Loretta Brennan Glucksman

Tireless in her devotion to the country of her ancestors, Loretta Brennan Glucksman has brought American-style charity to Ireland and Irish culture to America. Sue Leonard chats with the amiable American to get the whole story.

Her husband Lew has a wonderful line about when friends ask why he they chose to live in Ireland in the cold and rain, says Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Chairman of The American Ireland Fund. "He says you don't go for the weather, it's cheaper than a psychiatrist and a lot more fun."

She's a small, quietly-spoken woman with dark hair and clear, candid blue eyes. She and her husband bought a house in Cork two years ago and they also have a home in New York, which she returns to on average twice a month. "I'm a commuter, Aer Lingus loves me," she laughs. "My husband is happier here, he's a very keen boatsman and fisherman and is mad for his books. We love Cork and find the house and its environs magical. It's got a touch of Brigadoon about it. I have commitments with The Fund in the United States and I like to see my family and grandchildren, so I travel over and back."

Having lived in Ireland on and off since the 80's - they first had a house in Limerick - Loretta Brennan Glucksman, a keen observer of human nature, has developed friendships with Irish people and, in the process, has been able to delve beneath their warm outer skin in search of the real Irish psyche.

"I just love knowing about people," she says, "and when my American friends come they always say how warm and fabulous the people here are. That is true, of course, but the longer I'm here the more I realize that's only the first layer. Using the analogy of an onion, it's been a privilege to be able to peel the layers off with some of my very close Irish friends and find a different person down there below that surface bonhomie."

What she has found are complexities - a good thing - far removed from the stage Irishness she was fed on in America throughout the 50's and 60's.

"But anyone with half a brain would have known that a country that produces the Joyces and Becketts and the Heaneys is not a simple place," she says. "And it's a privilege to be able to learn that. For the most part it's a fascinating adventure which I'm eager to continue. I hope my friends don't turn off me now," she adds. She's joking of course. Or maybe not.

Third generation Irish-American, Loretta Brennan Glucksman grew up in Pennsylvania in a totally Irish community. Her maternal grandparents, McHugh / Murray, emigrated to America from Leitrim in Famine times. "They were coal-mining people, so when they went to the United States they went to the anthracite areas of north eastern Pennsylvania," she says. Of her paternal grandparents, all she knows is that they were from Donegal.

"I was very aware of my heritage when I was growing up and we were very close to both sets of grandparents," she continues. "Daddy was one of 18. I was imbued with the Irishness of the family. But the McHugh grandparents were intent on assimilating to the extent that they would never speak Gaelic in front of us, even though they spoke it to each other. Grandfather McHugh was a most beautiful man, he was a labor organizer, very important in that little community; a socialist, respectful of his Irish heritage but intent on raising American children, making sure they had a stake in the country."

The grandparents never returned to Ireland and none of her relatives had ever visited by the time Loretta came the first time. That was when she met her husband, a Hungarian Jew from Manhattan, a Wall Street financier who had a passionate interest in Irish literature.

"As a young man in the US navy, he had a terrific interest in all literature but especially Irish and, when he had a chance, he would come to Ireland and do what he called one of his pilgrimages, to where a particular writer would have lived and written. So when we met; here's this very savvy Jewish guy from Wall St. raving to me, the Irish Catholic third generation, about Ireland and I had never been. The first trip we did together was to Ireland, a ritualistic run around the country where you don't get to know anything."

They returned a second time after Lew Glucksman - a trustee of NYU - offered to gift a center for Irish Studies at the university.

"NYU had a lot of ethnic houses; French, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, German, but there was no Irish house," explains Loretta. "So to examine if it was a valid field of study, the president of NYU and his wife and Lew and myself did a tour of most of the university campuses around Ireland in 1987, to see if there was interest and, boy, was there interest.

"Later, Glucksman Ireland House was established at NYU. I think the name is hilarious," she adds, "an Ireland house with a Hungarian Jewish name." The Glucksman's have been married for 18 years. It was a second marriage for both.

"Lew has two grown daughters and I have two sons and a daughter. They are John and Christopher Cooney and Kate Cooney Pico. She got married last March, to John Domenico Pico. Like Loretta Brennan Glucksman, her name is now a mouthful."

As a young woman, Loretta became a teacher, married very young, had three children and then divorced.

"We went our separate ways when the children were very little and it was the four of us for a very long time," she explains. "I taught and did whatever I could do. This was way before the days of childcare or daycare and I sure as heck couldn't afford a nanny, but we were a unit. Their father, a wonderful man who has been very involved in their lives, is a professor at Penn State University, so it was ordained that they would go to Penn State.

