[caption id="attachment_68014" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Frank Durkan."]
Before a large crowd of cheering supporters, a Bronx community board last week approved the naming of a street near Gaelic Park in tribute to the late Frank Durkan.
About fifty members of the Irish community attended the meeting of Community Board 8 which unanimously passed a resolution that should now result in Durkan's name being added to that of Tibbett Avenue.
Supporters of the move had emphasized before the meeting that a good turnout was needed in order to persuade board members that the renaming had strong support in the New York Irish and Irish American community.
The move has to be approved a second time by the board before it proceeds to an ultimately decisive vote in the New York City Council, but supporters expect the second board vote to be little more than a formality. That vote will take place at a board meeting next month.
"It will then be calendared and submitted to the city council and we will be looking for support from (Speaker) Christine Quinn and other City Council members including Oliver Koeppel who will likely be asked to present the resolution," said attorney Martin Galvin, a leading proponent of the name change.
Galvin said that about half of those at last week's meeting to express support for the Durkan resolution were from the Bronx area, but the remainder had traveled some distance. Many of them had been aided by Frank Durkan in campaigns going back more than three decades.
Durkan, for years an attorney with O'Dwyer and Bernstien, took on a number of contentious cases related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland but his popularity extended well beyond the bounds of his legal work.
"Frank always supported the underdog and was generous with his time and expertise in supporting community efforts," Martin Lyons, one of the leading campaigners for the street name change, stated in a letter to the community board.
