Most people assume my Irish roots come from Dad’s side of the family. Something about the last name of Cassidy tips them off, I guess! But Dad’s family has been in Kentucky for generations, perhaps since the Revolutionary War, and he always seemed surprised when someone thought he hailed from the auld sod. 

Mom was the Irish one. She was proud of her lineage and traced her Concannon, Scott, Long and Hughes roots back to Counties Clare and Galway. She made us wear little green shamrocks made of green pipe-cleaners every March 17, back when it wasn’t cool to be green.

But it’s Dad I want to write about this morning. He would be 98 today, so I’ve been thinking about him and his way of looking at the world. 

Dad was an optimist and an extrovert who took joy in ordinary pleasures: his first cup of coffee in the morning (“ah, Brazilian novocaine,” he would say), a bowl of popcorn after dinner, his wife and children and grandchildren, whom he adored. 

He never tired of telling us how lucky he was to be our father, a compliment I threw right back at him as I grew older and (sort of) wiser. But he was lucky in the way that many of his generation were: tried and tested by early hardship and provided with free college, a low-cost mortgage and a trip to Europe aboard the Queen Elizabeth courtesy of Uncle Sam (though he had to fly 35 missions in a B-17 bomber to pay for it).

Most of all, though, he made his own luck. When the tough times came, which they did, Dad just plowed through them. Gratitude came easily to him. Luck, too. Whether it was from being “Irish” or just from being Dad, I’ll never know.