Danelle Sullivan, First Membership Chair and Charter Member of IHSM
May 16, 2017
Main interviewer: Sheila Danehy. Others present are Steve Kraftmiller, Nancy Smith, Maureen Richetelli, Sheila Johnson and Bernard Keilty.

Interviewer: We are here with Danelle Sullivan, and she’s going to talk about her experiences with the club, and especially about her experience as the first membership chair and any other thoughts she has on the club.

Danelle Sullivan: OK, to expand on Dan’s recollection, we met at the West River Nursing Home where Chris McEnerney worked and he and Marty Hardiman had hosted the meeting there. I’d say there were about 75 people there that night, and they had asked people to sign sheets about themselves and different things that they would like to enjoy with the club, and anything that they could add for the club. I signed up for the bylaws committee, and we started with that. It was the first committee to meet, and we had a lot of fun along with some tedious work with the bylaws, because it was new and we certainly borrowed from the Internet to put some rudimentary bylaws together, and then we started the board. I was the first membership chair, and initially we had about one hundred members. I think with that first amount of people at the nursing home, our first meeting, and then we had several meetings as Dan said at different local bars. And at West River, I think we met there a couple of times. We had about 100 members. We had our first fundraiser with the Oyster Fest not to take Dan’s little fundraiser with the tailgate to the Fairfield Club away from him. The big one was the Oyster Festival. We made quite a bit of money that year like $15,000 (Dan – probably about $7,0000) oh, yes, because it was two right in a row.

Interviewer: In today’s dollars (laughter)

Danelle Sullivan: Yeah, in today’s dollars! We borrowed money from Marty’s parade committee to get that started. I think we had to raise five hundred dollars, which was a lot for us; it is a lot of money. It was a big investment and we had to serve food and green beer.

Dan Sullivan: Yeah, learn how to serve the food and beer! The green beer was the deal…everybody there was lined up forever, and we were the Irish club, so they had to buy beer from us. We killed it. We sold like 15 kegs of beer. (laughter)

Danelle Sullivan: We also got a lot of members that day. I think that Ed Mead, I remember Ed Mead and Debbie coming up and they signed up. I even think the mayor, Ben Blake, the current mayor, he signed up the following year, he and his wife. Yeah, he had signed up that year. I don’t think he renewed his membership, but he did sign up that second year in 2007.

Dan Sullivan: This is from your membership experience (shows some papers).

Danelle Sullivan: Oh, there you go, he’s got a couple lists there some of the first lists.

Dan Sullivan: So, tell them how you did it. You had a membership at the festival, and you were greeting all the people at the festival. You always set up a table at every meeting.

Danelle Sullivan: Yes, we got to meet some very nice people. Yeah. and then we started our own festival. We didn’t get into that yet. And that was the same thing, first year. Who knew we were going to be able to do that from the Oyster Festival, you know, we had to put some money together to have a festival. Very gutsy people, you know? And, I don’t think, I did the tea room for the first year. I wasn’t there for that one. I had to go away for work, so the second year we had the festival, I had a membership table, and then I think the third year is when I had the tea room.

Interviewer: Did you have the membership table with the tea room together?
Danelle Sullivan: No, they were two separate things. It was the third year. Were they together?

Dan Sullivan: You had them together the second year. The first year everybody was a charter member, so you started it that second year.

Interviewer: So, the initial charter members were about one hundred, you’re thinking?

Danelle Sullivan: It could be a little bit more than a hundred. That first festival when I came back from being away there were a whole lot of applications. I had a book that was this big. I gave that to Priscilla and that is the original applications in that one binder of all the charter members are in that one binder that I gave it to Priscilla. I gave her a very nice tote and that’s in there.

Dan Sullivan: (showed some documents). These are from 2006. They’re originals. These were the lists from my files.

Danelle Sullivan: Yeah, I know I gave Priscilla all of that. I made sure that they’re here already, so they have all that. I gave Priscilla all those things.

Interviewer: Ok. Anybody else have a question?

