Ireland

Four teenage girls flew across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to America on July 25 - two leaving home and two going home. The two going home were Abby Wiggins and Toria Howard, West Jessamine students who had just spent two weeks finding out that the nation on an island west of Great Britain wasn't all that different from their own country. Wiggins and Howard, both 16, participated in the Lexington Sister Cities exchange program and brought Kelly Mallon, 17, and Mallon's cousin Carrie Lidierth, 15, back to the states with them for a two-week visit in Kentucky.

Editor's note: Eva Martin has been looking into her family history for several years. This is the first of a two-part series about the Daugherty family, who came to America from Ireland. The second part will be published Sept. 4. Martin would like to hear from others who are researching the family. Contact her at 4325 Hwy 1194, Stanford, Ky. 40484. By BRENDA S. EDWARDS brenda@amnews.com The Daughertys (Dochartachs) were in Inishowen County, Donegal, Ireland, for centuries before they came to America in the early 1700s.

To any working Boyle artists who have ever dreamed of a free trip to Ireland - it's time to wake up. The opportunity is at your doorstep. The Sister Cities Committee and Community Arts Center are accepting applications for the Artist Exchange Program through Thursday. A rare opportunity for an artist who is willing to share his or her craft, the program will pay for air fare both ways and arrange for free accommodations in Ireland for up to four weeks.  The program's purpose is to promote understanding of the unique artistic and cultural contributions of Danville and Carrickfergus, sister cities, through an artist exchange where working performing or visual artists create and exhibit or perform during a limited guest residency.

All Noel and Jaclynn Ball wanted to do was take pictures of their daughter at the park to send to Noel's parents in Ireland. When they arrived at Lake Mingo's playground, what they saw caused them to leave. Spray painted graffiti littered the place where the Balls intended to use as a backdrop for the pictures. "I was disgusted," Jaclynn Ball said. "We just wanted to get some pictures to send to her grandparents in Ireland. " Nicholasville/Jessamine County Parks and Recreation Director Scott Campbell was equally disgusted.

Student accepted to Harding Alexander Oakes, of Winchester, son of Bret and Lisa Oakes, has been accepted to Harding University for the fall 2009 semester. Oakes attended George Rogers Clark High School. He will be welcomed to Harding's campus Aug. 20 for Student Impact, an orientation program designed to help freshmen and new students make the adjustment to college life. Local student studying abroad Local student Austin Pace Jacobs will study the business and marketing of Ireland this summer at the Marino Institute at the University of Dublin.

Editor's note: as gleaned from materials researched by the family and supplied by Tim and Paula Lanham, current owners of the historic Harberson House in Perryville. The spellings of different generations of the Harbersons were left as they were spelled at the time. See Sunday's main Feature story for more information on the Harberson House. PERRYVILLE - A two-story white frame house built about 1844 has been home to more than 15 families and is called the A.C. Harberson House for its owners from 1905 to 1971.

But to a certain Catholic priest in Danville - a man who actually was born and raised on the Emerald Isle - the celebration likely will be a little more subdued but probably more meaningful. The Rev. Patrick Fitzsimons, pastor of SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, likely will spend part of this St. Patrick's Day as he has in the past - thinking of his native land and his family back home. And he will be reminded of Ireland not by big hats with large shamrocks on them or stirring a glass of Irish whiskey with a shillelagh but by three objects that are really from Ireland and have much more significance to him. One is a Celtic cross.

The engagement of Helen Walsh and Robert "Jay" Jason Grizzle, both of Lexington, is announced by her mother, Pauline Walsh of Ros Muc, County Galway, Ireland. Grizzle is the son of Robert and Sherrie Grizzle of Winchester. Daughter of the late Anthony John Walsh, the bride-elect is employed by Adens Springs Farm in Midway. Grizzle is employed by the 3-M Corporation in Cynthiana. The wedding will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 21, at the Church of the Incarnation in Ros Muc. Following the ceremony a reception will be held at the Ardilaun House Hotel in Ros Muc.

Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech, will address "Energy, Agriculture and Education - Opportunities for Kentucky," when he speaks at Eastern Kentucky University on Wednesday. The presentation will be from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Posey Auditorium of EKU's Stratton Building. The public is welcome. Lyons, whose firm is the primary sponsor of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, will talk about "exciting plans he envisions for Kentucky - how science and marketing can revolutionize the commonwealth and promote education and innovation.

Dear Editor, Sometimes we get so busy with our own busy-ness that we miss some very special moments. A case in point was the play "A Fence for Martin Maher," at the Danville/Boyle County Library Thursday night. It was written by Georgetown College theater professor George J. McGee Jr. in association with Irish writer John McCardle. McGee and three Georgetown College students will be taking this delightful play to Ireland in the next few weeks and are a bit nervous about showing off their Irish accents in the homeland.

