John Corry

John Corry’s chronicle of the Murrays and the McDonnells is the quintessential story of a successful Irish American clan—perhaps the most successful in sheer numbers and influence. Thomas E. Murray, the patriarch, was born in 1860 in Albany, New York. At his death in 1929, he left $9 million, eight children, forty-eight grandchildren, and a record of industrial accomplishment ranging from 1,110 patented inventions to the consolidation of Con Edison. His faith never left him. Murray’s children, the “lace curtain” generation, nurtured, increased, and occasionally squandered the new wealth, made feudal marriages with the offspring of other Irish climbers, built great houses on Fifth Avenue and the shore, and a tight, exclusive society upon the twin rocks of Catholicism and respectability. A third generation was raised in the great houses, convent schools, and the Southampton “compound” (prototype for the parvenu Kennedys’ in Hyannis). Their inevitable entry into secular society found them ill-prepared: marriages with a Ford and Vanderbilt ended in failure. The most recent crop of Murray-McDonnells moves in St. Tropez and St. Mortiz, scenes of the celebrated Charlotte Food–Starvos Niarchos liaison. The author remarks and regrets the loss-through-assimilation of what was distinctively Irish in this and other great families, closing with a memorable firsthand portrait of the indomitable Anna Murray McDonnell. Corry’s history of the “golden clan” is set against the larger context of the Irish experience in America: tales of Colonial grandees and early nineteenth-century “fashionables”; how the historic emigrations radically changed the nation’s perception of the Irish; how families like the Murrays and the McDonnells came by their values and passed them on; fascinating details of the relationship between the rich Irish and their clergy. Writing with their proper shade of a lilt, John Corry offers a fond and discerning view of a great American Irish family that “arrived”— and never looked back.

Bang "Help My dog's been shot." Mrs. O'Reilly, living with Arnold Really O'Reilly, in a cozy Cape Cod bungalow overlooking the Atlantic in late November was moderately frantic over her wounded pet Arnold, who'd always wanted to write a mystery, had a fine collection of unpublished poetry, philosophy, and Quaker theology. Arnold was a tall man, thin as a rail, with deep set sleepy eyes, wispy hair on top, and a savage pink scar across his left cheek His hands were... "The dog? What about Mrs. O'Reilly mourning her favorite pet who'd just been shot?" 'Not to worry. She didn't like the dog much anyway and Whiskers had only been nipped in the left hind paw." "But..." "As I was about to say, Arnold's hands were his favored visible physical feature. Grey-veined they put him in touch with his beloved computer and a hundred other little...."

SELF. Not the observing self, not the self-serving-others self. But SELF that wills SELF. Ego-SELF. SELF-against-selves. SUPERSELF. SELF over all Love. The most critical relationship in life is not as St. Augustine claimed between the human soul and God, but between SELF and Love. God. First encounter? Sitting next to grandmother when I was eight years old in the big Quaker Meeting room in Atlantic City... Finally the squirming drifted away and I became aware of stillness around me and I knew God wasn't in the big fan overhead... but God was in the stillness. Not just silence but stillness that came out of the silence. Jesus. We speak of Jesus as a primal word. We make a clearing in the forest of words for the Word who was flesh. We leave Love and God to one side to walk into the mystery of a new primal Word.