*A version of this blog post originally appeared in The Irish Times on October 1, 2018

With family and friends just a mouse-click away, we might be forgiven for believing we can feel at home wherever we are in the world. Migration seems less complex and consequential given the abundance of opportunities for virtual connections to home, but “the ache of the uprooted plant,” persists, reminding us that sometimes there is no substitute for a real social network in a physical space. For the Irish Diaspora or for anyone seeking to connect or reaffirm a connection with Ireland, an unlikely opportunity exists in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun, best known for its 299 days of sunshine each year and its multi-city sprawl – each of those cities boasts a sister city in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Just north of downtown Phoenix, stands the McClelland Irish Library, a latter-day 12^th century Norman castle. Such an architectural juxtaposition may seem incongruous in other urban landscapes, but not in Phoenix, a city that is barely 150 years old.

Although considered a new city, its network of canals – more miles of waterway than Venice and Amsterdam combined –  are reminders that Phoenix was built on the ruins of the ancient Hohokam civilization.  With sticks and stones, the Hohokam carved almost a thousand miles of canals into the desert, creating the most advanced irrigation system in the New World to deliver water from the Salt Water river to their crops.  After tending fields in their desert oasis for more than a millennium, the Hohokam civilization disappeared in circumstances that remain a mystery for archeologists. The Valley of the Sun lay empty for 400 years, just waiting for European settlers, the pioneers who would uncover the ancient Hohokam water routes to shape the canal system and the city that continues to rise from the ashes of its mythical namesake – Phoenix.

Phoenix is a big city, the 5^th most populous in the United States with over 1.6 million people, 10% of them claiming Irish ancestry. It is big but not entirely urban. Surrounded by mountains, the neighborhoods of Phoenix are various and distinct, some separated by over thirty miles and more than one freeway, some sprawl across acres where citrus groves, horse pastures, farms, and fields of flowers once flourished, all coaxed by canal waters.  Phoenix is also a city of newcomers, that, according to U.S. Census Data, added 220 people a day in 2017.  And although it has been synonymous with suburban sprawl for decades, more people are flocking to the city. Downtown Phoenix, Inc., a think tank established to encourage more businesses, residents, and visitors, reports that in 2018 Phoenix has already seen an 85% spike in its downtown population.  People want to be less dependent on their cars; instead walking or taking the light rail to restaurants and cultural destinations. This bodes well for recent Irish emigrants in search of the craic – they might just find it in a place like the  Irish Cultural Center and the McClelland library – a bold expression of Irishness in the heart of a desert city.

The library bears the family name of Norman P. McClelland who passed away in 2017. He was the son of W.T. McLelland, an immigrant from County Down, who settled in Tucson in 1912, about a month before Arizona became a state. In many ways, Norman McClelland was typical of the Irish in America, who Eileen Markey characterizes as “tenacious in in their cultural identification, claiming an Irish identity a century or more after our forbearers stepped off the boat.”  This tenacity is reflected in McClelland’s genealogical research, painstaking work that would lead him to envision. a library that would also provide access to dynamic Irish culture, arts, and education for the entire community.  Head Librarian, Chas Moore, explains that “Norman researched and published four detailed family history volumes, one on each of his grandparents who grew up within a ten-mile radius in County Down, N. Ireland. His dedication to family and helping others discover their roots and write their family histories is what guided his huge investment of the library that bears his family name.” McLelland’s active involvement in the Irish Cultural Center of Phoenix and his eponymous library is what Arizona Senator John McCain described as “a testament to Norman’s steadfast leadership and genuine dedication to serving his community whilst paying homage to his Ulster roots.”

The largest of its kind in the Southwestern United States, the three story library houses 8,000 books from Irish authors, poets, and genealogical sources as well as a permanent exhibit on The Book of Kells, several reading rooms, and computer access to various disciplines of Irish and Celtic studies including genealogy.  While conducting his own genealogical research, McCelland met Dr. Brian Trainor, former Research Director of the Ulster Historical Foundation, Director of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and Chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. Just this week, Dr. Trainor passed away in Belfast and as testament to McCelland’s commitment to preserving the history and genealogical record of the people of Ireland has bequeathed to the McClelland Library his personal collection, helping realize what  Librarian Chas Moore reveals as McLelland’s greatest hope, “to have an entire bookshelf lined with Irish in Arizona family histories. We are well on the way to achieving that goal with our new Irish in Arizona project.”

