The Ó Súilleabháin Clann of Munster

William Randolph McCreight was born in 1934 in Newton, North Carolina. During the Korean War he was conscripted into the U.S. Army and assigned to a medical research laboratory in Korea researching hemorrhagic fever, about 15 miles from the front. Upon his return, he completed his university studies in physics and math. After graduation he was employed by NASA for orbital analysis. While at NASA he continued working in a medical laboratory at night where he met his wife, Antje from Hamburg, Germany.

After retiring in Germany, Mr. McCreight dedicated his life to researching ancient European genealogies, including the O’Sullivan and Kilian families. He recently published his work, O'Sullivan: The Earliest Irish Royal Family: History and Genealogy.  

Visit the following link to purchase a copy:

http://www.genealogical.com/products/OSullivan/8355.html

To view original biography from the New Zealand Government site please click on photo.

In 1890 O'Shea entered the Marist seminary at Meeanee; he was professed as a member of the Society of Mary the following year and ordained on 3 December 1893. He taught philosophy at the seminary from 1894 until 1896, when ill health necessitated several months' recuperation in Australia. On returning to New Zealand O'Shea served in the Wellington parish of Te Aro; he was initially based at St Mary of the Angels Church and then at St Joseph's in Buckle Street. O'Shea was appointed vicar general of the archdiocese in 1907, and received the title of dean in 1912.

On 17 August 1913 – after protests from the secular clergy, who had not been consulted over the appointment – O'Shea was consecrated as coadjutor archbishop of Wellington. St Joseph's was made the headquarters of a separate parish over which he continued to have charge. Increasingly he took over responsibility for the affairs of the archdiocese from the ageing Archbishop Francis Redwood, and when the latter died on 3 January 1935 O'Shea succeeded him. During O'Shea's tenure, the archdiocese's traditional dependence on the Society of Mary was replaced by increasing reliance on secular clergy.

Committed to the cause of Catholic education, O'Shea chaired from its inception in 1912 the Wellington Catholic Education Trust Board, which was able to provide free tuition in the city's Catholic primary schools from 1929. A lifelong concern for social justice was expressed in his revival of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in Wellington in 1906, and the promotion of Catholic social-study classes throughout the archdiocese during and after the depression. In 1936 O'Shea appointed a Church Music Commission to promote liturgical music in accordance with recent Vatican directives. Eschewing any public celebration of his episcopal silver jubilee in 1938, he undertook his second official visit to Rome (his first had been in 1922). He used the opportunity to secure international support for the forthcoming National Eucharistic Congress, which he hosted in February 1940 as a contribution to the national centennial celebrations.

Convinced that Protestantism was in decline, O'Shea saw communism and irreligion as the real threats to Catholicism and society. He therefore believed that his own church ought to co-operate as fully as possible with other denominations in matters of public concern. O'Shea was an early supporter of the League of Nations Union of New Zealand, initiated by a leading Presbyterian minister, James Gibb, in 1921. In 1930 he negotiated an agreement with the Bible in State Schools League of New Zealand whereby the Catholic church would not oppose legislation to introduce Bible reading into state primary schools. Although O'Shea failed to ensure the acquiescence of the other bishops, who publicly repudiated the agreement, he continued to support the league's objectives. During the depression, he encouraged Catholic relief agencies to co-operate with those of other churches, and when the New Zealand Inter-Church Council on Public Affairs was formed in 1941 O'Shea appointed Catholic representatives. He enjoyed the respect of leading politicians, but had a particular affinity with the New Zealand Labour Party and a warm relationship with Prime Minister Peter Fraser.

O'Shea's diminutive stature, which contrasted with the more imposing Redwood, earned him the affectionate nickname of 'Little Arch'. Also commonly referred to as Tommy O'Shea, he was a popular figure in the community, and in the course of his regular walks in the city he maintained contact with a wide circle of acquaintances.

From the mid 1940s O'Shea increasingly suffered from senility, and by the time of Peter McKeefry's appointment as coadjutor archbishop in 1947 he had become quite unable to carry out his episcopal responsibilities. O'Shea was bedridden for the final years of his life and died at Calvary Hospital, Wellington, on 9 May 1954.

Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin (1748 – 29 June 1782), anglicized as Owen Roe O'Sullivan ("Red Owen"), was an Irish poet. Ó Súilleabháin is known as one of the last great Gaelic poets. A recent anthology of Irish-language poetry speaks of his "extremely musical" poems full of "astonishing technical virtuosity" and also notes that "Eoghan Rua is still spoken of and quoted in Irish-speaking districts in Munster as one of the great wits and playboys of the past."  

