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When Grandpa Trod the Boards: From The Colleen Bawn to the Irish Cultural Garden

Title page from The Colleen Bawn script.   In 1933, when Joseph John Gilbride was 23 years old, he took to the stage. Grandpa had a bit part as a soldier in a production of the 19th century Irish play, The Colleen Bawn , by Dion Boucicault. The play was produced in Cleveland's Little Theater in Public Hall. 1   My grandpa's name and address in The Colleen Bawn cast list. 2   Now, it's not a huge stretch to imagine Grandpa doing a bit of theater. He was an outgoing fella, prone to jokes, puns, and visual nonsense that made his grandkids laugh.  Cut-up Grandpa checks out his new headphones, getting a smile from Grandma! 3 But beyond the novelty of thinking about a young Grandpa playing a soldier, it was the context of this Theater of Nations endeavor and the groups that helped produce  The Colleen Bawn  that grabbed my attention.   Beginnings  It began with this announcement on 13 December 1929 in The Plain Dealer: Races of City to Give Plays with P...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Generational Photo

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Generational Photo - January 12th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey


 

BOOMER! 

I love this three-generation photo of my husband, son and father-in-law, for a few reasons. 

All three are died-in-the-wool University of Oklahoma fans. Jim and Papa (the kids' term for their paternal grandpa), both born and raised in Oklahoma, grew up rooting for OU. As far as football was concerned, OU was the most important football thing going. James was quickly initiated into the OU fold as soon as he was old enough to hold a football. So when it was time to pick a theme for a multi-generational photo, an OU-theme photo it was.

Ironically, our son now attends OU. OU may have been his last college visit of three, but it was the school that quickly rose to the top, the dream school. Somehow it just felt right that he would choose OU, and fulfill the unspoken generational dream that someone from the Casey family would attend there.

It's also not lost on any of us that another Casey family favorite—the Cleveland Browns—now possess a former OU quarterback in Baker Mayfield. It came as a complete shock to me to learn in the early days of my relationship with Jim, that both he and his dad were not only lifelong OU fans, but also lifelong Cleveland Browns fans as well. That's right, these Okies had been rooting for this gal's hometown team for years. A marriage made in heaven? In more ways than one!

OU is inextricably woven into our life as a a family. 

And that's OK.

  SOONER!



 

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