[caption id="attachment_66768" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Dublin-born bar owner Niamh Conway at the Maria Lucadamo Crisis Nursery at the New York Foundling's headquarters in Manhattan."]
By Peter McDermott
Niamh Conway was flummoxed by a question a 3-year-old asked her in late June.
He said: "Are you going to keep me?"
She'd just organized a 3rd-grade graduation party for Haven Academy Charter School, which was established by the New York Foundling. Each of the students could formally invite two people and the little boy with the question, a sibling, was one such guest.
"That's no way to begin life - being handed from person to person," said Conway, who is the owner of three bars, Fiddlesticks, the Galway Hooker and the Galway Hooker Downtown.
One of those bars was disguised so that it could host the big end-of-school-year party. Another will be serve breakfast on Monday morning before a bus leaves for a golf outing at Mansion Ridge in Monroe, N.Y. The beneficiary of the 150-person event, which ends with dinner back in Manhattan, is the New York Foundling.
And from Monday, Nov. 28 through Friday, Dec. 2, Conway's bars will give patrons wrist bands that allows them to drink free during the 4-to-8 p.m. Happy Hour if they donate holiday gift cards for teens who are cared for by the New York Foundling.
"The cards might be for iTunes, the Gap, Abercrombie, AT&T," she said.
The Drumcondra, Dublin City-raised entrepreneur believes that children in that age category are sometimes forgotten at that time of year and she would like other Irish bars to get involved in the charity.
Conway, who took over as owner of Fiddlesticks in 1999, spends much of her free time organizing events raising money for New York Foundling, and has the help of key staff members, too.
"Nathaniel Roberts, who is from Liverpool, and Daniel Kelly from Meath organize the golf outing," she said. "That's their baby. They put so much effort into it every year and do such an amazing job."
Conway and her team have raised $55,000 overall in the last couple of years.
"She has a heart," said Bill Baccaglini, the New York Foundling's executive director. "There's no discernable reason why she chose us. People usually have some connection; they've adopted or whatever. But when she chooses you, she chooses you.
"She doesn't come in with all the answers, but she has all the right questions," said Baccaglini, whose Bronx-raised parents have lived in the same house in Nanuet, N.Y. 52 of their 62 years of their married life together. ("He's part-Italian, part-Irish, and was raised in St. Brendan's parish, and she's all Irish and was raised in St. Mary's parish.")
As head of the historic child-care organization he must raise 5 percent of his budget, the equivalent of $5 million, from private donors. "It's people like Niamh who chip away at that," he said.
"At the graduation party, she had tears in her eyes. She was so happy," Baccaglini said.
"She puts herself out. She doesn't stop," he said. "I shake my head, and thank God that there are people like her -- not enough, but they're there."
The New York Foundling can be reached at 212-886-4043. For more information go to www.nyfoundling.org. To help Niamh Conway charitable efforts call 212-725-0555 or mail checks, payable to New York Foundling, to 133 Seventh Ave. South, New York, NY 10014.
'Mind my child'
The New York Foundling began helping families in 1869 when two members of the Sisters of Charity took in children in Greenwich Village. On the 11th floor of his headquarters, the organization displays some early letters from those who left infants and children with the nuns.
On May 6, 1870, a mother wrote: "I wish to leave my child, George Ferguson, aged 12 years. Please take good care of him."
She added that she had not heard from the child's father, her husband, since he went the California the previous year. She promised "to call and pay the expenses as soon as I'm able."
Three weeks later this letter accompanied a child: "Dear Sister, This is the baby the lady who came yesterday was speaking about to you. It has just been baptized by Father Griffin of St. Stephen's Church, its name is Geraldine Farrell, her real true name.
"Sister, I want my little one again; no power on earth would make me part with her forever. If you let me pay for it I would willingly for it I would willingly do so. I will call the first day I am able.
"Respectfully, Margaret E. Farrell, Clifton, Staten Island."
Another from March 20, 1872, read: "The name of this child is Patrick McGee. It is a legitimate child, left here to be taken care of that he may live and be a good Catholic. The mother's name is Alice Mooney."
An unsigned note from this period said: "This child is baptized, its name is John Mullen. It was christened in St. Joseph's Church. I'm afraid it will die. I have no means to bury it. God be with you!"
