Tommy Finnegan is the son of a Chicago Firefighter and has been playing the pipes in The Shannon Rovers Pipe Band for 27 years. He sez, “I’m not musically inclined.”
He got the itch to join the band when he was a little kid, meeting the late Irish rebel and Rovers founder Tommy Ryan at a family party and told him he wanted to play the bass drum. Ryan told him, “you’re too little, pick up the bagpipes!” Tom and Dorie
Tommie Ryan started the Shannon Rovers in 1926 with a group of fellow freedom fighters who had settled on the west side of Chicago. Their proud Celtic music provided a link to their Irish heritage for emigrants who had come to Chicago after the Irish Civil War. Since then the Shannon Rovers have played around the world.
They’re the Beatles of the Bagpipes and during St. Patrick’s season they not only lead off the parade downtown but split up into smaller groups hitting pubs all over town, sometimes for weeks!
It wasn’t until Finnegan and his new bride Dorie Murray were at a wedding many years later and The Rovers were performing when Tommy confessed, “I’ve always wanted to do that!” Dorie told him, “You’re not getting any younger!” Finnegan family
Ask Finnegan what he wears underneath his kilt and he will tell you, “Shoes and socks.”
Members of the Shannon Rovers take their full battlefield dress seriously, and Tommy told me, “It’s no joke, you gottta do the whole thing. Every once in a while you find a guy who cheats by wearing underwear, you have the Sgian Dubh,(a knife worn in their garters), and you cut his underwear off and hang it on one of the flags!”
In some of the rowdier joints the Rovers play, it gets so crowded that they stand right up on the bar to blast their bagpipes. Tommy sez, “It’s the closest thing that a middle-aged guy can be to a rock star!” Marsie and her dad
Do any of the ladies sneak a peek under your kilt when you’re up there? Tommy deadpans, “Once in a while but you’ve usually just come in from the cold so there’s shrinkage.”
Tommy is the youngest of six Finnegans and Dorie the eldest of 14 Murrays from the West Side of Chicago where they met and fell in love in high school. They are parents to Tommy, Liam, Marsie, Kathleen, Tara, Kerry, and the late Jean Marie.
27 years with the Shannon Rovers means Tommy doesn’t usually see his kids for the month of March. I finally got to meet his daughter Marsie, (their nickname for Mary). She was recently in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Queen’s Court for two years running and our seasonal guest on my Hibernian Radio show. She’s a delightful young lady, with a great sense of humor, no nonsense. Marsie is one sweet potato. She says she finally got to see her father up close as a Shanonn Rover over both her Paddy’s Day seasons on the court and she realized the spirit and commitment of all the Rovers. Tom and Marsie Finnegan
When her little sister Jean Marie died many years ago at less than two years of age, the family was bereft. “We were initially gonna do a private funeral just for the family and one woman in the parish said to my parents, ‘You can’t, you can’t do that, the people of this community are really invested in your baby girl.”’
“So they had a wake from 3-7PM, and the funeral was right after that at St. Paul of the Cross church. My dad asked only his old friend and bagpiper Brian Giblin to play and process us out. When the church doors opened that October evening there were 45 Shannon Rovers, including the color guard, who were playing on the church steps as a surprise to us all. The Finnegans
"No, we didn’t know it was gonna happen. I think I learned at that time the flip side of a deep and unexpected loss is, if you’re lucky, feeling the support of those who can carry you through it. And witnessing The Rovers that night was a testament to the community my parents built, and the impact of our baby’s short life and this unforgettable act of love and one that I don’t ever think my dad could have ever imagined or anticipated how close The Rovers would come to us when he joined over 27 years ago.”
God bless Tommy and Dorie and all the Finnegans and God bless the Beatles of the Bagpipes.