Maureen Richetelli: Everybody worked so hard.

Dan Sullivan: You don’t know my computer was buzzing …I sat there at night typing all these lists.

Danelle Sullivan: I know, I had my kids involved. Like I said when I came back it was a little overwhelming from the festival, and they had all these applications and they had money over here, and money over there.

Dan Sullivan: …but again that’s what made it work, because like she said, she was very worried. So, she would make sure people got cards, because it made them feel if you forgot them already you’re slacking off in the beginning of the Club, and so she took it seriously, and she wanted to make sure people got the cards, or you got a phone call, or, you know, she was always making sure everybody was happy. She made a lot of phone calls just to keep everybody in the loop, because it was hard at first.

Danelle Sullivan: And there wasn’t very much email, because email was new and not everybody had email.

Dan Sullivan: People didn’t really know anybody, so she was like the person who tied everyone together. She would introduce other people to other people, because it’s hard when you are first meeting people. So, to make them feel comfortable, she would walk them over to somebody she knew. Sometimes, she’d walk them over to introduce them to me, because I’d be talking to somebody else, and then they’d start talking and so on, and then you felt, you know, once you met people here, you know for whatever reason, once you felt comfortable like that you’d start talking.

Danelle Sullivan: And I still do that to help people feel more comfortable even at the grocery store! (laughter)

Maureen Richetelli: We all felt we had a job to do.
.
Interviewer: Thank you, Danelle! It sounds like you were a big help to the start of the club!

Dan Sullivan, First Sergeant at Arms and Charter Member of IHSM
May 16, 2017
Main interviewer: Sheila Danehy. Others present are Steve Kraftmiller, Nancy Smith, Maureen Richetelli, Sheila Johnson and Bernard Keilty.

Interviewer: Dan, how and why did you become involved in the Irish Heritage Society of Milford?

Dan Sullivan: We had gone to the Fairfield club to see a band or something and have dinner…we were doing dancing there too as well as other things, and on the way Danelle had said, "You know, it’s getting too far. We should start something in Milford.” And just that weekend, I was reading the paper and I said, “Look! There’s two other nuts like you, and they want to have a meeting to start an Irish club!” They were meeting at the nursing home, there, on West River. So we showed up at that meeting.

Interviewer: Sounds good. OK, what was the biggest challenge in getting the club started?

Dan Sullivan: ByLaws and the goals. You know, everybody had different ideas. There was one gentleman, I remember, you know, who felt everybody had to be Irish; there were procedures on how we were going to do it, and, you know, just the whole thing about setting up ByLaws was the main thing at first, because that’s how you got your officers and things like that. So, we had worked mainly on that. There had been this gentleman that was very important, Seth, who was an attorney and he helped us a lot. We had met in his office (aside to Danelle…what was his name? Cohen) yes, Cohen…and, yeah, he had helped out a lot, and he wrote up the By Laws and gave us ideas and gave us a lot of input.

Interviewer: Okay. What has been your personal experience and involvement in the club?

