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Lawrence Welsh\u2019s mother was born in this thatch cottage in Coolaholiga, Nenagh, County Tipperary. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Welsh)<\/p>\nBy Lawrence Welsh\u00a0<\/p>\n
I still cherish Winnie Hogan\u2019s first words to me: \u201cWelcome home.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was June 1975, and our family landed earlier in the day at Shannon Airport, and now we stood at Coolaholiga, my mom\u2019s ancestral home just outside Nenagh, County Tipperary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember,\u201d Aunt Winnie added, as she hugged me, \u201cIreland will always be your home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, on some level, I know she\u2019s right.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unequivocally, that summer changed and rearranged everything I knew about the world, and as a 16-year-old from South Central Los Angeles, I was already world weary from the tough, gang infested streets of my neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Coolaholiga, however, wasn\u2019t an island unto itself. It linked to Ballycommon, another farm a mile away, and my mom said the Gleesons were our people, too, for the Hogans and Gleesons married in the 1800s, and now I had hundreds of cousins, aunts and uncles everywhere: In town, out of town, and in places like Dublin, Limerick, London, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
Back then, it seemed if a relative married, the newlyweds eventually gave birth to seven to 11 children, and the offspring followed the same path, until it turned into a Hogan\/Gleeson world where I could only know a small segment of the puzzle. By the time of my arrival, the tribe expanded to include new relatives with last names like Slattery, O\u2019Shea, Minogue, Ryan, Limey, O\u2019Carroll, Morgan and Powers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I asked my mother during those years how long our people had remained in Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps 400 years, maybe more,\u201d she said, in a bit of a dazed reverie. \u201cThese are roots Americans will never understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawrence Welsh\u2019s mother was born in this thatch cottage in Coolaholiga, Nenagh, County Tipperary. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Welsh)<\/p>\n
Without question, I spent that summer in the old Ireland: one of endless fields, darkened woods, and tent dances at Dromineer on the River Shannon. Packs of Carrolls, Sweet Aftons and John Player Specials were smoked, and I leaned into Smithwick\u2019s Ale, Carling Black Label and Guinness with uncles, aunts and cousins. I soon realized I couldn\u2019t match or beat them at anything, including drinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long before our arrival, my mother\u2019s oldest sister, Mary Hogan, lived at Lissen Hall, a long gone to ruin Tipperary manor that served as an IRA safe house during the Irish Civil War. On my day there, nothing remained, not even the roof, but the walls stood and ivy and other vegetation took over the corridors, as my brother, sister and I carefully walked on through. Mary had married Danny Gleeson, a local farmer, at the age of 20 and raised 11 children on the property in a small thatch cottage. It was all staggering and mind boggling.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When summer ended, the Hogans and Gleesons threw a \u201cwake\u201d party for our return to the States. At Ballycommon that August night, everyone for miles around showed up: fiddlers, accordionists, guitarists, and the food, dancing, drinking and storytelling went on until dawn. I also tasted poteen, a bootleg potato liquor, for the first time and felt proud to be included in it all. In retrospect, I think the locals didn\u2019t know if we\u2019d ever return, so nothing was spared.<\/p>\n
My mom just beamed and danced that night. Throughout her life, she told me not a day passed when she didn\u2019t think about Ireland, since she was lucky enough to have stayed put until the age of 32. And even after 40 years in California, she never lost one bit of her Tipperary brogue.\u00a0 My high school friends dug her, but they couldn\u2019t understand her.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also found myself infatuated that summer with a beautiful 16-year-old from the Silver Mines, a village a few miles away, but she remained some distant cousin from a family connection and everything stayed pure and innocent. But up until that time, she was the most beautiful teenager I\u2019d ever seen.\u00a0 It would take decades to find out that she liked me, too.<\/p>\n
Recently, I realized that Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, the Irish\/English band, spent his summers as a youth in the Silver Mines, and his death Mass took place at St. Mary\u2019s in Nenagh, where my mother and all 10 of her brothers and sisters were baptized and confirmed.<\/p>\n
At summer\u2019s end, I returned to Los Angeles for my junior year of high school. However, I felt a bit like a stranger and often wondered if I belonged back in Ireland with \u201cmy people,\u201d even if I remained a \u201cYank\u201d as many of the Irish called me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seven years later, I\u2019d get a chance to go back \u2013 this time to Cork, where my father\u2019s people immigrated from and Phyllis Hogan, my first cousin, lived, with her young family. In 1999, I returned for my honeymoon.<\/p>\n
As a father of young teenagers, I took my family back in 2018 and read my work at the University College Cork during the American Conference for Irish Studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Welsh-3.jpg\")
Lawrence Welsh\u2019s children play with their young cousins in the summer of 2018 at Coolaholiga, Nenagh, County Tipperary. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Welsh)<\/p>\n
Eighteen years have passed since my mother died, but she always reminded me: \u201cDon\u2019t let anyone take Ireland from you. It\u2019s yours and you can\u2019t lose what\u2019s yours, even if you try.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of my mother\u2019s brothers and sisters are dead now, and I still think of Ireland all of the time. Coolaholiga and Ballycommon remain in our family, and, in a sense, it\u2019s my home, too, for one can only be who they are, and I\u2019m some sort of Irishman, some sort of American, lucky to still call both countries home, and lucky to be alive at all.<\/p>\n
Lawrence Welsh is an El Paso author and English professor at El Paso Community College. His 14th published book of poetry, \u201cDrag of the Dust,\u201d is forthcoming from Texas Tech University Press.<\/p>\n
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