Brendan Sullivan is a Corporate Creativity Coach. He helps organizational teams and leaders to create more dynamic solutions, more productive collaboration, more effective leadership and a healthier work environment where talented people can thrive. He has a checkered past which includes acting, producing radio, selling advertising and writing stuff. And of course he has a website, http://www.creativitycoach.net.Contemplations on Growing Up “Southside Irish”
By Brendan Sullivan
When your name is Brendan Patrick Sullivan, a certain level of Irish American wisdom and experience may be assumed. As an adult, I have been asked all sorts of things that you of other ancestry may not have: Do you support the IRA? Have you read “Angela’s Ashes”? Is the Guinness in a can as good as on tap? What are you doing for St. Patrick’s Day? Would you guest-write my blog with your thoughts on being Irish? I don’t think I look particularly Irish, I don’t have a brogue and I don’t belong to any Irish or Irish American organizations. So all I can assume is that my name conjures up these questions.
Such was not the case when I was a child. I grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago, in the 1960s. I was named after my father, and was the oldest of six children. And I never realized how “Irish” I was because everyone in our neighborhood, it seemed, was just as “Irish.” We lived down the street from the Flynns and the O’Connors and the Walshes and the McDonoughs. And everyone had about six kids. No one ever spotted me as being particularly Irish because everyone was. So no one ever said “Gosh, that’s a really Irish name.” What other kind of name was there?
And of course we all went to the Catholic school and church. Oh sure, there were a few outsiders, whom we referred to as the Publics. And we weren’t sure what the Publics did. They had little churches with various names that sounded alike. We had huge Gothic churches that were packed to the rafters every Sunday. The Publics went to a different school and didn’t wear uniforms to school. They had spring break and winter break. We had Easter break and Christmas vacation. And I never really got to know any of them that well. They were all going to roast in hell, anyway.
So my world was all Irish. And all Catholic. In fact, you didn’t live in a neighborhood, you lived in a parish (St. Cajetan, Christ the King, St. John Fisher, St. Barnabas, St. Christina, etc.) And yeah, there were a lot of pubs. I went to a Catholic all-boys high school where they would suspend you if you were caught drinking. But the school gave you a personalized porcelain beer stein when you graduated, and our senior prom favor was an etched brandy snifter. Hmmm?
There is something very insulating, and very provincial about the Southwest side. So that when I moved to the North side after college, I may as well have gone over to the Dark side. How could I? Lord knows there’s nothing north of 35th street. And I now live in a neighborhood with Applebaums and Espositos and Jacksons and Lis and Pashas and the gay couple down the street too.
But I return every year with my wife and four very Irish kids to sit with their multitudinous cousins and watch the parade, using my sister’s house two blocks off the route as our home base. And we eat corned beef sandwiches and wear green and you stand on the parade route with hundreds of thousands of others with equally Irish surnames, watching the endless stream of marching bands and firemen and policemen and veterans and clans and politicians and community groups and Knights of Columbus and there’s a feeling that you are a member of a very large green cult.
Oh, I’m still Southside Irish. I still believe that the White Sox are far superior to that team down the street. My parents and all of my brothers and sisters all live on the south side, or in the southwest suburbs. And there’s an Irish flag flying in front of our house this week. But it’s the only one on the block.
