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Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

Welcome to the Second Century

November 15, 2007

by Tom deignan

ONE hundred years ago this summer, a girl named Rose Deignan left Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, for Queenstown. From there she sailed to Ellis Island.

Ballinamore (or Béal an Átha Móir in Irish) can roughly be translated into “Mouth of the Big Ford.” The name derives from the town’s status as the main crossing point along the Yellow River.

As if that were not impressive enough, Ballinamore is also placed in what the locals call the Valley of the Black Pig.

Anyway, Rose left the Yellow River and the Black Pigs behind. She arrived in New York City on June 20, 1907. She was 14 years old and as best as my cursory examination of the records at ellisisland.org indicates, she came here by herself.

So what? Who cares? What’s in a name?

Rose, after all, as best as I can tell, was no relation of mine. However, a few months later, my grandfather and a bunch of other Deignans also set sail for Ellis Island, on a Belfast-built ship named the Cedric. They came from Widnes, England, near Liverpool, where they had moved after leaving Boyle, Co. Roscommon.

There were two Margarets traveling alongside Joseph, James, John, Phillip, my three-year-old grandfather, Leo, and his one-year-old sister Sarah. Other brothers and sisters would be born over here. Or would come over later.

They arrived a few months after the aforementioned Rose, in October 1907. Which means the Deignans, for better or worse, have been in the New World for a century now.

How to mark such an occasion? Well, it so happens this past weekend, another Rose Deignan arrived in the New World, this one weighing in at seven pounds and eight ounces, arriving Saturday evening just before 6 p.m., joining her sister, Maggie, and brothers Timothy and T.J.

All were born at the old St. Vincent’s hospital on the North Shore of Staten Island. I was born there, as was my wife, Kate.

In fact, my wife’s parents met there. Her mom was working as a nurse while her father was a police officer moonlighting as a security guard.

As we were leaving the hospital this weekend, a nurse gazed at my wife for a moment before asking her name. It turned out she’d gone to nursing school with my wife’s mother.

Of course she did.

So, baby Rose, you are born into a world of connections, the past and present always colliding — again, for better or worse.

Another nurse looked at my own name and remarked that she’d known a Jimmy Deignan who’d worked at the hospital a few years back and had since become a firefighter. Yes, he’s a cousin of mine. Of course.

One hundred years is a long time, in one sense, but not too long in others. There are still people alive today who were alive when my young grandfather and his family stepped off the Cedric.

What was that world like for the Deignans, my grandfather as well as Rose from Ballinmore? In the fall of 1907 there was a stock market panic which cost investors millions. The Plaza hotel opened in early October. George M. Cohan’s musical Talk of the Town was about to open on Broadway.

The first helicopter was flown, the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve in Times Square for the first time and a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread would cost you less than 40 cents.

My God, the Chicago Cubs even won the World Series.

In Ireland, meanwhile, Belfast was still recovering from a strike over the summer which had many cheering because they saw it as a moment of unity for Catholic and Protestant workers. Such unity, of course, would fade.

In September, an Irish Parliamentary Party meeting was disrupted by a raucous Sinn Fein demonstration. The Easter Rising was less than nine years away.

Baby Rose, you are, in some ways, born into a vastly different world.

Just this week, the Ulster Defense Assoc-iation, the largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, agreed to put its arms beyond use, as the IRA did some time ago.

War and ethnic tension rage in the Middle East, more so than Europe, these days.

Obviously, Rose, it remains an imperfect world. We will all work together to make it as good as it can be.

Whatever became of Rose from Ballinamore? We cannot know. I can only hope she was as happy as you and your brothers and sister have made me.

(Contact Tom at tomdeignan@verizon.net)

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