The Listowel castle ruins, a block from the town square, will be turned into a cultural center. Contributors include several Los Gatans.

Photograph by Sandy Sims

Los Gatos and Listowel, Ireland

The relationship between the sister cities has become a downright lovefest

By Sandy Sims

Ireland is being called the Celtic Tiger because it enjoys one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, if not the fastest-growing. The tiny country, which was losing 40,000-50,000 young people a year to emigration during the 1980s, is now welcoming them back home. Last year 44,000 people returned to Ireland. High-tech companies such as IBM, Amdahl, Intel, Motorola and Dell, to name just a few, have set up shop in the Emerald Isle.

Ray O'Flaherty, a San Jose-based industrial development and travel consultant, says "roughly 50 Silicon Valley companies are manufacturing there," not to mention many other companies from the United States. "Thanks to Silicon Valley," he says, "Ireland is now the second-largest exporter of software in the world."

While the country's high-tech economy is exploding, so is its tourism, and its relationship with the U.S. is getting more and more intimate. Irish movies, singers, dancers, athletes and politicians are finding a growing audience here. Not only politicians but hordes of U.S. citizens are becoming familiar with the narrow hedge-lined roads, the ubiquitous bed and breakfasts, the pubs, the soda bread and the warm hospitality of the Irish. "They'll put down their pint and get in their car just to show you how to get somewhere," Mark Wormley, dispatcher at the Los Gatos Police Department, says.

Los Gatans especially have found their own bit of Hibernia with which to develop a relationship--the town of Listowel.


Photograph by Dai Sugano

Coed Margaritta Purtill, a resident of Listowel, chats with Michelle Jarvis (center), manager at Bakers Square, where Purtill has been working this summer, and Lisa Castillo.




Listowel is a small agricultural town of about 3,500 in north County Kerry in the west of Ireland. It's just six miles down the road from the famous seaside Ballybunion golf course, where President Clinton whacked a few golf balls around last year.

It's a town most Americans might not even pick out on the map. But to Los Gatans, Listowel is not just another pretty Irish town. Los Gatos and Listowel have actually "twinned," the word used to describe the state of becoming sister cities.

Listowel has, in fact, twinned with three other towns in the world. But its most vibrant relationship is with Los Gatos. The exchange of social, cultural and sports activities has blossomed and grown, with more and more people hopping back and forth between the two towns every year since it all became official in 1994.

Service clubs and politicians are coming and going. Jimmy Deenihan, the TD (teachta dala--Celtic for messenger of the people) who represents the Listowel area in the Irish Parliament, has taken many Los Gatans and other Silicon Valleyites down the road to the Ballybunion golf course. Earlier this summer he took John McGraw, chairman of the California Republican Party, and Mike Doherty, who used to tend bar in Los Gatos down the road. "Unfortunately for Doherty and McGraw, the game resulted in a bad defeat for Los Gatos," Deenihan recalls, laughing. This month the Los Gatos Lions Club will be visiting. Maybe they will rectify the loss.

Besides Deenihan, who's been to Los Gatos enough times to be recognized on the street, other important Irish dignitaries have stopped at C.B. Hannegan's for a pint. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern came by before heading out to spend St. Patrick's Day with Clinton, when Ahern also received the Spirit of Ireland award. Tim Pat Coogan, who wrote the book I.R.A., and the Honorable John Hume, MP (Member of British Parliament) and MEP (Member of European Parliament) and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, dropped in at Hannegan's. And several lord mayors of Dublin, including Joe Doyle last year, have taken a pint or two here in Los Gatos.


Photograph by Dai Sugano

Mary Alice Scanlan of Listowel pours a glass of beer at Johnny's Northside Grill.




Students are trekking back and forth as well. Los Gatos High School English teacher Nancy Avoy took her class to Listowel in April, and they were put up in local homes and enjoyed poetry readings and plays in town. And this summer college students from Listowel are living and working in Los Gatos. Their enchanting Irish brogue can be heard in various businesses around town--the Los Gatos Roasting Co., C.B. Hannegan's, Johnny's Northside Grill, Bakers Square, the Chart House and Campo di Bocce. Some come with Celtic-Irish sounding names, like Maeve Queally and Gráinne Mulcaire.

It's not just the Irish Americans in Los Gatos with names like Hannegan, O'Laughlin and Shaunessy who are spending time in Listowel. "People are going over there now who have had nothing to do with the twinning. They are going on their own," explains John Hannegan, co-owner of C.B Hannegan's. "Even our police department went there." Bonnie Eckert, records and communications manager for the Los Gatos Police Department, and now-retired Sgt. Trish Frederick spent some time in Listowel in 1995. "We had lunch at the Listowel Arms with Jimmy Deenihan," Eckert remembers. They also met with a Listowel policeman (called garda in Ireland). "They seem less forceful than we are here," Eckert recalls.

While Listowel is an important market town in the agricultural west, it also boasts its share of important writers, not surprising in a country that produced such giants as James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. John B. Keane's plays, short stories and humorous writings are known worldwide. The elderly Keane is still alive and active in the town, which hosts a writers week every year.

The San Jose Repertory Company found its way to Listowel this summer. That was after spending time in San Jose's sister city--Dublin--where the company was tying up arrangements for the famous Abbey Theatre to perform in San Jose next March. "It's wonderful," Ray O'Flaherty says. "They're not going to San Francisco but coming to San Jose."

