy Madden
Providing Recovery In 1999, Dorothy Madden gave up her 34-year career as a banker to serve the poor. She took over as director of the John Thomas Travis Center after the death of its founder, Sr. Helen Travis, on February 3, 2000.
The Travis Center, located in the South Bronx, is a home for men recovering from drug and/or alcohol addiction who are transitioning back into the community.
Madden has been a lifelong resident of the Bronx. She was born in the South Bronx and currently resides at the Center. She started her career in banking in 1965 for Dollar Savings Bank, a Bronx-based bank. In 1992 the bank was taken over by Emigrant Savings Bank. Madden rose from teller to vice president of communications during her career in banking. She says her background came in very handy when she assumed the responsibility for managing the Center, food pantry, and clothing bank. “It gave me a strong financial background which has been very helpful because one of my many roles at the Center includes managing its finances,” she says.
Madden believes the need for programs like the Travis Center is vital. She believes the men need a clean, supportive, and structured environment in which they can recover and maintain abstinence.
Programs provided by the Travis Center include finding affordable housing and offering follow-up and support services to the men after they have been discharged from rehab.
Madden, who is proud of her Irish heritage – both of her paternal grandparents hail from County Galway – is a life coach and confidant to the men, but most importantly she is a friend. Prior to her death, Sr. Helen spoke of her dream that the Travis Center would continue long after her demise. With Dorothy Madden at the helm the Center is in good hands, and its preservation is ensured for years to come. 
Father Jim Maher
Feeding the Community “We run for a higher purpose,” Rev. Jim Maher, a priest and New York City marathon veteran, explains when asked how he could possibly have spent the past ten years running the arduous 26 mile race. The campus minister at St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens, Maher runs to raise money for the college’s Bread and Life program in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
In 1994 he first entered the New York City marathon, only four years after he was ordained and had begun working at St. John’s. As he runs though the streets of New York, Maher keeps in mind that the Bread and Life program
produces 1,000 meals per day, which means a lot of mouths to feed.
Many people come to the Bread and Life food pantry. But for those who are unable to travel, the program has a mobile unit that reaches out to people in the neighborhood who need food and services. Said Maher, “When we reach out to the community, we can really respond to people’s needs and get people connected to services.”
He considers his marathon runs as a wonderful experience but he also bears the heavy burden of the lives which he works so hard to improve. Maher added, “For people who are poor and hungry, life is like a marathon, with few water stops and no finish line.”
Maher’s Irish heritage is important to him and he has visited Ireland seven times. His mother’s side of the family, named O’Connor, comes from County Tipperary. True to his active nature, Maher bicycled from Galway to Donegal on one of his visits to Ireland. 
Thomas Moran
Global Generosity Mutual of America’s president and CEO, Tom Moran, is a familiar face in the business world. He is equally well known in philanthropic circles for his dedication to humanitarian causes.
Moran, whose ancestors come from Kesh in Fermanagh and Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary, is particularly known for his longtime dedication to Irish causes.
He has played and continues to play a significant part in building collaboration among all the various parties involved in Northern Ireland politics. He works behind the scenes and retains the view that the only way for Ireland to grow, economically and socially, is through peace. He recently hosted a delegation from Northern Ireland at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Concern Worldwide has also benefited from Moran’s
caring nature and steadfast commitment to helping others. He serves as Chairman of the North American branch of the Irish organization charged with serving the poorest of the poor in developing countries. Moran’s dedication has inspired generosity in others, and Concern’s seventh annual dinner, held in New York City last November, and honoring Hewlett-Packard's CEO, Carly Fiorina, was its most successful fundraising dinner to date.
Moran, a native New Yorker, also serves on the board of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, National Center for Disability Service, American Cancer Foundation and is a member of the Ireland Chamber of Commerce in the USA. He is also a past chairman of the North American Board of the University College Dublin Graduate School of Business – the Smurfit School. 
John Walsh
Fighting Crime TV personality and crime fighter John Walsh somehow finds the time and energy to host both his daily talk show The John Walsh Show, and the program that first made him famous America’s Most Wanted.
His public life began in 1981 when his six-year-old son Adam was abducted and murdered. Walsh was the first parent of a murdered child who used the media to help locate other missing and abducted children, and he has spent the rest of his career educating the public and working with the FBI and police to keep kids safe. Last year, he was instrumental in keeping the image of abducted teen Elizabeth Smart fresh in America’s memory. Following a tip sent to America’s Most Wanted, Smart was found and returned to her parents.
As a result of his public life, Walsh has had to experience many of his personal tragedies in the glare of the spotlight. Earlier this year, he told Irish America, “There are times when I am extremely happy and I feel very blessed. As much sadness as I’ve had in my life, as much sorrow, as much heartbreak – I have also had the greatest luck of anyone I know.”
Walsh, who grew up in upstate New York, is intensely proud of his Irish heritage. Both his mother’s side of the family, the Callahans, and his father’s side come from Ireland. He has visited Ireland many times and enjoys the Irish countryside. This year, Walsh was asked to be the Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Washington D. C. 
Ed Ward
Keeping the Spirit Alive Ed Ward is the founder of Milwaukee Irish Fest. Born and raised in Chicago, Ward attended Marquette University in Wisconsin for both his undergraduate and law degrees. A veteran of the U.S. Army, he did a tour of duty in Vietnam as well as serving two years in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer. For the past 18 years he has worked at Morgan Stanley where he is now a vice president.
Ward got the idea of an Irish festival after being a volunteer for many years at Summerfest in Milwaukee, a large music festival. He also saw the success of the Italian Fest and realized Irish culture was being neglected. Ward says his music industry background encouraged him to pursue organizing a festival seriously. “With 30 years as an entertainer, record distributor, and concert booker, I knew the business,” he says.
Milwaukee Irish Fest is the world’s largest Irish music and cultural festival, attracting 132,000 visitors annually. Also housed at the Fest is the largest public collection of Irish music in America, the John J. Ward Irish Music Archives. In 1989 an academic scholarship was set up in Ed Ward’s name. The yearly scholarship is designated for any resident of the Milwaukee area studying Irish instrumental music or song.
Ward has visited Ireland many times and is very proud of his heritage. His paternal grandfather emigrated from County Meath to Joliet, Illinois in 1900 and his mother was a Cagney who traces her roots to County Galway. He and his wife Cathy have five children.
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