Some things can cost you your life.
Some things can cost you your career.
Some things cost an arm and a leg.
For Dan Donnelly, it was his career, his life and then his arm.
For James J. Houlihan, the cost of bringing the Irish boxer”™s feted golden arm back to life was time and a plane ticket.
It”™s not that Houlihan actually brought the arm to life; after Donnelly died in 1820, his arm was severed as part of a negotiated agreement with a doctor who had come into possession of the boxer”™s entire body via grave robbers who supplied medical colleges and physicians with cadavers.
In death, the arm gained a life of its own, first at a medical college, than it joined a traveling circus and then found a resting place, albeit public, in the ironically named Hideout Pub in Kilcullen, Ireland.
How Houlihan met up with the arm, is a bit circuitous.
Houlihan loved baseball as a kid growing up in the West Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. He was a pitcher at Manhattan Prep and earned a baseball scholarship to Fordham University. In his junior year at Fordham, he realized he didn”™t have the kind of arm needed to compete in the major leagues. He did continue playing in semipro leagues until he was 30. He cut his teeth in the family real estate business when it was on White Plains Road under the el in the North Bronx. He earned a bachelor”™s degree from Fordham”™s School of Business, continued working with the business that has grown tremendously and now has its Westchester headquarters on West Red Oak Lane in West Harrison. He is a principal with Houlihan-Parnes/iCap Realty Advisors L.L.C. (www.houlihanparnes.com), a multifaceted commercial real estate firm.
As his career grew, Houlihan sat on a number of boards and committees, among the more interesting was the Great Hunger Memorial Committee. He was asked to be a part of the group by then-County Executive Andrew O”™Rourke. The goal was to create a memorial marking that aspect of Irish history in which thousands starved, in part to a potato blight and in part to the ironrule of the British who kept the export of Irish produce to England under lock and key as Irish families starved, Houlihan says, calling it the systematic debasement of the Irish. After little movement forward, Houlihan took over as chairman of the committee, helping raise three-quarters of a million dollars and placing a sculpture in 2001 at the V.E. Macy Park off the Saw Mill Parkway in Ardsley. He would later head fundraising for “The Rising,” Westchester County”™s memorial to county residents killed during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. For his varied efforts over the years, Houlihan received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He has also been the recipient of numerous other awards for community and industry work.
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While doing some pro bono work for the Irish Arts Center down on West 51st Street in Manhattan, a conversation about fundraising came up and Houlihan asked Pauline Turley, the executive director, if she had ever considered a cultural exhibit, perhaps something similar to the “Sting like a Maccabee” boxing exhibit put on in Philadelphia a couple of years earlier by the National Museum of American Jewish History. “She said it was an interesting idea,” Houlihan said. Three days later, after conferring with her board, she called Houlihan and congratulated him on being the newly appointed curator of the exhibit. He immediately asked his assistant Kim Ibanez to go through the company”™s massive database and seek out everyone with an Irish and/or boxing connection or interest. He eventually received hundreds of replies that led to all sorts of leads for obtaining artifacts from photos to John L. Sullivan”™s fur coat to what Houlihan says is unequivocally the “most unique piece of sports memorabilia” ”“ Donnelly”™s arm.
Houlihan got in touch with Patrick Myler, a writer and boxing historian in Dublin, who wrote “Regency Rogue: Dan Donnelly, His Life and Legends” back in 1976.
Myler told him to call Des Byrne, who ran a pub in Kilcullen and had the arm on display in a glass case. It was always Byrne”™s hope to take the arm on the road so others could look at the mummified marvel. Houlihan”™s call to Byrne came unfortunately too late; Des had died the day of the call and the family was too busy making funeral arrangements. Houlihan called back several months later and spoke to Josephine Byrne, Des”™ widow. They worked out arrangements, including obtaining special consent from the government because the arm is considered an artifact, and a few months later Josephine was on board an Aer Lingus flight to New York City. The arm was placed in a case and rode in the cockpit with not just anyone, but chief pilot for the airline Henry Donohue. And there was just an inch to spare for the arm.
It took Houlihan about a year with the full support of his wife, Pat, to gather all the personal ephemera for the exhibit, “Fighting Irishmen: A Celebration of Celtic Prizefighters 1820-Present,” which ran at the arts center from September through December 2006.
And while its run may have ended at the center, it, like Donnelly”™s arm, has found new life at the South Street Seaport Museum. Houlihan said there is talk that the exhibit may go on the road once its run ends in December at the Seaport museum.
Borrowing from his grandmother, “who had 10,000 sayings for everything,” Houlihan said, “If you”™re going to do something, do it right.”
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