Ellen Harrington - 2024 Irish Person of the Year
By Kathleen Sweeney
Sinead Dooley (former Tullamore Mayor), Ellen Harrington, Tony McCormack)
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Faire Committee has selected Ellen Harrington as its 2024 Irish Person of the Year. Ellen was the oldest of Greg and Ellie Turner’s three daughters. Greg was a petroleum geologist. The family lived in Tyler, Texas, when Ellen was born, but moved to Fort Worth when she was one and to Houston ten years later as Greg pursued his career at different oil companies. Ellie was a housewife in the Leave It to Beaver style. She was also very talented in the arts and had a specialized interest in Chinese pottery. She had used her artistic talent by working as a draftsperson on airplane design during World War II.
Greg’s father died when he was five, and he was raised by his mother and a maiden aunt. His mother, Ellen’s “Grandma T,” managed a bookstore in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Afternoons would find Greg tucked in the back room doing his homework or cruising the bookshelves. His mother’s family came to the United States directly from the area of Darmstadt, Germany. Long before the internet was invented, Greg became adept at tracing the movements of his father’s family by spending many hours poring over street maps and census and catalogue systems. Ellen was later to build on his work and to make a surprising discovery of her own about her ancestry.
Ellen’s maternal grandparents, Paul and Marian Ellis, were from the Midwest. Paul, who was an engineer, moved the family to Southern California, where he was involved in the early use of radar in the Pacific during World War II. “GM”—as Ellen dubbed Marian because she was a very hip grandmother—was deeply involved in politics and community service and began the family’s genealogical trees. Both of them served on the board that platted the planned community that is now known as Irvine, California.
Ellen’s parents instilled many important values in their children—the importance of family, of volunteering, of pursuing one’s “best” avenue, and of honesty, as well as a love of reading. Ellen remembers family vacations as involving packing on Friday night, being on the road Saturday morning, crisscrossing all the states west of the Mississippi, and ending up visiting family in South Dakota one year and in Southern California the next. Being a geologist, her father spent many hours mapping out their routes, which would lead them to—among other things—back roads, old forts, abandoned mines, national and state monuments, natural wonders, rock picking in mountains and valleys, and learning about Native American reservations. “My father’s philosophy was that if there was a road, we should take it,” Ellen says. This gave her and her two younger sisters the priceless gifts of learning about their beautiful country and of having the patience to stop and gaze at wonders, but it also subjected her parents to their share of “are we there yet?” questions from the three little girls.
Paula Moore, who is the middle Turner sister, lives in Mesa. She has two grown children and two grandsons. She is an accomplished flutist, an avid hiker, and a glass jewelry maker whose pieces incorporate gemstones. Her hiking has led to a love of photography, and she is always trying to capture the “perfect” shot. Her photography has been featured in the Arizona Highways magazine.
Ellen’s youngest sister, Betsy Haber, recently retired from the natural gas industry in Texas, and she finds herself being even busier in retirement. She belongs to a Thunderbird car club and enjoys car shows and driving veterans in Texas parades in her 1966 yellow convertible T-bird. She expresses her creative “Mom” side by organizing craft days for her daughter’s two young girls.
Ellen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in English and French and a minor in Italian from the University of Houston. “Languages came very easily to me,” she says, “and I had wonderful, encouraging professors.” She was working as an administrative assistant at a Houston oil refinery and construction maintenance company when she met her husband Pat at her sister’s wedding in Chandler, Arizona. She was the maid of honor, and he was the best man. He was working with the Gila River Indian Reservation’s agricultural program in Arizona at the time. “We talked on the phone for ten months—old school and very expensive!—and saw each other in person only five times before we got married,” she says.
Ellen with bottle of Tullamore Dew, a gift from Tullamore
After the marriage, Ellen moved to Arizona, where she worked as an administrative assistant for the executives of a real estate research and marketing company for several years. When her second child was born, she became a freelance typist. She then became an assistant to the principal of Seton Catholic Preparatory High School, and this led to her becoming the Development Director at St. Mary-Basha Catholic Middle School.
Pat was a Professor of Farm Business Management at Central Arizona College in Coolidge for thirty-two years. He submitted a proposal to establish the first and only Farm Business Management Program in Arizona. The Arizona Department of Education funded it for two years, which led to a permanent position at the college. Pat’s students were adult farmers, and the program showed them how to take their receipts out of shoe boxes and enter them into computers. With specialized computer programs, they began to produce crop reports, which enabled them to better analyze their financial positions so that they could more easily attain their personal family and business goals.
Pat and Ellen will celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary on July 4. They have two children. Amanda, who is thirty-seven, is married to Daniel Arku, who is from Ghana. Amanda has a Ph.D. in PharmaEconomics from the University of Arizona. Her specialty is health, economics, and outcomes research. Kyle, who is thirty-five, is engaged to County Kerry’s own Lynn Cosgrove and will receive his Ph.D. in Entomology this spring from the University of Arizona. Amanda and Kyle both attended St. Mary-Basha and Seton schools. Amanda was a championship level Irish step dancer, and Kyle excelled in any sport that involved a round ball, making it to the state semifinals in tennis his senior year.
Irish culture was not a big part of Ellen’s life growing up, but marrying into an Irish family has had a tremendous influence on her life. Pat’s Harrington grandparents came to America from Castletownbere in County Cork in the 1890s. This Irish influence led to Amanda learning step dancing and to Pat and Ellen hosting St. Patrick’s Day parties in their yard. Ellen says that the family joke is that when they are asked “What did you teach your children?” the answer is “Irish drinking songs!”