Dan Sullivan: Well, we did the first fundraiser when they had decided to do an Irish Festival. We had done a breakfast at the vfw in Milford. We cooked egg sandwiches and gave away tee shirts for everybody to wear that showed the date of our Irish Festival. It was Father’s Day, because that’s when the Fairfield club held their festival, so we had everybody come for breakfast and wear their shirts to the festival there. Also, I did the Oyster Festival which we did the first year. That was our first real money-maker which financed the Irish Club here. (aside from Danelle: Who’d you do that with?) Oh, yeah, Tori Spillings was very, I think, very important to the club. It was her idea to do the Oyster Fest which was our first fundraiser and then when the club, to me, was kind of petering out a little bit, or having issues, she came up with the idea of the Happy Hours and that kind of kept things going because we had become kind of stagnant for a little while, it seemed like. I have a lot of good memories such as the parades, going to the Irish Village — that was like something! I still talk about those events. We met a lot of people in town. You know we weren’t from Milford and Ed Mead, Kathleen, Nancy, and Steve Kraftmiller and actually everybody was there. I had great experiences with those people. You know, we’d go to the music and Bernie’s there and it was nice. The people we’ve met, the parades, going to different places, Mystic, going across that bridge and stuff, New York, Yonkers. We met the Counselor General of Boston from Ireland. It was really interesting going to that club up there and hearing what those clubs did because really what those clubs were about was helping out the people coming from Ireland. That’s really what these were about and that’s kind of important to me. I was always, like, not really for the bar. It was not my goal. I kind of was more into helping the people coming from Ireland with the club. Not that it’s wrong; I say all the time I’m amazed at what they’ve done. My parents and everybody I know enjoys all the functions that they have here. They really do a lot. We’re really lucky. We really are fortunate with the group of people that they’ve put together that really get involved. And it’s hard. You get politics, and people do have different goals and ideas. But, no, it’s been very functional. It blew my mind every time I was going to meetings: all the amount of people that would show up because when we went to those things in Boston they were paying people to come to their meetings! They were doing raffles just to get people to come to their meetings. So, we really should be proud of what they’ve done here.

Interviewer: OK. We’ve just had our 10th anniversary. Can you talk about or do you have anything to say about the growth over these last ten years? I know you’ve covered some of that. Any early memories of the club?

Dan Sullivan: Again, yeah, the parades, and like I said, when we first started the club the meetings were at some of the bars, but they were also at people’s homes and again the association with those people, you know, going to homes, we really developed a lot of friendships. We did some cool things, movies at people’s houses in their backyard, that’s kind of what I really enjoyed about the club. That kind of stuff. We did a lot of neat things. They really did a lot…nice social (events), not expensive things to do.

Interviewer: Sounds like a good time!

Dan Sullivan: It was, it really was.

Interviewer: One thing I was thinking was do you want to expound on what you did for the first job you had?

Dan Sullivan: Yes, I was the first Sergeant at Arms. That was when they sicced my wife on me. It was, I don’t know, maybe their third or fourth meeting, once they had put a board together, and they asked Danelle, “Is he going to come to the meetings or is he not?” So, she asked me that night. They couldn’t ask me themselves (laughter). And so then I started going to the meetings and then, like I said, we had them at Marty’s back porch…and I forget the other one’s name there…and Mike’s house, too. And Bill MacNamara. And for the first Oyster Festival we did, I had all the volunteers come over my house. We had a picnic that night and discussed people’s ideas and how we were going to manage the volunteers. We had no idea. I remember turning around to Mike and saying I’d be so happy if we make $50 bucks! (laughter) It was a big investment! We had nothing. We had 300+ dollars that we had made at the vfw, and the same thing, the first Irish Festival. I think they put it on for like $10,000. That was kind of a cool thing too: what we were able to accomplish with nothing. And, you know, we have this club, ten years later. And, like I said, it was started with nothing. It was just two nuts’ ideas. Then we got that nursing home. We did that maybe three or four times. And then we started moving around to the bars, and then we started going to homes. Once we had a board we started meeting at the homes, because it was too big. We had maybe about 30 people in the beginning, right? (Aside: Seems like they outgrew this too). Yes!

Interviewer: Do you have any ideas now, where you would like to see the club go?

Dan Sullivan: No, like I said, I think they’ve done an amazing job. I mean, I like exactly what they’ve been doing. I know my brother enjoys coming to the trivia night, and Danelle’s sister and my parents talk about it all the time. I just hope they stay with what they’re doing. Keep up with the parades and things; those were fun. And now I see they plan trips. We don’t come down that often right now, so I really don’t think it’s right to say. Like I said, I’ve been here a couple nights, and like I said, it’s amazing. And when people ask me, I say it’s really something, what everybody has done in such a short time. I remember the Fairfield Club up above the stores, and that was a long time to get to where they are. And these people have done it in ten years. It’s a nice thing to work together like that. That’s hard.

Interviewer: Does anyone else have a question? Okay, Dan, thanks so much!