Mary Novaria

Published at Mary's dad with his mum (right) and sister in the early 1940s in Poughkeepsie, New York. We memorialized my father 20 years ago this St. Patrick’s Day.  “Oh, your father would have loved this,” more than a few people said. But I knew my father, who’d died four days prior from heart disease, likely would have been unmoved by sharing the occasion with Ireland’s patron saint.   The youngest son of immigrants and 40 years sober, he’d have rolled his eyes at the holiday many Americans use as an excuse to drink beer and paint themselves green, just as he did regarding New Year’s Eve, which he often proclaimed “amateur night.”  In the early 1970s, my dad took a brief interest in his McAleer roots, even procuring the family coat of arms to display in our suburban Chicago entry hall. A onetime Latin scholar, he frequently reminded my brothers and me of the family motto: Spectemur Agendo -  Let us be judged by our deeds. That was the sum of his investment in ...

As featured in the Huffington Post My mother embraced all things Irish: shamrocks, soda bread and fishermen’s sweaters. She chose St. Patrick’s Day for my father’s funeral and, the night before, she mended the old green, white and orange flag so we could fly it at the house during a reception following the service. My mom could tell you the names of the villages in Cork, Kerry and Limerick where her grandparents were born, and I knew my dad’s people were from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. I’d always been told I was 100 percent Irish and I believed it every St. Patrick’s Day of my life — until now. I recently ran my DNA and the surprising results, which estimate I’m 94 percent Irish, indicate the percentage could even be as low as 81. Surprisingly, I have DNA from Finland/Northwest Russia, but I have a feeling those ancestors go so far back I’ll never find them. Click here for the rest of the story...