Seven will receive $1,000 scholarships at June 9 event.
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Springfield resident Kathleen P. Murphy, a native of Ireland, helped established the John Boyle O'Reilly Scholarship Fund 40 years ago. Springfield resident Kathleen P. Murphy places great value on education.
“Everyone can learn, and in order to have a decent job, you need to have that piece of paper,” a diploma, said the Irish-born Murphy, a member of the Springfield-based John Boyle O'Reilly Club who went to college later in life.
To help students who are of Irish descent, Murphy established the club's scholarship fund 40 years ago with the help of the late James Curran, a professor at Springfield Technical Community College who taught microbiology to nursing students, and the late Mary Constance Powers, who for many years was assistant city clerk in Springfield.
The social club is named for the Irish-born Reilly, who was an Irish nationalist and Boston journalist. The fund awarded the first scholarship for $200 in 1972.
More than $175,000 has been awarded over the past 40 years to deserving Irish-American students to further their education.
This year the John Boyle O’Reilly Scholarship Committee awards brunch will take place on June 9 at 11 a.m. at The John Boyle O'Reilly Club, 33 Progress Ave., Springfield.
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Wayne Phaneuf, executive editor of The Republican, and area historian, will speak June 9 at the awards brunch of the John Boyle O'Reilly Scholarship Committee. Seven high school seniors going on to higher education were selected from a field of 19 to receive a $1,000 scholarship each this year.
They are: Alexandra Fitzgerald of Williamsburg, Cameron Keating of Monson, Lauren Kennedy of East Longmeadow, Patrick Moskal of Holyoke, Corrine Murphy of Wilbraham, Patrick O'Shea of Wilbraham and Jessie Page of Arlington.
“We’re looking for individuals that are very well rounded…dedicated and determined to seek higher education and to promote our Irish heritage,” said Mollie M. Bresnahan, a co-chair of the scholarship committee and a 2001 scholarship winner.
Scholarship winners, who are children or grandchildren of club members, are selected based on their academic record, extracurricular activities, references and essay related to Irish culture and history.
The speaker at the awards brunch will be Wayne E. Phaneuf, executive editor of The Republican.
Phaneuf, who will speak on Irish soldiers and the Civil War, conceived the idea for the paper's Heritage Book & Travel series. The series will feature books based on ethnic groups in Western Massachusetts. The first book in the series, “Irish Legacy: A History of the Irish in Western Massachusetts” co-edited by Anne-Gerard Flynn and Sister of St. Joseph of Springfield Judith Kappenman, was published in the fall and featured a recent trip to Ireland. An exhibit based on the book opens June 11 at the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History.
Phaneuf is co-author of the forthcoming “The Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans in Western Massachusetts” with other books in the pipeline on the legacies of Hispanics to the area as well as individuals of Jewish heritage.
A founder and first vice president of the Springfield Historical Society, Phaneuf is an honorary trustee of Old Sturbridge Village and a member of the board of trustees of the Springfield Museum Association.
He has written extensively on local history, including books on Springfield's 375th anniversary, co-authoring a history of the Union-News and Sunday Republican and currently does a weekly page in The Republican on the Civil War as it related to the area. For more than a decade, he wrote a weekly column on local history for the paper.
Murphy, 73, came to the United States from County Mayo, when she was 17 and earned a GED in her 30s, but it wasn’t until she was 40 that she attended Springfield Technical Community College where she earned an associate’s degree in gerontology in 1984.
She worked for the City of Springfield as an advisor to the Golden Agers and ran the Mayflower Senior Center.
Married, she is the mother of three attorneys and a writer. She has 11 grandchildren.
She recalled spending an extra two years in eighth grade in Ireland because her parents could not afford for her to continue her education at a convent school.
“I tutored other students,” she said, of those two years.
The scholarship fund she established has been successful through the years in large measure, she said, because it has been well managed. She praised the work done by the late Ellen B. Shea who served as treasurer for many years.
Currently members of the committee are Mollie Bresnahan and Patrick Garrity, co-chairs; Alesia Barbaro, Marie Long, Sheila Tzoumas, Philomena Hanrahan and Richard Devine.
Money for the annual scholarships comes from fund-raisers and donations; all funds go directly to the scholarship fund.
For more information or tickets to the brunch, which are $20, call Bresnahan at (413) 237-7969 or Garrity at (413) 478-7141.