Denis Mulcahy
By Irish Echo Staff
If the month of March is the time of year when we consider more closely all things Irish, it is time, too, to consider the complications of identity on the island of Ireland.
Such complications form the backdrop for one of the more inspiring stories to emerge from all the years of Troubles on the island.
Project Children tackled conflicting identity head on, and did so on the landmass of a nation, this one, which has more experience in reconciling conflicting identities than any other on the planet.
“How to Defuse a Bomb: The Project Children Story,” is, as its title suggests, an account of how people go about tackling a troubling and dangerous situation.
The film, narrated by Liam Neeson, tells the story of Project Children founder Denis Mulcahy whose career with the New York Police Department was significantly concerned with defusing things.
The County-Cork born Mulcahy was assigned to the NYPD’s Bomb Squad.
“How to Defuse a Bomb” will be screened on Thursday, March 2, at the Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers.
The work of Project Children during its years of defusing was to provide summer vacations in America for more thousands of children from Northern Ireland.
Those children, Protestant and Catholic, never less than badly needed a reprieve from the Troubles and the fact that, even living in close proximity in a small place like the North, the chances of them meeting and socializing were, to say the least, slim.
Denis Mulcahy founded Project Children in 1975, along with his brother Pat.
Both men would serve with the NYPD but their service, over the course of the next quarter of a century, would reach into territory well beyond their regular police duty.
In that troubled summer of ’75, the Mulcahy brothers brought six kids from Northern Ireland -three Protestants and three Catholics - to Greenwood Lake, New York.
The idea behind this was twofold.
Most importantly, the brothers Mulcahy wanted to get the kids away from the violence and the paramilitaries.
They also wanted to show Protestant and Catholic kids that they could live together and actually like each other.
Well, lo and behold, once taken away from their environment of conflict, the kids, who were just that, kids, found that they could actually be friends.
Over the years, Project Children grew from those initial six pioneers and the $1600 it took to bring them over to the United States.
The number would reach closer to 600 young people per summer and their placing with U.S. host families in more than twenty states.
The total of Project Children kids over the years has been an astonishing 22,000 hosted by 1,500 U.S. families.
The budget would rise from that initial $1600 to close to a million dollars, none of it going to salaries.
And the headquarters of the organization has been Denis Mulcahy’s own home, where his wife Miriam has been nothing less than a managing partner in all of Project Children’s extraordinary work.
After the 7 p.m. screening on March 2, Denis, who is a member of the Aisling Center’s board, will answer questions from the audience.
The Aisling Center is at 990 McLean Avenue. RSVPs to info@aislingcenter.org, or by calling (914)237.5121.
