25th Anniversary

This past Sunday, February 3rd, marked the 25th Anniversary of Echoes of Erin broadcasting on WEDO.  My guest in the studio was Kerry Keegan Mulhern; it was Kerry and I who created the program back on February 7, 1988.  The program was very good and heart warming as we relived some memories of the early shows, artists we brought to town and introduced to the region, the origins of the different segments on the program, and we just had a good old time.

We aired some clips from two of our first shows, really interesting.  We had a segment called "Ireland's 32", each week a different county was highlighted with history, people, specialities of that particular county, then two songs of the county were played.  We did this for 32 weeks. 

From the first program we had another segment called "Dateline Irish", it was our calendar of events, although much more extensive today, I do believe it was the very first 'Dateline' in the media.  I told Kerry the big stations heard Echoes of Erin, liked what they heard, then copied our 'Dateline'.  We had a good chuckle on that!!

Kerry was with the program about two years then she moved to New York to pursue her lifes' goals.  Eventually she moved back to Pittsburgh, married an Irishman from Donegal, and had two boys. Through all this time we have remained very good friends. It was really good working with Kerry again; way back when we had some excellent ideas, actually we were probably ahead of ourselves and many others at that time.

When we arrived at the studio on Sunday, laying before us was a beautifully decorated table with a cake, some beverages, a lovely card, and great wishes from our Irish organizations in Pittsburgh.  This thoughtful gesture was orchestrated by my good friend Jim Caldwell and joining him were the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Irish American Unity Conference, Knights of Equity, Daughters of Erin, Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, Conway Mill Trust, TYORC, and all the other Irish organizations.  It was so kind and generous and the cake was delicious.  John Loder of WEDO was our technician when first we started and he is still with the studio, so we took some pictures.  I'll post them shortly.