While in Listowel, members of the Rep attended a Ballad Festival in the large town square. They attended a performance of the play Sive, written by Keane. "Jimmy [Deenihan] looked after us," O'Flaherty recalls, "and we met with John B. Keane at his pub." Keane also wrote the play The Field, which was made into a movie in 1991. "John B. was upset by the way they changed the end of his play," O'Flaherty recalls. However, Richard Harris garnered an Academy Award nomination for his performance in the lead role.

Most Los Gatans find their way to Keane's small, warmly lit pub on Charles Street. It's busy every night, but especially packed on the nights Billy Keane, John's son, is doing his stand-up comedy.

Los Gatans also spend time at the town square. Surrounded by Georgian buildings and graced by the steeples of two Gothic churches, the square is where groups from Los Gatos have belted out songs and kicked up their heels dancing. The Listowel Castle ruins, which will eventually be transformed into a new cultural center, loom just a block from the square. Several years ago, Los Gatans attended a fundraising party for the center at Pat O'Laughlin's home and raised $10,000 for the cause.

The Los Gatos-Listowel relationship is not just one of entertainment and tourism. More serious connections are brewing as well. O'Flaherty says a business project involving Los Gatos, Listowel and the dairy industry is in the works, though he is not at liberty to talk about it.

The notion of Silicon Valley putting its industry in Listowel is something Deenihan has been striving for since the early 1990s, when Ireland's economy was prime-pumped by an allocation of several billion dollars from the European Union and tight, national fiscal policies were set up.


Photograph by Dai Sugano

Simon Doyle of Listowel enjoys a conversation with Los Gatan Shannon Green on the patio at Johnny's Northside Grill.




"We need to bring more jobs to the west, where the economy is still struggling," Deenihan says. "The agricultural west must industrialize quick or lose its young people." He'd like to see people in Listowel doing high-tech jobs in the day and keeping the small farms going after hours.

"We want to keep our rural traditions going. It's the names, the family roots that connect with place. In fact, names have always connected with different regions in Ireland, especially in the rural areas. It's the continuation of generation after generation in the same place that passes on the pride in the locality and family resilience of rural places," Deenihan explains. "We want to create options for our young people so they can see the possibility of staying home. With the economic boom and people moving around, regional names are becoming a thing of the past.

"It's some of the most beautiful country in the world here," Deenihan continues, looking down from the Stacks Mountains just south of Listowel. The valley below is picture-postcard beautiful, a rolling blanket of emerald green divided into quiltlike squares by hedgerows. Sheep and cows graze everywhere. "Look," Deenihan says, "the air is clean; there's no traffic; you can build a huge mansion for under $300,000, and there is no property tax in Listowel." He continues, "The airport at Kerry is 30 minutes away, Shannon airport one hour and 15 minutes, and Cork airport just one hour and a half."

Deenihan himself, a sixth-generation Listowelian, lives on a narrow, hedgerow-lined country road where two tiny cars can barely pass. He lives just down the street from his mother, who still resides in the house where he was born.

These days the young head mostly east and south to Dublin, Cork and Waterford for jobs, some to the north. The exodus is showing, too, in the number of young faces in Dublin. Some 50 percent of Dublin's population is under 25 years old. Maeve Queally, who is a graphic arts major at the university in Limerick, says many of those in Dublin are college students. "Everyone in Ireland goes to college or technical school," she explains.

Among the many Los Gatans who've posed at Listowel's sister-city sign are Bonnie Eckert (left), records and communications manager for the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department, and LG-MSPD Sgt. (Ret.) Trish Frederick.

Photograph courtesy of Bonnie Eckert





The well-educated workforce is one of the main reasons U.S. industry is finding a place in Ireland, along with the lower corporate tax rate. U.S. companies in Ireland pay 10 percent corporate tax because of Ireland's membership in the European market, which is quite a drop from the 34 percent they pay in the U.S.

Our young Irish visitors had no problem finding jobs in Los Gatos. In fact, they have brought welcome relief to an economy in which small merchants have trouble attracting employees, as evidenced by the many help-wanted signs in town. "It benefits everyone," Hannegan explains. The students borrowed money to come here and need to work to pay back their loans. Los Gatos merchants will miss our hard-working Irish visitors when they leave in early September. "They are good, wholesome kids, a lot of fun," Johnny Mesa, owner of Johnny's Northside Grill, says.

Housing, however, was a problem. At first the group was staying at San Jose State. But it took two hours by bus to get to Los Gatos. Mesa says, "John [Hannegan] came to me and said, 'We've got to find housing for them here.' " The two men got together with Pat O'Laughlin, former Los Gatos councilman and mayor, and worked out arrangements to put the entire group up in a cottage in Los Gatos.

When the students return home, they will be finishing their education. The six of them are pursuing degrees in a wide range of fields: dentistry, law, graphic arts, and anatomy and physiology. They want to come back and do their professional internships in the U.S., even work here a couple of years.

Then they plan to return to Ireland to live and work. However, it may not be to Listowel.

Simon Doyle, a graphics design major in Limerick who's been working at Advanced Office Systems--a San Jose company owned by Los Gatans--says, "After my internship and my degree, I'll travel, then find work in Ireland, perhaps even England. It'll all depend on where the jobs are."

In the meantime, Los Gatos and Listowel are growing strong ties, and local faces and names in both towns are becoming familiar. It may be that some Los Gatans will move to Listowel because of some excellent job opportunity there.

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