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Nick Lethert Interview Narrator: Nick Lethert Interviewer: Dáithí Sproule Date: 1 December, 2017 DS: Dáithí Sproule NL: Nick Lethert [BEGIN NICK LETHERT PART 01—filename: A1005a_EML_mmtc] DS: Here we are – we are recording. It says “record” and the numbers are going up. This is myself and Nick Lethert making a second effort at our interview. It’s the first of December, isn’t it? NL: It is. DS: And we’re at the Celtic Junction. I suppose we’ll start at the same place as we started the last time, which was, I just think chronologically, and I think of, what is your background, what is the background of your father, your family, and origins, and your mother. NL: I grew up just down the street from the Celtic Junction in Saint Mark’s parish to a household where the first twelve or so years I lived with my father, who was of German Catholic heritage and my mother, who was Irish Catholic. Both of my mother’s parents came from Connemara. They met in Saint Paul, and I lived with my grandmother, who was from a little village, a tiny little village called Derroe, which is in Connemara over in the area by Carraroe, Costello, sort of bogland around there. My grandmother was a very intense person, not the least of which because her husband, who grew up in Maam Cross, a little further up in the mountains in Connemara, left her and the family when they had three young children, so it made for sort of a Dickens-like life for her and for her three kids, one of which was my mother. I grew up in that. My grandmother definitely ruled the roost and it was very much a matriarchy. DS: She was living in the house? 1 NL: Living in the house, and I think she helped my parents buy the house in fact. She was a very devout Catholic. I have very vivid memories of her watching every time Bishop Fulton J. Sheen came on television and she was in there watching him. She gave a lot of money to him. He was probably one of the first televangelists – you know he was Catholic, and he went on with his bishop robes and the whole thing and he would be all fire and brimstone and “Give us money.” DS: Wow, and did they have a thing like a banner under the bottom… NL: No, I don’t think that technology was around, but definitely the practice of giving money – striking fear into hearts and asking for money… DS: So that was the method. NL: That was the method. And my grandmother obliged. DS: Did she have a job or a career previously? NL: She had a job as a clerk at the railroad, the Great Northern Railroad, which a lot of immigrants, Irish immigrants especially, worked on. Those were the days before daycare unfortunately. Daycare’s a really great idea because it seems to have solved some of the problems that my mother had to go through when she was young where her mother every Monday morning would bring the three kids out to some orphanage run by the Catholic nuns that was somewhere on the northside of Saint Paul, where it was beyond the streetcar lines. So all types of weather -- my mother’s brother had some sort of disease like polio or something – so she had to carry him after the streetcar ended. He didn’t live long, but during those years my mother was the oldest of the three, and her sister Abby was quite cantankerous and she would always get in trouble with the nuns, but my mother would take the punishment because she was the oldest. They’d stay all week in the orphanage, then my grandmother would make the trek out to pick them up and they’d spend the weekend together. It didn’t sound as if it was the ideal childhood, but that’s the way it was in the years before daycare, I suppose. They had to bring them some place, and the nuns were the best place they could find. Anyway, there wasn’t too much, other than living with an Irish person, that I remember that was specifically Irish, but there was a time I remember when there was another television show called Arthur Godfrey, and it was like the variety show of the day, sort of the Ed Sullivan of the daytime hours and he would always have different guests on. One year he brought on a teenager 2 named Carmel Quinn from -- was it Tipperary or Limerick or one of those places? She was a young red-haired singer, a beauty from Ireland and she sang all the songs, and everybody in America fell in love with her. She came over quite a few times, and for some reason, I still don’t know the reason, we ended up hosting a brunch at our house for her when she arrived in Saint Paul. I think she had a concert in Saint Paul or something. DS: I don’t suppose you remember where would she have performed? NL: You know, I can’t remember where that was. I should look that up. She was performing up until recently, I don’t even know if she’s still alive. She performed for a long time. She’d a great crowd of…she’d a lot of groupies in America. DS: I think she’d have even been at Milwaukee, would she? NL: Maybe, yea. DS: I’ve never seen her, I don’t think, at least in the flesh. NL: That was a big deal, such a big deal. The only time I remember that we used the china, that was always up in the cupboards – you’d wonder what’s that for? – those were for special events, and that was the only special event I can remember it being used. Maybe for weddings it would be used. Carmel got to see the china and eat off our china… DS: So you were actually there? NL: I was very young, yea. DS: And do you remember anything about her demeanor or what was it like? NL: She was very young – she was a teenager. And she was very polite and very shy, as was I. I was probably about five and I was dressed up in some sailor suit of some kind that was very uncomfortable, I remember. I just remember there were a number of people there that I’d never met and never saw again. But I suppose that was the first time there was hosting anything Irish in my house, which ended up being – a career. (laughter) DS: A way of life! NL: So it started with Carmel Quinn. And then as far as grade school up at Saint Mark’s for some reason everybody defined themselves as either Irish or German, and that all came to fruition on Saint Patrick’s Day. We’d have a basketball game and it would be the older boys – 3 six, seventh and eighth graders – and the two teams would be an Irish team who’d wear green and a German team who would wear red. They always wanted to put me on the German team – I mean this was for sitting on the bench, I was about three feet tall, so it wasn’t as if I was going to score any baskets or even be put in the game… DS: But did you have skill in the game? NL: No skill. None whatsoever, just a lot of maybe energy and a lot of imagination that I would be a superstar if I’d ever been let into the game. Unfortunately I was always put on the wrong team because I really identified with being Irish, and I wanted to be on the Irish team, but because my last name was my dad’s last name and he was German, I was put on the German team, and I would always protest, “No, I want to be on the Irish team.” “No, you can’t be on the Irish team.” So that really annoyed me. Later at the high school I remember, the only time I really thought about being Irish probably was on Saint Patrick’s Day, and our school, Saint Thomas, would always send a contingent off to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. But it was all based on your last name, and you couldn’t go if you didn’t have an Irish last name, to march in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. So I would protest about that too. “Look, I’m as Irish as the next fellow here. I should be at that parade!” So I used to just skip out of school and go to the parade. That started a long period of partying very hard on Saint Patrick’s Day until around mid 70s – am I going too far? Do you still want to delve back…? DS: Yes, I do want to go back, I do want to rewind slightly. I’m interested in – you have the German and the Irish – I don’t think I asked you this before, but what about the German language? Was there any sign of actual German culture around or German language speaking or anything like that at all? NL: My father was born in 1905 – he was quite old when I was born, in his late forties, which was quite old to have a child, and I knew that he spoke German in his house when he was a kid because that was, I think, the main language in the house.

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