Wednesday, the Boyle County Public Library's Friends of the Library and the Community Arts Center will co-host this month's Lunch with the Arts guest, Liz Orndorff. The program is set for 4 p.m. in the library. The local playwright traveled to Danville's sister city of Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, as part of an artist exchange facilitated by the Danville Sister Cities Commission. Orndorff explains the purpose of her trip was “to experience the life of the people of Carrickfergus and to exchange ideas and activities with artists and schoolchildren of Northern Ireland.” This exchange involved visits with local school groups who participated in drama workshops and visits to Maghaberry Prison to work with inmates.

It wasn't solely the luck of the Irish that brought businessman Dr. Pearse Lyons, the founder and president of the Nicholasville-based Alltech, Ireland's “Business Person of the Year” award from Business and Finance. The ambitious entrepreneur who built a top-10 global animal health company was celebrated for his contributions to Ireland during the Business and Finance awards ceremony held Dec. 18 at the Convention Centre in Dublin, Ireland. A panel of Irish business leaders selected this year's winner.

Pioneer Playhouse, Kentucky's oldest outdoor theatre, is teaming up with the Danville Sister Cities Commission to bring a slice of Ireland to the Bluegrass with the premiere next season of “The Search for Tinker Doyle,” a new play by Elizabeth Orndorff, which celebrates in a fictional story the special bond Danville shares with its Irish sister city, Carrickfergus. Elizabeth Orndorff is an award-winning Danville playwright whose work often is set in Kentucky. With “The Search for Tinker Doyle, however, Orndorff will be taking her audience - and her characters - to a new locale across the ocean.  “The Search for Tinker Doyle” is a comedy about Eleanor, the wife of a small-town Kentucky mayor named Charlie, who travels to a quaint Irish “sister city” to help her too-busy politician husband's re-election chances.  Eleanor's hidden agenda for the trip, however, has nothing to do with politics.  She's come to Ireland to find the old Irish flame of her youth, the long lost love she's never quite forgotten.  But a lot can change in 28 years, and how do you track down a man when his name is as common in Ireland as flies in summer?

To any working Boyle artists who have ever dreamed of a free trip to Ireland - it's time to wake up. The opportunity is at your doorstep. The Sister Cities Committee and Community Arts Center are accepting applications for the Artist Exchange Program through Thursday. A rare opportunity for an artist who is willing to share his or her craft, the program will pay for air fare both ways and arrange for free accommodations in Ireland for up to four weeks.  The program's purpose is to promote understanding of the unique artistic and cultural contributions of Danville and Carrickfergus, sister cities, through an artist exchange where working performing or visual artists create and exhibit or perform during a limited guest residency.

The Sister Cities Committee and Community Arts Center are inviting artists of the area to step forward and tell them why they should be selected to complete a residency exchange in Ireland. Danville's sister city, Carrickfergus, will in turn send an artist it has chosen to spend time in Danville. Milton Reigelman, chairman of the Sister Cities Committee, said the exchange is a result of Danville becoming “a mecca for art.” He said due to the success of last year's Irish Celebration, the committee now can fund airfare for the artist.

Four teenage girls flew across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to America on July 25 - two leaving home and two going home. The two going home were Abby Wiggins and Toria Howard, West Jessamine students who had just spent two weeks finding out that the nation on an island west of Great Britain wasn't all that different from their own country. Wiggins and Howard, both 16, participated in the Lexington Sister Cities exchange program and brought Kelly Mallon, 17, and Mallon's cousin Carrie Lidierth, 15, back to the states with them for a two-week visit in Kentucky.

The Danville Sister Cities Commission has announced that it will sponsor a 10-day tour of Ireland this coming summer from July 19-29. The trip will begin in rustic Western Ireland, move to Dublin and end in the seaside town of Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, Danville’ s Sister City. The $1,540 land cost of the trip will include accommodations at three-star hotels, full Irish breakfasts each day, six dinners, all excursions and entry fees as stated on the itinerary, hotel porterage, service charges, and government taxes.

Ashley Johnson is an 11-year-old girl who always wears an olive-colored, braided leather wristband with the single word "Romeo. " Her love for Romeo is obvious ? he's tall, dark and handsome. And has a few white spots. Romeo is Johnson's pony, and this week she rode off into the sunset ? actually flew to the United Kingdom ? because of Romeo. Johnson, a sixth-grade student at Winchester Christian Academy, is one of five girls selected to represent the United States in the international competition of mounted pony games in Belfast, Northern Ireland from Sept.

The last leg of a mission to track down information on Revolutionary War Capt. Robert Edward Craddock proved to be the most important for a distant relative. Thomas Bowling and his wife, Susan, of Chicago, recently decided to visit Danville to gather information on Capt. Craddock, who owned more than 10,000 acres in Central Kentucky. The Bowlings learned that some of the land Craddock got for serving in the war and some land he purchased from veterans who had no interest in coming into the wilderness across the Allegheny Mountains during the time Kentucky was being settled.