After marrying Pat, Ellen was very excited to discover through carrying on her father’s genealogical work that not only did she marry into an Irish family, but she has Irish ancestry of her own! There were Stewarts from County Down on her mother’s side. They had fled Ireland by 1750 and had come to America’s New England states before settling in North Carolina and Georgia. They were educated, and they participated in forming governing bodies there. She also discovered a great-great-great-great-grandfather, Rufus Lynch, on her father’s side who lived in Kentucky and who records indicate was born in Ireland, but she has not been able to identify his birthplace any more specifically than County Galway.
Marrying into an Irish family also enabled Ellen to fulfill a life-long dream. Amanda danced for the Bracken School of Irish Dance, which was the first Irish dance school in Chandler. Her dance teacher, Thomas Bracken, was a native of Tullamore, a town in Ireland’s County Offaly. Ellen had always wanted to become involved in a sister city partnership. She retired from her Development Director position at St. Mary-Basha School after twelve years to pursue that dream full time. Ellen’s friendship with Tom Bracken led her to take a factfinding trip to Tullamore in 2007 to determine whether it would be a good fit as a sister city for Chandler.
Ellen Harrington, Camilla Cullen of Tullamore, Laurie Fagen, Chandler-Tullamore Board Member, and Roisin Ui Oistin, Tullamore artist
The Sister Cities International organization grew out of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s desire to seek diplomatic alternatives to the war that he had witnessed as a soldier, general, and Allied Commander. On September 11, 1956, he called a White House conference of one hundred top American leaders, who joined him in creating the People-to-People Program. As a National Archives document explains, its goal was “to enhance international understanding and friendship through educational, cultural, and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences directly among peoples of different countries and diverse cultures. President Eisenhower felt that creating understanding between people was essential to building the road to enduring peace.” One of the ways that he envisioned accomplishing this was through affiliations between cities in different countries.
Ellen created one of these affiliations because it turned out that Tullamore and Chandler were a perfect fit. In 2009, after much hard work on both sides of “the pond,” they finalized their sister city agreement. Ellen has served as the President of Chandler-Tullamore Sister Cities (“CTSC”) ever since. She cherishes the organization’s role of promoting peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation—one individual and one community at a time. Through CTSC’s Student Ambassador program, which began in 2013, families in each city host students from the other city. This year’s Parade and Faire will feature over forty Student Ambassadors from both Seton Catholic School in Chandler and Sacred Heart School in Tullamore. Other CTSC-inspired exchanges have involved government officials making trips back and forth between the cities, citizens of each city leading guided tours for citizens of the other, and citizens of the two cities forming economic and friendship ties with each other. A perfect example of the exchanges that have occurred was the time that Ellen’s husband Pat took five Arizona farm families to the Tullamore Farm Show.
Ellen has found her role in helping to forge all of these connections to be very fulfilling. “Among other things, it has involved finding new friendships, navigating government protocols, hosting visiting delegations, initiating educational events, and giving our citizens opportunities to experience and explore the Irish culture through this long-term community partnership,” she says.
CTSC will be hosting its Twelfth Annual Southwest Tea on Saturday, November 16, 2024, at the Avion Center in Chandler. Last year’s Tea was a tremendous success, with over 140 people attending. This year’s attendees will be “piped in” by master piper Len Wood and will be served a delicious catered meal on tables that will be festively decorated by the unique designs of the Table Toppers. There will be wonderful guest speakers and live entertainment that participants in Arizona’s Colleen Program and dancers from the Bracken School of Irish Dance will provide. There will also be intriguing Chance Baskets. All proceeds will benefit CTSC’s projects—most notably its Student Ambassador Program, the Young Artists and Authors Program (which Sister Cities International sponsors and which CTSC will be promoting at the Tea), and hosting Tullamore visitors (which benefits Chandler economically).
Although at one point in her life, Ellen could never have imagined that this would be true, she has had the opportunity to experience Irish culture herself by visiting Ireland many times. She initially visited when Amanda competed internationally in World Irish step dancing competitions. Her CTSC work then created many more opportunities to visit. In her travels, she has been to the Stewart land in Killyleagh on Strangford Lough in County Down and to the existing Harrington family farm on the Beara Peninsula in County Cork. She has made many dear friends there, and attending weddings “back and forth” has become another reason to visit Ireland and to have her Irish friends visit her. “Some of my best memories of Ireland involve simply sharing tea and scones in Jenny’s Kitchen, the local coffee shop and bakery in Tullamore, while getting to know new friends and greeting old ones,” Ellen says. “You can always find me there!”
When asked whether she has any hobbies, Ellen laughingly says that her hobby appears to be volunteering. In addition to serving as CTSC President since 2009, she was one of the founding members of the Arizona Irish Sister Cities group, which is comprised of Arizona cities and towns that have Irish Sister City relationships—Chandler, Gilbert, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, and Tucson. She has also served as the group’s Treasurer. In addition, she served for several years on an Affiliate Advisory Committee for the Irish Cultural and Learning Foundation (“ICLF”), the nonprofit coalition of Irish and affiliated Celtic organizations that operates Phoenix’s Irish Cultural Center through a public-private partnership with the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department. She is now serving on the ICLF’s Board as Nominating Committee Chair. She is also a member of Chandler’s PEO Chapter AF, a chapter of the Philanthropic Education Organization, which is an international women’s organization with approximately 197,000 members, primarily focusing on providing educational opportunities for students worldwide.
“Arizona’s Irish community scoops you up, is enthusiastic about your personal history, supports your involvement in organizations and events, and shouts your successes through things like personal contact and social media,” Ellen says. She is grateful to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and Faire Committee and is very honored and humbled by the recognition. She “hopes to continue to spread the good news of the Irish in Arizona” in her Irish Person of the Year role.