"After Kate began, I was teaching at a university in New Jersey which was planning a television station, a public station funded by the government. They hired me and it was just the biggest fun for about 12 years. I did mostly public affairs and politics - I love politics as a spectator sport, that's why I love Ireland."

In those years too, she was psychologically involved, she says, with the burgeoning feminist movement. "I interviewed Gloria Steinem a lot - a wonderful woman - and a wacky called Shere Hyte; a space cadet of the first order, but she was a real trail blazer. We lived in a beautiful little town in New Jersey and I was one of only five local mothers who went out to work. There was no cafeteria in the school, so I got on the school board and got a cafeteria in the school. But I never marched on Washington or burned my bra. I have a quiet way - Lew has a term from his business; "softly, softly, catch the monkey". If someone wrongs you, you never go right back at them. I think that's more my style."

Soon after she left her TV job - "it's a young person's game" she says, almost as an aside - she set up a PR firm and around the same time met her husband.

"My schedule changed dramatically. I would go with him on these marvelous business trips - a whole exposure to a world I didn't know."

They met on a quintessential blind date from Hell.

"It was one of those nights when you think your watch has stopped because it's so endless," she laughs softly at the memory. "Neither of us like the other. I thought he was just so opinionated and boring; I didn't know his world, I never studied finance or the world markets or anything.

"He must have thought I was this ditz who just wanted to talk about politics or current affairs, which he never cared about. So we suffered through this endless evening at the very spiffy Four Seasons restaurant in New York and at the end of the meal - we were with our mutual friends who had had the misfortune to introduce us - the captain draws this very grand cart over to the table and you're meant to chose a piece of fruit, which he then carves into some sculpture or other. All very precious.

"Everyone was choosing their pear or whatever and Lew across from me, grabbed an apple and started chomping on it. The captain - I thought he'd have a heart attack - said to Lew, "I'll help you with that sir" and he said: "Help me chew the apple?" That was the first time I liked him. I liked that humor. He called me the next day. He was chairman of Lehman Brothers at that time, and they were sponsoring a very grand opening of a Monet exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum and pretty much we're been together ever since then. It's a great love. I'm a very fortunate woman."

"It was so quick. I was 45 years of age and the chances of meeting someone you connect with like that are decreasing at a rapid rate at 45."

After the Glucksman Ireland House was established Tony O'Reilly (who knew Lew Glucksman through business) approached saying The American Ireland Fund would like to honor his wife.

"At that point, he had Lew in the palm of his hand," smiles Loretta, "that was quintessential O'Reilly, and that was the beginning of out involvement [with The Ireland Funds]. It was such an easy progression. Then I was elected President two years after that, and subsequently Chairman. In those eight years, we've raised $75 million for Ireland. In the same time Ireland has gone through a metamorphosis.

"We started sending funds to Ireland because they didn't have the wherewithal to get the money internally; now we are partnering with people like Denis O'Brien and other wonderful philanthropists and forging ahead. It's been so exhilarating. Dr. Maurice Hayes, the Chairman of our advisory committee, vets every single project we give money to.

"Over the years, there were a lot of organizations who wanted to raise money for Ireland, but it didn't always go where they thought it was going. We have people in every area of Ireland, north and south, who troop out and look at these projects and the money goes where it is intended to go."

Many Irish Americans contributed to The Ireland Funds because the conflict in Northern Ireland heightened their interest in the land of their ancestors. Then the Peace Process and the work of Senator George Mitchell gave donors a sense of hope, a feeling that they could really help. Consequently, contributions increased significantly.

"A case in point was the establishment of integrated schools which we have funded. When people see children who have never been allowed to be educated together doing just that, they want to be involved. I have every optimistic hope that our efforts will help in a very real way towards peace and opportunity," says the Chairman of The American Ireland Fund.

This article appears courtesy of The Irish Examiner.

"A little bit of heaven fell from the sky one day, and it fell upon The American Ireland Fund in the form of a wondrous lady who has benefited everyone she has been in touch with for the past ten years or so. She has always acted with an unbelievable energy and devotion to duty, even amongst the most trying circumstances of her own personal life. Apart from this, she has been more than generous in donating funds to many causes in Ireland, the quantity and amount of which would stupefy anyone. I cannot imagine any one person who came suddenly into The Ireland Funds and who will be remembered forever as their great benefactor."

-A. W. B. Vincent - Vice-Chairman of The American Ireland Fund

This article first appeared in Connections Summer 2001 issue