Erik Buckalew
Reflection on Gallagher’s Presentation on Irish at Saint Mary’s College
On Gaelabration, President Ronald Gallagher held a lecture about the Irish at Saint
Mary’s College. Gallagher studied comparative literature, particularly Irish literature. He said
that many of the Saint Mary’s students in the 1860’s were the children of the Irish gold camp
workers. In fact, Mr. Croak, who was a Bishop, went down from Oregon and collected money
from gold dust to help start the college. Five out of the nine original Brothers who came to Saint
Mary’s in 1868 were Irish-born, and twenty out of the twenty-eight Presidents at Saint Mary’s
have Irish surnames. Indeed, Irish people have played a prominent role in Saint Mary’s creation,
but they also helped put it on the national stage in the 1920’s & 1930’s. At this time, our football
program became a national powerhouse due to Slip Madigan and we had a famous Brother
named Brother Leo as Chancellor in 1930. In fact, Leo is the one who popularized William Yeats
when he used to be less well-known. The combination of these two figures made Saint Mary’s
known to the nation, and the traditions of the Irish Brothers are reflected in Saint Mary’s beliefs.
In fact, our name of “Gaels” came from our 1920’s football team which was made up of many
Irish players. This was a cool fact which I did not know about before this presentation. He even
spoke about how there were two main clubs on campus when he was at Saint Mary’s. One was
the Dante Club, which had Italians, and there was another one which had Irishmen. This
presentation was interesting because I was not aware of just how much influence Irishmen had
on getting Saint Mary’s to where it is today. It will be interesting to see how Saint Mary’s
changes in the next fifty years, as the President can now be anyone after Gallagher (not just a
Brother as it has always been). Hopefully, whoever the next President is will keep the traditions
going, as they are what makes Saint Mary’s unique and attractive to many people.