New York march will honor past chairman

Last year, the parade was dedicated to the fallen heroes of 9/11. Others to be honored in recent years included the victims of the Great Hunger in Ireland and those who fought in the Korean War.
“The 2003 parade will honor the past chairmen of the parade,” said Jim Barker, the parade committee’s executive secretary.
The most recent of the five is the late Frank Beirne, who chaired the parade organizing committee in the tumultuous years of the early 1990s when the parade was embroiled in the battle over Irish gays and lesbians attempting to march under their own banner.
Also to be honored will be the late Judge James J. Comerford, Harry Hynes, John Sheahan and Roderick O’Connor, who chaired the parade from 1923-35.

MONAGHAN MAN DIES IN HUB FALL
A 24-year-old County Monaghan man was killed last week when he fell from a rooftop parking lot in the Boston suburb of Quincy.
Hugh Maguire’s body was found early on Monday, Jan. 27, in the parking lot of a Petco store. Police ruled out foul play and it appeared that the man, who was from Clones, had fallen from the roof sometime during the night.
The cause of death was a severe head injury sustained in the fall.
Maguire’s body was flown home to Ireland later in the week for burial.
It was the second time that tragedy in America had struck clones in recent months. Jason McAardle, also from the town, died in November when he fell from a radio tower he was climbing in Fayette, Mo. McArdle, who was 20, was on a three-year scholarship program at the time of the accident.

AVALANCHE VICTIM HAD GALWAY TIE
One of seven back-country skiers killed in a recent avalanche in British Colombia had family ties to Galway.
David Finnerty, who was 30, was a member of the Irish Sporting and Social Club in Vancouver.
His father, Patrick Finnerty, immigrated to Canada from the Athenry area.
David Finnerty lost his life on the Durrand Glacier near Revelstoke on Jan. 20. In an eerie replay, seven more skiers were killed by an avalanche in the same area last weekend.
Finnerty played soccer at the sporting club, according to another member, Paul Stack.
Stack, a native of Clare, said that Finnerty was known as being “a very nice and obliging guy.”
“He was very much an outdoors type,” he said. “He had taken time off from work and had volunteered as a guide in the mountains. I don’t think he was even getting paid.”
Finnerty had also lived in Athenry for a period recently, Stack said.

MUM’S THE WORD
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office had nothing to say this week on the upcoming appeal by Brooklyn resident John O’Hara against his conviction for voting fraud.
O’Hara’s conviction in state court followed three attempts by the DA’s office to secure a guilty verdict.
The third prosecution was successful and was upheld on appeal, but O’Hara is now being allowed appeal the conviction in federal court because part of his sentence has been community work, specifically picking up garbage in his Brooklyn neighborhood.
That kind of community service is considered a form of confinement and is therefore grounds for the appeal.
Asked if Brooklyn DA Charles “Joe” Hynes had any comment to make in advance of the appeal hearing, expected later this month, a spokesman said that the DA’s office was not presently commenting on the O’Hara case.
O’Hara is the first New Yorker to be convicted of voting fraud since women’s suffrage campaigner Susan B. Anthony in 1776.

HAASS HANGS IN
While he is still expected to leave the State Department for the top job at New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Richard Haass is not leaving his present job anytime soon.
“He is remaining in place for the foreseeable future,” a State Department spokeswoman said.
Haass, the Bush administration’s point man on Northern Ireland, Is in Belfast, Dublin and London this week for meetings with government officials and party leaders.
Haass met with Irish foreign minister Brian Cowen in Dublin on Tuesday.

NEW PHILLY TRIAL DATE SET
A revised trial date of March 12 has been set in Philadelphia for the trial of four men charged with the 1999 slaying of a Donegal man Neil Martin McConigley.
However, a trial opening still depends on the outcome of extradition proceedings against one of the four accused.
Marlon Mullings, a Jamaican citizen, is under arrest in Jamaica and facing a U.S. Justice Department warrant for his extradition to Philadelphia.
Investigators believe that Mullings was the shooter in a robbery at McConigley’s West Philadelphia business premises in Oct. ’99.
Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy said that prosecutors were ready to begin the trial but that an actual opening was now largely dependent on the Jamaican authorities’ response to the extradition request.
A call to the Jamaican embassy in Washington, D.C., had not been returned by press time.