Eddie Kirk, 68, succumbs to brain cancer

By Harry Keaney

Edward Joseph Kirk, an Irish-American innovator, businessman and community activist, died New Year’s Day in Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, N.J. He was 68 and had been suffering from brain cancer.

A native of County Monaghan, Kirk lived in Oradell, N.J. He operated an array of tire outlets throughout the metropolitan area, having built the businesses after inventing a cost-effective method of whitewalling tires in the early 1960s.

With Roscommon man Edward Sheeran, Kirk was the public face of Tara Circle, the organization that fought a high-profile battle, starting in 1992, to establish an Irish-American cultural and educational center in Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, N.Y.

"I became involved because I was embarrassed as an Irishman that we have one of the largest Irish communities but no home of our own," he said at the time.

Tara’s current president, James Rice, said nothing ever stopped Kirk from going forward. "He would have to get it done," he said. "There was a persistence, a need to just keep plodding when the odds said you couldn’t. He was nobody’s yes man."

Sheeran, executive director of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency, said that Kirk will be remembered as one who never forgot where he came from. "He was a very, very proud Irishman," Sheeran said. "The contributions he made to charity, to Irish organizations and to charitable organizations are just amazing. And he made them without fanfare.

"There was always a green line in front of Eddie. He never saw a stoplight. He was a tremendous entrepreneur, a tremendous businessman. When you shook his hand, you knew you had a deal. It was a tough handshake."

Kate Cunningham, who also worked closely with Kirk on the Tara project, said he was tireless in his efforts to promote his heritage. "His commitment and dedication were constant and he gave countless hours working on what he believed in," she said. "You always knew where Ed stood on an issue."

"He strove to help people understand what Ireland is really about," his daughter Regina said. "He truly wanted to break the stereotypes that many people have about the Irish. He worked from his core to preserve and further Irish traditions and customs for his own children and those of others."

Kirk was a leading member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an organization with which he clashed when he insisted on marching with his Irish wolfhounds in the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The dispute erupted on Fifth Avenue in 1995 when he was removed from the parade while marching with his wolfhound, Emmet, behind the colors of the Fighting 69th Regiment.

Kirk had not only been a parade participant; he also had provided financial assistance for television coverage of the event.

He was a former president of Div. 9 AOH and the Bronx County board, and served for a year as state director.

Although passionate in his enthusiasm for all things Irish, he was particularly sensitive to what he perceived to be injustices and prejudice against the Irish. Indeed, his last conversation with the Irish Echo was following the 1998 suicide in Van Cortlandt Park of 23-year-old Liam Mason, also from County Monaghan. Kirk called to express his outrage that such a tragedy, that such alleged exploitation, should happen "in this day and age."

"He had to have a focus in whatever he was doing," his son Brian said. "He knew what his values were. That’s something that he had from the first day of his life."

Kirk was born on a farm in Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan, in 1931, one of 11 children born to Brian and Kathleen Kirk. Nicknamed Ned, he left school at 13 to become a farm hand, plowing fields and tending to livestock. At 16, he began a five-year apprenticeship with a cabinetmaker.

When he was 23, he came to the United States and settled in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.

He worked as a cabinetmaker, deliveryman and salesman for the Dugan Bread Company in the Bronx. While working at the bakery, he read a newspaper advertisement selling a bread route in Riverdale. He bought it and started working for himself for the first time.

Shortly afterward, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the 82nd Airborne Division. During that time, he earned a trip home to Ireland for having received the Soldier of the Month Award. When he returned to the U.S., he met Breda Griffin, of Killarney, Co. Kerry, and they were married on April 23, 1960, in St. Rose of Lima Church in Washington Heights.

Shortly after, Kirk made the discovery that would, ultimately, set him on the route to an innovative and successful career in business. He invented and patented a new vulcanizing oven for whitewalling tires and started the Little Giant Whitewall Corporation.

"At the time, it cost auto dealers $60 per car to whitewall tires," Kirk recalled in 1992. "I came up with a system where I could do 130 tires in a day for $3 a tire."

Subsequently, he was hired by one of his customers, Northern Tire, in Whitestone, Queens, as a salesman. After three years, in 1973, he bought the company and today, Kirk’s Northern has 10 locations in New York and New Jersey.

Apart from the AOH and Tara Circle, Kirk was also involved with a number of other Irish cultural and charitable endeavors. He was a member of the Irish Bergen Association and was a founding member of the Irish Youth Football Organization in Bogota, N.J. In recent years, he worked with Daytop Village, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program, as a board member and group leader.

He was also a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association.

He is survived by his wife; by four sons, Eamonn, of Montague, N.J.; Brian, of Clifton, N.J.; and Stephen and Kevin of Washington Township, N.J.; by two daughters, Kathleen Bogue of Emerson, N.J., and Regina Kirk, of the Bronx. He is also survived by seven grandchildren.

Following Mass on Wednesday last in St. Joseph’s Church, in Oradell, burial took place in Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah, N.J.