I traveled back in time with Laurel Mahoney today as we visited
the 1960s family room and kitchen of the home she once shared on
Welburn with her husband Vince.
I traveled back in time with Laurel Mahoney today as we visited the 1960s family room and kitchen of the home she once shared on Welburn with her husband Vince. The two of them were a young couple who, along with Fred and Virginia Wood, joined together to hold a small St. Patrick’s dinner for their friends. While Mr. Mahoney loved his many Italian friends, he said, “We need to have something for the Irish.”
Several couples gathered to enjoy the evening at the Mahoney home, and they enjoyed it so much that they did it again the following year. When they moved, the dinner moved too. Soon, the dinner was so popular – “We fell out the door,” as Laurel Mahoney put it – that they switched over to meeting in the Woods’ home, which was larger.
Since Fred Wood was city administrator for Gilroy, he engaged city council members to come help serve the food. As the guest list grew, Val Filice and Joe Peralta were cooking up a storm. But soon, “We fell out the door there too,” Mahoney said.
The dinners had to be moved to what used to be known as Peralta’s Busy Bee (now known as the Longhouse Restaurant) on Monterey Street.
In those days, they were lucky to break even; there was no fundraising involved. They hired Martin Lawler from the Irish Cultural Center in San Francisco to bring music and dance to the dinner.
When the dinner outgrew the Busy Bee, it moved to St. Mary’s Gym, where Father Ryan had the vision of it being ecumenical. He invited other churches and other pastors to participate, and encouraged them to meet once a month.
Picture this as we journey backward: The Catholic Ladies Aid Society is working hard to put the dinner on, Peralta’s cadre of chefs are busily feeding 150 people, Mary Henry sings, “Tura-Lura-Lural,” and Steve Valencia (principal at Brownell) brings the house down with his rendition of “Danny Boy.” Sister Philippa (principal of St. Mary Parish School) gets up on the stage and begins dancing an Irish jig. All the tables are pushed back to leave room for dancing to the live band, which goes on long into the night. And tickets to the event? They cost $4!
Tomorrow, more than 40 years later, Joe Peralta and his team of chefs will still be expertly cooking the corned beef and cabbage. City Council members will help serve the food, and the Gilroy High School Chamber Singers will perform. There has been so much support from all around town that all 200 tickets to this year’s event have sold out in advance. A Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic pastor will be auctioned off to those lucky enough to win “Dinner with the Pastor,” which will be deliciously cooked by Jenny Derry.
What began as a simple dinner idea in someone’s home over forty years ago has grown to be a citywide event which raises funds for St. Joseph’s Family Center, a collaboration between many businesses, organizations, churches, and individuals working together to provide a central location for people to come to when in a crisis or emergency situation.
St. Joseph’s Family Center is providing urgently needed assistance to more than 7 percent of Gilroy’s population, almost 5,000 children and adults in January alone. This represents an increase of almost 25 percent more households than last year.
More and more families are experiencing extreme hardships. Thanks to the support of this community, tomorrow’s dinner will be a great success, and Laurel Mahoney will be there just as she was for the very first annual St. Patrick’s Dinner.
“I’m very pleased that my son-in-law, Allen Dinsmore, has become a board member with St. Joseph’s,” she says.
Thank you, Mrs. Mahoney, for taking me back to the beginning in your time machine.
