Smilin’ eyes

As the Irish American Club of Southern Minnesota kicked off its 55th annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration at Sacred Heart Catholic Church Saturday, March 11, one thought was shared among the group of over a hundred proud Irish in the pews: This is how it’s supposed to be after a Covid-19 interruption.

“It’s good to be back at it again,” Muriah Miller-Keith told the congregation at the special mass. “We’ve worked for years to get back to this point.”

After two years of uncertainty due to the pandemic, everything was back. However, as Faith Ryan recalled, there was a moment when the celebration didn’t happen back in 2020.

“At that time, the world was starting to shut down,” she reminisced. “We weren’t sure whether to keep going or not. But we decided that us Irish folk could get through it.”

Two days later, Minnesota considered shutting down most of the state as the pandemic came to the United States.

In 2021, nearly the entire celebration was canceled. The only remaining staple was the mass along with the Irish music preceding it. 2022 was a much more normal year, but the celebration still missed one main event: the pageant. Its return this year meant that things were back to normal for the Irish American Club of Southern Minnesota. It also meant that after a three-year reign, Miss St. Patrick Carmen Miller and Miss Irish Rose Rachel Borneke gave up their titles to long-awaited successors.

At the Irish mass, Ryan revealed that the 2023 Grand Marshal is Edna Burns. She also presented the 2023 Mr. and Mrs. Emerald Isle, Mike and Jane Mulcahey. The couple succeeds Mr. and Mrs. Emerald Isle 2020 Greg and Sue Harguth who, like Miss St. Patrick and Miss Irish Rose 2020, served in their capacities for three years.

Father Brian Mulligan, who serves the Catholic Churches in Janesville, Waldorf, and New Richland, was the celebrant of the Irish mass while Father Thê Hoáng of Waseca was the co-celebrant.

After mass, there was a parade of clans. The units marched from Sacred Heart north, turned east and went around Ace Hardware before making their way back to the Mill, where

the rally began. Blake’s Food Truck provided the meal of mulligan stew, corned beef and cabbage, burgers, and hot dogs. During the afternoon, Irish music was performed by Becky Borneke, Muriah Miller-Keith and the Ditch Creek Dixies. Irish auctions and bingo took place throughout the rest of the afternoon.

The pageant followed shortly after 7 p.m. at the Mill. A more detailed writeup of the pageant will be in this week’s paper as a separate article.

Immediately following the pageant was musical entertainment by Buffalo Alice, a local five-piece classic-rock and country band, playing on past midnight.

For many proud, local Irish, it felt good to have the entire celebration back for the first time in three years without any hiccups. That night, as Miller and Borneke relinquished their titles after the longest reign in the club’s history, Irish eyes were definitely smiling.