By Denise Foley
If you’ve ever attended a charity party, bought a cake from a home-school association, or, say, perused table after table of raffle prizes at a St. Patrick’s Day Parade fundraiser somewhere in the Delaware Valley, you can be pretty sure there was a woman involved.
She might have planned the party, baked the cake, organized — or even created — some of the raffle prizes. She might be the head of the organization or the behind-the-scenes worker. She may be a well-respected community leader or just that familiar face that turns up whenever something needs to get done.
Women not only “hold up half the sky,” as the saying goes, but they also do most of the volunteer work — almost 60 percent, says a worldwide United Nations study.
And it is those women —the cake bakers, raffle creators, ticket sellers, event organizers, community leaders, the backbones of just about every organization —who are going to be honored by the new Top 100 Irish Women of the Delaware Valley Award.
“There are so many women doing so many things to help the Irish people, doing work for charity, promoting the culture, to keep Ireland and Irish customs alive,” says Pari Livermore of Wyncote, who co-chairs the committee that is planning the event at the John Barry Arts and Cultural Center (The Irish Center) sometime — Covid permitting — in 2022. “I’ve seen these women and they knock themselves out. They spend so much of their energy, time and devotion to the Irish community that they should be honored.”
The proceeds from the event will benefit the nonprofit Irish Center, where this transplanted Californian often can be found on the dance floor on Wednesday nights with the Circle of Friends Irish dancers.
With roots in County Antrim, she first learned Irish dancing at the Irish Center in San Francisco. She took it up again in Philadelphia while she was caring for her ailing husband. A hospice caregiver recommended she do something she enjoyed so she didn’t burn herself out. It was a lifesaver for her and she wanted to give something in return.
“What I have is the ability to raise money through parties,” she said.
In fact, she has decades of experience in turning parties into sizeable charitable donations. In 1986 while living in San Francisco, she started The Red and White Ball to raise money for the American Heart Association. But it was no ordinary event: Some of the money came from the $1 a dance women paid to dance with 150 eligible bachelors recruited for the event.
Over 20 years she organized 14 Red and White Balls for a variety of other charities and the event spun off her second career as a matchmaker. (She met her own husband, Putnam, at one of the Balls so it was a natural progression.)
The fees she was paid to make 307 couples blissfully and happily married also went to charity. Total so far: $5 million. She and her husband devoted much of their married life to philanthropy. He was co-founder of the Trust for Public Land and the two established 11 California State Parks and created a scholarship program for migrant children.
But when she thought about honoring the Irish women who gave their all to support Irish culture in the Delaware Valley, she realized there was something she didn’t have: local contacts. That’s when she met Kathy McGee Burns.
“Kathy said ‘I would love to help.’ I didn’t know she would be doing so much,” laughs Pari. “I didn’t know anyone. She knew everybody!” She asked Kathy to be co-chair of the event.
Kathy, like Pari, was once a newcomer in the Philadelphia Irish community. Knowing nothing about her own Irish roots at the time, she perused a phone book from Ireland and determined that since there were so many McGees in Donegal, that’s probably where her family was from. “So the first thing I did was join the Donegal Association,” explains Kathy. “Then I volunteered for everything.”
She went from the volunteer who sold raffle tickets to the first woman president of the Donegal Association of Philadelphia. Eventually she added to her firsts: first woman president of the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame and first woman president of the Irish Memorial. She was also second woman president of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Observance Committee and only second woman in to be named Grand Marshal of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day parade. She has also served on boards for the Duffy’s Cut Project, St. Malachy’s School (in the parish where her Donegal ancestors — yes, she was right — worshipped when they arrived) and as vice president of the board of the Irish Center. All while raising nine children and selling real estate which, now in her mid-80s, she still does successfully for Berkshire Hathaway.
“We were looking for people like Kathy, who said, ‘I’ll do it’ and then did more than they were expected to do. There are a lot of people who say they’ll do something and then you never hear from them,” says Pari.
The women they were looking to honor didn’t have to have amassed a series of firsts or moved into leadership positions. Like other organizations, Philly’s Irish groups thrive only because they have reliable volunteers willing to do all the nitty gritty jobs, who show up when they’re needed, who bring it.
When Pari and Kathy identified and approached leaders of 38 of Philadelphia’s leading organizations that support Irish culture, from the Irish American Business Chamber and Network to the Philadelphia Gaelic Athletic Association, the question they asked was: “Who helped you? Who did the most work? Who can you not function without?” They sought out other women in the Irish community “to help us remember the forgotten,” some of the older women who, for one reason or another, have had to retire from a lifetime of actively supporting Irish organizations.
Pretty soon they had their 100 women, all of whom have been notified. Most were pleased, Kathy said. Some wanted to know what organization nominated them. Some were “shy about it” and protested that “they didn’t do anything” worthy of being honored, Kathy said. “But I think most of them really liked it.”
The committee hopes to announce that the festivities will happen in April 2022 though Covid holds all the cards there. “We don’t know if we’re going to be seeing more variants or if we’re all going to be on our fourth booster,” Pari says ruefully. But she’s more than optimistic — she’s determined. This party is going on.