Impressive and imposing against the desert sky, the McClelland Library is modeled after an ancient Norman castle and stands on the campus of the Irish Cultural Center along with the Cottage, An Gorta Mor The Great Hunger Memorial, and the Great Hall which has hosted an impressive trail of ambassadors, academics, historians, poets, and politicians. Last Fall, John Deane gave a poetry reading at the center and in January 2019, Jim Rogers, Editor of the premier Irish Studies journal in the United States, New Hibernia Review, will deliver a lecture. Diverse programming such as this that resonates with Phoenix resident and editor and publisher of Reading Ireland, Dr. Adrienne Leavy, who first became involved with the McClelland Library and the Irish Cultural Center some years ago when her daughter Niamh began taking Irish language classes there. Leavy praises the staff “who take their stewardship of Irish culture very seriously,” and the Center’s impressive programming, “whether it be lectures and exhibitions, or the various language, music and dance classes offered.”  Part of the creative team that organized the 1916 Centenary exhibition, Leavy points out that perhaps the most gratifying aspects of that project, was that it “exemplified the cross-cultural mission of the ICC, with the opportunity to work closely with the Louth County Museum in Dundalk, who made the research for their excellent 1916 exhibit available to the library.”

In 2018, the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library presented a full season of activities exploring the theme of Peace and Reconciliation, featuring book discussions, lectures, events, and films as well as a lecture on the impact of the Good Friday Agreement on contemporary Ireland by Robert O’Driscoll, Consul General of Ireland to the Western United States. Other dignitaries include President Mary MacAleese, who during her visit to the Center in 2008, foreshadowed these collaborative endeavors, acknowledging the promise of the new library to “build connections as never before,” and reminding those gathered that the will to do so is part and parcel of our Irish DNA

It is what keeps us clan and family to one another through all of life’s vagaries.  This [Irish Cultural] Centre, and its new library, will be a hub for those connections, and a home for the new networks of friendship and shared interests that will keep Ireland and Arizona close, even across the miles.

Back home, that simple mouse-click away, my parents still live in rural South Derry, but my father would be right at home in the McLelland Library. In my mind’s eye, he is surveying the arch above the doorway, calculating how much limestone and labor went into it, and marveling when I tell him that the  Irish blue limestone was quarried in County Galway, then cut and carved in a County Clare workshop by master stonemason, Frank McCormack, the kind of Irish craftsman who belongs in a Seamus Heaney poem along with the blacksmith, the diviner, and the thatcher, each well-practiced in the techniques and tools of ancient crafts. Just like my father.  McCormack, who has been practicing stonemasonry since 1989, did all of the stonework at his workshop, Irish Natural Stone Products. The three tons of limestone were shipped to the United States by boat through the Panama Canal, and after arriving in Los Angeles, transported by truck to Phoenix, where McCormack and one of his finest master stone masons flew to fit the pieces of stone in layers.  His wife, Mary, describes the difficulty of working in the Phoenix heat, “They were on site at dawn ready to work and had to leave at the height of the sun and then work again as the day cooled down. Should a mistake be made and a tool left in the sun hands were burnt and this slowed work.” It took a month for the team to recreate in the desert a masterpiece of ancient Irish civilization. McCormack reminds us that

If you look at that doorway, you’ll see old history; you’ll see we used the chisel the same way stonemasons did 1,000 years ago. It’s the real deal.

Lib The inspiration for the doorway came from library architect and President of the Irish Cultural Center, Paul Ahern.  He had visited Ireland in 2005 “to see the churches, monasteries, and castles in order to absorb some of the design character of these old, old stone structures.” While the basic conceptual design was completed before Ahern began searching for a specific historical reference image for the doorway, he knew what he wanted – relatively simple geometric shapes without religious figures or Celtic crosses. He focused an Internet search on County Clare because of the relationship between Phoenix and her sister city, Ennis and while perusing possibilities, he discovered a photo of the former St. Brigid’s church on Holy Island, Lough Derg. A 10th century structure, “St. Brigid’s arched entry seemed to have the right character so I developed the design by scaling up the original to fit our library.”  To help him recreate the doorway, Mary McCormack explains that her husband made a number of trips to Holy Island to photograph the details, and that it was Frank who had the idea of carving “McClelland Library” into the arch, “a permanent recognition of Mr. McClelland’s involvement in the project.”

Towering over me as I enter the courtyard, is the McClelland Library and McCormack’s impressive handiwork. Under my feet is a map of Ireland, each of her counties set in brick and etched with the names of donors.  Behind me, the An Gorta Mor, in memory of those who suffered in the Irish Famine.  All around me, the echoes of two ancient civilizations, and I find myself recalling five years after his death, Seamus Heaney, a man who loved libraries, once exalting them and their librarians with these lines from one of his favorite poems by Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz:

“I imagine the earth when I am no more . . .

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”

 Yet the books will be there.

 

 

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