Everyone’s Irish this week
Published 6:24 pm Monday, November 24, 2008
Nancy Gould-Hilliard
Around the Island
A leprechaun left a bag of shamrock cookies on my doorstep this week. Suspecting my goody-giving neighbor, Eve Green, I asked her how Jewish leprechauns celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
“With corned beef, cabbage and Jewish rye bread, of course,” she replied.
She’ll be in luck any Wednesday evening this month, when Roanoke Inn-keeper Dorothy Reeck will serve that traditional “Irish-Jewish” meal. On Saturday, March 17, St. Pat’s Day, add bagpipers, green beer, shamrock champagne and all the trimmings. Just follow the chalk shamrocks on the sidewalk to the door festooned with the St. Patrick’s Day flag.
A visit with Dorothy in her circa 1914 parlor above the tavern is indeed a time warp. The six-bedroom inn with a common bathroom is full of antiques, early photos and inn-keeping treasures, such as an old Red Cross First Aid kit, vintage radios, collapsible laundry-drying-rack, and coin separator. Its view of the lake and the remains of the Roanoke Ferry Dock evoke ghosts of commuters from Leschi trudging up the road to buy supplies at the Roanie, pre-1940 bridge.
Up-Island at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on St. Patrick’s Day, MIHS students will serve an authentic Vietnamese lunch from noon to 1:30 p.m. to benefit second-generation children disabled by the effects of Agent Orange. Sponsoring teen service group is Interact Club. Paul Taylor and his company, Real Networks, will double “the green” donated to the cause.
Let’s head straight to the ultimate St. Paddy’s Day topper, heeding an Italian proverb that “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” Excite your palates as honorary “Irish-in-law” Tom Callahan instructs how to enjoy a truffle, “by holding it against the roof your mouth and letting the chocolate melt over your tongue.
“After you’ve had your corned beef and cabbage and a stout Guinness, my mint truffle is bold enough to hold its own against the strong brew,” says Callahan, a self-made chocolatier in his third year. He responds to “I-need-chocolate” phone calls by delivering many flavors of truffles to your doorstep.
His company, tkChocolates — so named when a friend called his hand-dipped truffles “to-kiss chocolates” — is his secondary job, he claims. “I’m Chief Operations Officer for a private concern specializing in personnel development,” meaning he’s a house-husband and Mr. Mom, and was proud to take his wife’s name when they married. Let’s toast this lad!
A memorial celebration for an Irish lass of Mercer Island who stole our hearts as proprietor of Riley’s Gifts (1981-94) will be held at 4 p.m. Friday, March 16 at the Mercerwood Shore Club. Gloria Riley recently died in Tuscon, Az. She and her husband, Bill, raised six kids on the Island - Patricia, Jack, Nancy, Jim, Joe and Maureen — and all were integral to Island life.
Gloria’s Irish heart loomed large. One day she phoned me at work that “the overstuffed teddy bear your daughter wanted so badly now is on sale for half price.” It really wasn’t. But she knew my daughter needed it then. A well-loved “Hug-a-bear,” now 28 years later, is still in my married daughter’s home.
A final note on St. Paddy’s: MI’s legendary leprechaun of past decades was Larry Lahey, who worked hard to preserve the Island’s history and parks from 1933 until his death in 1995. Helen, his wife, also did before her death in 2004. They lived proudly in a Cape Cod cottage at 9229 SE 33rd St., then-acreage with specimen trees and shrubs, and a meandering stream. Larry would sneak into the Reporter office this time of year and leave a sprig of fragrant daphne odora from his garden.
The Laheys’ pastoral place now has been replaced by multiple designer homes. But before their construction, I retrieved Larry’s crumbling St. Francis statue from the excavated mud. This spring, it sits among daffs in my planter, working hard to coax my own daphne to grow.
May the saints be w’us all.
Last Friday, Ann Meyers Kaplan, who lived at Island House for several years and has lived in the Seattle area many decades, celebrated her 100th birthday at the Community Center at Mercer View with about 70 guests. Her daughter, Maxine Schnebele, and Ann’s son, Arthur Kaplan, say the secret of their mom’s longevity is maintaining a positive outlook on life.
Ann’s parents were Russian immigrants who came to Seattle via New York in 1910. She graduated from Garfield High School in 1925, married Ben Kaplan in 1935, was bookkeeper for his company for 50 years, and worked many years at the Bon Marche. When daughter Maxine lost her hearing at age 3, Ann took up advocacy for the hearing impaired, and with the Herzl Ner Tamid Congregation, started the Deaf PTA. Maxine and her husband, Brian, have lived on the Island 27 years; Ann’s grandson, Henry Honig, also lives here.
Nancy Hilliard can be reached at Nancybobhilliard@comcast.net.
