AN IRISH STEW Aroostook County town recalls holiday fondly

St. Patrick’s Day is serious business in Benedicta.

Just ask Jane Cummings. As a girl, she and her classmates would return from Christmas vacation and immediately start practicing for the annual St. Patrick’s Day show.

“We had these wonderful productions, and we knew every Irish song you could ever sing,” Cummings said on a recent morning, as she and a group of friends from St. Benedict’s Catholic Church sat in the rectory and reminisced.

From the rollicking “Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder” to the mournful “Danny Boy” – the children of Benedicta sang all the favorites. Some years, they were required to wear matching costumes – green skirts, white blouses, a green tie, and a shamrock hat, for example – that their parents made. One priest, Father Leo White, turned it into a theatrical production with moody lighting and lots of drama – kids popped out of a cake one year.

Today, hundreds will gather in Benedicta, a township in southern Aroostook County, for corned beef and camaraderie. This pretty hamlet in the foothills of Mount Katahdin is home to one of the oldest Irish colonies in northern New England – and St. Benedict’s is at the center of that community.

“Benedicta is a good community,” Jimmy Cunningham, a retired woodsman, said. “A good Irish community with a good strong church.”

At the time of its founding, Benedict J. Fenwick, the second bishop of Boston, had concerns about the standard of living for Irish immigrants in the city. According to an essay by Edward T. McCarron in “They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine,” Fenwick reasoned “one solution … would be the establishment of a rural colony where the Irish could take up farming and be free from the pitfalls of metropolitan life.”

To that end, McCarron writes, Fenwick bought 11,000 acres of farmland on the Aroostook frontier in November 1833. He had grand visions of agrarian living – not to mention dreams of a seminary and a college.

But life in Benedicta wasn’t quite as idyllic as Fenwick had hoped.

“Conditions were far from stable during the early years – leading to a slow but steady exodus out of Benedicta.” The seminary and college buildings were erected, but Fenwick chose to focus his efforts in nearby Worcester, where his dream campus is now known as the College of the Holy Cross.

Today, the population of Benedicta hovers around 225, and a fair percentage of those are descendants of the original settlers. For the Irish that remain in Benedicta, the college and seminary are the stuff of legend.

“Holy Cross was supposed to be here when this town was first established,” Jimmy Ingalls said. “We never got big enough, I guess.”

“No, it was too cold here, Jimmy,” Mona Qualey added with a smile.

Qualey, nee Roy, likes to joke that she was the only French girl in town as a girl – but she did have three sisters. The Roy girls are all musical, and their act was always a highlight of the St. Patrick’s Day show.

“I think your group should relive the past,” Esther Rush-Hines told Qualey last week.

“I just sang,” Qualey replied. “I never danced. But oh, gosh, we used to sing.”

In the years that have passed since those childhood performances, Mona has become the unofficial mistress of ceremonies at most St. Benedict’s functions. That’s how she ended up in charge of the St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage feast.

“I have bought my meat – 60 pounds,” she said last week. “Last year I only had 30 pounds. Who knew corned beef melts? Did you know corned beef melts?”

The supper, a cherished tradition in the community, had taken a hiatus, but thanks to many volunteers, the event has become a fund-raiser for the youth ministry and for the church to offset skyrocketing heating costs.

“The St. Patrick’s Day supper has blossomed again,” Cummings said. “It’s fun and we need fuel.”

Call it the luck – and pluck – of the Irish.