Eoghan Rua was relatively unknown to English speakers until 1924, although famous among Irish-speakers, especially in Munster. In a 1903 book, Douglas Hyde, an Irish scholar from Roscommon who had learned Irish, referred to him as "a schoolmaster named O'Sullivan, in Munster" in his book The Songs of Connacht (which includes a drinking song by Ó Súilleabháin). The 1911 version of the Encyclopædia Britannica mentioned Eoghan Rua in an article on "Celtic Literature," calling him "the cleverest of the Jacobite poets" and noting that "his verses and bons mots are still well known in Munster." 

In addition to patrolling with the Irish Volunteers, O'Sullivan had the distinction shared by a small proportion of later "original IRA" members of being a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which traces its roots to earlier revolutionary movements of the mid-Nineteenth Century. He also had the honor of raising the Irish Flag over the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin as fighting raged around the Irish rebellion's GPO headquarters and throughout the streets of Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising. O'Sullivan, then 25, was the youngest IRB officer fighting in the GPO. He had been personally chosen by rebellion leader Sean Mac Diarmada to serve as his aide-de-camp. The additional honor of raising the Rebel flag was given to him by another of the rebellion's leaders, Patrick Pearse.

For full Wikipedia article please click on photo.

For the first time in the history of the Irish State, An Garda Síochána is being led by a woman.

The former Deputy and Acting Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan will formally take over the role of Commissioner on a permanent basis following her appointment by the Ministyer for Justice today.

O’Sullivan was launched into the top spot after the resignation, with immediate effect, of Martin Callinan on 25 March this year.

But who is she?

O’Sullivan joined the force in 1981 and has worked across operations and administration, making a name for herself initially by tackling the capital’s drug problem.

She was among the first members of a plain-clothes unit which targeted Dublin’s dealers and their gangs. The unit brought a number of convictions against high-profile criminals.

Her reward came in the form of promotions – thick and fast.

In 2000, she was promoted to Superintendent and served in the Garda College with responsibility for specialist training and as a Detective Superintendent in the Garda National Drugs Unit. There, she was responsible for tracking the supply of controlled substances into the country.

Three years later, another promotion saw her take a role at the Garda Technical Bureau as Detective Chief Superintendent. She also spent some time in Human Resource management.

By 2007, she had been named Assistant Commissioner for the west of the country, while continuing in a HR role.

Continuing her fast progression up the ranks, in June 2009, she was appointed Assistant Commissioner, Crime and Security.

She took the Deputy Commissioner Operations post in 2011 – the first woman to reach the high rank.

O’Sullivan’s qualifications also make for impressive reading. She has completed an FBI executive leadership programme designed for chiefs of police worldwide and holds a First Class Honours Advance Management Diploma from the Michael Smurfit School of Business in UCD.

She also boasts qualifications from Harvard University, CIPD, the IMI, University of Limerick and Trinity College.

For full article please visit: http://www.thejournal.ie/noirin-osullivan-deputy-commissioner-1379862-Nov2014/ 

On Christmas Eve 1914, Capt Arthur O’Sullivan, from Greystones, Co Wicklow, was in his trench at Rue du Bois, near Neuve Chapelle on the western front, when he heard a foreign accent shouting from the opposite side of no man’s land.

“Do not shoot after 12 o’clock and we will not do so either,” said a German voice. A little later, the voice called out again:

“If you English come out and talk to us, we won’t fire.”

Thus began the now famous Christmas truce for Arthur Moore O’Sullivan, a 36-year-old career soldier in the British army’s Royal Irish Rifles. Amos, as he was known to his men, played a small but not insignificant role in the playing out of the truce on his part of the frontline trench, section E, not far from where the Italian artist Fortunino Matania would set his painting, The Last General Absolution of the Munster Fusiliers at Rue du Bois, now sadly lost.

What did Amos and his comrades think on hearing the Christmas Eve invitation? Thanks to a memoir by Amos’s commanding officer, Col George Laurie, and the record of his exchanges with brigade headquarters, we know what happened next.

In response to the German invitation, an Irish rifleman ventured out into no man’s land and was not fired upon. Instead, when he reached the other side, he was given a cigar by a German soldier. When he returned safely, other riflemen clambered out of the trench, the Germans now meeting them halfway across no man’s land.

Col Laurie was thrilled with the pause in hostilities. “You have no idea how pleasant everything seems with no rifle bullets or shells flying about,” he wrote later.

