The snow was piling up Saturday morning and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick were not about to kiss their 38th annual luncheon goodbye.
Some 200 of these fellows resisted the blizzard and drove downtown for the get-together, a green-letter day on the local Celtic social calendar. Had the weather been better, 900 Irishmen and friendly pretenders would have been wearing the green at the luncheon.
Baltimore possesses a number of groups whose membership tends to be strictly all-male and who revere the memory of the Emerald Isle. The pecking order can be confusing. Some are religious; others are social or neighborhood-based.
They represent all classes of Irish Baltimore, from the Blue Book to the back alleys. And it would be difficult to find a man buried in New Cathedral Cemetery whose ancestors were not members of one of these clubs.
The Friendly Sons, founded in Philadelphia in 1771, count George Washington as one of its members. The local chapter arrived here fairly late, in 1955 at the old Park Plaza Hotel, Charles and Madison streets, which in its day was a favorite gathering spot for the sons of Cork, Galway and County Mayo.
"These guys party hard. They got in their four-wheel drives when there were no other cars on the road," says E. Hanlon Murphy, the outgoing president of the group, of those who attended the luncheon at the height of the blizzard. He is also the grandson of Ned Hanlon, the legendary manager of the Baltimore Orioles who led the team to the 1894 World's Championship.
D. Chester O'Sullivan, 88 years old, still an usher at SS. Philip and James Roman Catholic Church and still chairman of the State Athletic Commission, has been chief of the Sons' board of stewards since the group was organized here.
"We are supposed to have the biggest hearts of any Irish society, to have love in our hearts at all times. We are supposed to help people in any way we can. Our charity is the Little Sisters of the Poor," says O'Sullivan.
Tonight, the members and guests of the Hibernian Society of Baltimore will pack a room at the Omni for the society's annual banquet, an all-male, black-tie dinner, with lawyers, judges and business people heavily in attendance.
The Hibernian Society was organized here in 1803 by both established Protestants and Catholics to help newly arrived Irish immigrants. The group stayed away from religious infighting. Baltimore then had many Irishmen who were Presbyterians. It also had quite a few who genuflected toward Rome.
