Comhaltas video reunites Listowel family with US cousins
‘We never even knew each other existed’
TALK about Irish music bringing it all back home! Just a few short weeks after his talented daughters, Hayley and Céilí, featured in a major online project by Kerry Comhaltas, Mike Holly found himself talking on the phone to Chicago with a first cousin once-removed he never even knew existed.
It all came about when dancing teacher and photographer John Stack initiated a project to bring all the performers in the county branches together on-line in lieu of public fleadhanna cheoil as a result of the pandemic.
Hayley Holly (13) featured as one of the 264 individual videos Comhaltas ended up receiving in the fruition of its extraordinary project. John also got the performers to film themselves doing fun things under lockdown at home and spliced it altogether to the music of Pharrell Williams’ Happy – with Hayley’s sister, Céilí, winning the best individual performance of all in the video ( see right, inset).
Hayley – who won the under-12 fiddle category of the County Fleadh in Milltown last year – would meanwhile catch the eye of someone very far away – but very, very close, as Mike explained.
“It was actually the video of Hayley that caught Kay Stark’s eye, and she put up a comment underneath it saying ‘we could be related’,” the Ballygologue Park resident told The Kerryman. “So I texted her back on Messenger and asked her what part of Kerry was her father from, only for her to tell me that he was from Asdee.
“I’m living in Listowel now, but I’m from Ballylongford originally, and my father always told me that they moved from Asdee into Ballylongford when I was born. So I sent her back a message saying that my father is Michael Holly from Asdee. She then explained that her father had a brother, John Holly.
“I couldn’t get over it as my father’s father, my grandfather, was John Holly. Turns out that we soon confirmed her father was Jeremiah Holly, and he was my grandfather’s brother!”
“I wasn’t even aware I had relatives in Chicago,” Mike said.
It just so happened that Kay Stark (née Holly) had already clapped eyes on Mike’s father.
“She told me to join a group on Facebook called ‘ The Lynchs, Dalys and Hollys of Co Kerry, Ireland’, and there was a video of my father, Mikey Joe, singing in John B’s pub in Listowel. Not only that, but there was a picture of my grandfather and grandmother, John and Margaret. I had never even seen a photo of my grandmother, who passed away in 1976, the year after I was born. My grandfather, John, died in 1985.”
Within days, Mike and Kay were chatting on the phone, beginning to fill in the blanks of their shared family history since Kay’s dad, Jeremiah, emigrated from Ireland in 1929 at the tender age of 22.
Like many, Jeremiah followed his own path from New York, initially to Chicago, where he put down his roots. Sadly, as often happens, the contact petered out over the years.
“I was even able to tell Kay that her first cousin, my aunt Margaret, has been living in the States for years when I spoke to her on the phone for the first time. It was unusual to finally get talking, but we really hit it off and the conversation was soon flowing between us.”
Incredibly, the Irish traditions so strong in Hayley and Céilí are just as strong in their US relations they’ve been in contact all along with. “Our relations are so big into Comhaltas over they have their own branches: “My father’s sister Margaret ‘Peggy’ moved to America and her daughter, Margie Mulvihill, has her own Comhaltas branch in New York, and her daughter, Erin Loughran, has Erin Loughran’s school of Comhaltas too. Would you believe it that Erin, who was the New York Rose, even married a Tyrone footballer in Listowel?
“She played the fiddle as the New York Rose in the Rose of Tralee and really made a fuss of Hayley to the extent that it was a big inspiration for Hayley to take up the instrument too.”
And the trans-Atlantic relationships don’t end there.
Incredibly, Mike’s wife, Hayley; and Céilí’s mom, Nora (née Stack from Ballyhahill) is a relative of aunty Margaret’s husband! Talk about bringing it all back home!