Col Laurie went on to describe how soldiers from both sides were mingling. The Germans, he wrote, were “fine men, clean and well clothed. They gave us a cap and helmet badge and a box of cigars. One of them states the war would be over in three weeks as they had defeated Russia!”

The regiment’s war diary, a compilation, essentially, of intelligence reports from the battlefield, records the situation as follows:

1 The truce is sought entirely by the enemy.

2 The enemy have asked for two days of this, which has been refused by the officers of the battalion in the firing line.

3 The mutual arrangement is that if either side construct works, or carry out repairs to works, that the other consider not playing the game, they will fire shots over the other side’s heads.

4 Capt O’Sullivan, commanding B Company of the battalion, will fire his revolver at 12 midnight tonight (25th/26th), at which signal the truce ends.

Col Laurie wrote: “Only a few shots were fired by the enemy after the midnight signal was fired by Capt O’Sullivan from our trenches. Shortly after midnight a party of Germans came over towards B Company’s trenches and were ordered back. During the morning of the 26th, the enemy fired very few shots.”

Hostilities resumed gradually and the murderous stagnation of the western front took hold again in the early days of 1915.

In March, O’Sullivan was wounded by German machine-gun fire while trying to cut through barbed wire across no man’s land. This prompted a complementary mention of him in a dispatch by the British commander, Field Marshal Sir John French.

Two months later, Amos was among those who died at the Battle of Aubers Ridge, the same battle that did for so many of the absolved Munsters in the painting by Fortunino Matania.

Arthur O’Sullivan was an only son. His father, Patrick O’Sullivan, was advocate general in Madras, India, but died, aged 52, in 1887.

Arthur was born in Tamil Nadu in 1879, but by the time of the war, his mother, Sydney Jane O’Sullivan, a daughter of Dublin doctor and pharmacist William Daniel Moore, was living in the Burnaby Road house in Greystones.

Arthur left £3,208, five shillings and 10 pence to his sister Katherine. She died, apparently of a heart attack, while playing tennis in 1916, and so his estate passed to his other sister, Muriel. He had no children.

He is buried in the Royal Irish Rifles graveyard at Laventie in Pas de Calais, not far from the Rue du Bois.

To read the entire Irish Times article please visit:

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/1914-christmas-truce-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-as-guns-were-silenced-1.2047017?page=1 

BACKGROUND: A County Clare man is regarded as one of Major League Baseball's most pioneering figures. He is credited with creating the now commonly used sports term for a supporter, 'Fan', as well as the first person to emphasise the importance of scouting.

Prior to arriving in the United States, David O’Sullivan served as the Chief Operating Officer of the European External Action Service. The EEAS supports the High Representative/Vice President of the European Commission, in fulfilling her mandate to ensure the consistency of the Union’s external action. The EEAS also assists the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission in the area of external relations.

David O’Sullivan was Director General for Trade from 2005 to 2010. Previously he was Secretary General of the European Commission from June 2000 to November 2005, Head of Cabinet of Commission President Romano Prodi and Director General for Education and Training.  He started his career in the Irish Foreign Ministry and spent four years in the Commission Delegation in Tokyo.   He also has extensive experience in EU social and employment policy. David O’Sullivan has a background in economics, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin and having completed post graduate studies at the College of Europe, Bruges.   He holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Dublin Institute of Technology.  He is also a Member of the Consultative Board of the Institute for International Integration Studies at Trinity College, Dublin.  He is a visiting Professor at the European College of Parma and was awarded Alumnus of the Year 2013 by the College of Europe, Bruges.  In June 2014, David O’Sullivan was awarded the EU Transatlantic Business Award by the American Chamber of Commerce. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from his Alma mater Trinity College, Dublin in December, 2014.

Lenny Sullivan, Springsteen's cousin and assistant road manager, died from an accidental drug overdose. According to a Jackson County, Missouri official, the cause of death was "acute amphetamine and heroin intoxication." The death was ruled an "accident" by the coroner.

Sullivan was found dead in his hotel room in Kansas City on October 26, 2009 shortly before Springsteen was to take the stage. Springsteen's group, the E Street Band, canceled their concert at the Sprint Center at the last minute after discovering Sullivan.

At the time, the group released a statement on their Web site that read: "Lenny Sullivan, Bruce's cousin and the assistant road manager of the E Street Band for the last 10 years, passed away today at the age of 36. . . A warm and sensitive person, he was beloved by Bruce, the Band, the crew, and the entire Thrill Hill family."