Nobody can accuse Sheila Houlihan of not going above and beyond the call of duty in her efforts to learn Irish. Over the past three years, she has studied under some of New York's best teachers. Now, she's scheduled to fly out to the Gaeltacht to study in an intensive four-week immersion course
"It will be six hours of classes each day, six days a week," said Houlihan, who is due to graduate with an arts degree from New York's Lehman College next year.
She is one of a pioneering group of students who are beneficiaries of the Fulbright scholarship program's first venture into the Irish-speaking region.
Houlihan will live with an Irish-speaking family in Connemara, while studying at the National University of Ireland, Galway, from July 15. "I don't know who they are yet. I assume that they'll be nice. But I'll barely see them," said the mother of two grown-up sons.
The other recipients are New York City sanitation worker Edward Shevlin, full-time student Ciara Grogan and Idaho firefighter Gareth Lambson, all participants in Lehman's Irish Language Program. The summer study program in Ireland carries six credits toward their B.A.
Houlihan, whose parents were from County Limerick, grew up on 48th Street, in Woodside, Queens. She went to nearby St. Teresa's School. "[NYPD Commissioner] Ray Kelly graduated a few years before me," she said. Her high school was St. Jean Baptiste on the Upper East Side, not far from where she currently lives.
She settled on Long Island with her husband, a teacher. When he died, she went to live in Palm Harbor, Fla., with her boys Brian and Brendan and then to Nashville, Tenn., after being promoted by her company. With her sons grown -- one is now married and has three children and the other is in the air force -- Houlihan thought it was a good time to get back to New York. She became more involved there with her Irish heritage, notably the successful campaign to save St. Brigid's Church in the East Village.
Houlihan had previously accepted an invitation to join the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians and was appointed its historian. "It always stuck in my craw that the language was taken away from people," she said.
Her Irish teachers have included the late Alexei Kondratiev, at the Irish Arts Center, Maura Mulligan, at the New York Irish Center, and Prof. Padraig O Cearuil, of Glucksman Ireland House, NYU. (Her sister, Eileen Zurell, is an Irish teacher and writer, and though they've conversed, she has never been in her class.)
"They all had their different teaching methods," she said.
But Houlihan credits Prof. Thomas Ihde, head of Lehman's Language and Literature Department, with getting her to Gaeltacht readiness.
"He wrote a beautiful recommendation," she said. "I wouldn't have got the scholarship without him."
Lehman was eligible for the program because it has a Fulbright teaching assistant. Siobhán Ní Mhaolagáin, a Dublin native, will soon return home after a year teaching the language at Lehman and Queens College.
While most will never qualify for a Fulbright program, the entire Irish-language student community in New York "are having fun and enjoyment struggling at it," Houlihan said.
"I'm pretty good at the grammar and book stuff," she said, adding that her Gaeltacht experience should help with her level of fluency.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Houlihan said.
