On misty days, when the air is fresh and fragrant, Father Patrick Carley is often taken back to Thurles, Ireland, a place where horses and cows may outnumber people and real men don't drink green beer.
Thurles and Salt Lake City have about as much in common as shamrocks and sagebrush, but that hasn't stopped Father Carley, a Roman Catholic priest in Utah for 31 years, from pursuing a dream: To make his little hometown a sister city to Salt Lake City.On St. Patrick's Day, Father Carley will watch proudly as Mayor Rocky Anderson and dignitaries from Thurles make it official: Thurles will become the city's sixth sister city, joining the likes of Keelung, Taiwan; and Chernivitzi, Ukraine; in promoting good will between two cultures.
That's what he wanted to talk about over a Free Lunch of split pea soup and sourdough bread at Fiddler's Elbow, about the closest thing Salt Lake City has to Mickey Bowe's, Father Carley's favorite neighborhood pub and grill back home in Thurles.
Sitting at a corner table beneath a string of shamrocks emblazoned with beer brands -- something you would never find in Thurles, he says -- Father Carley, a witty man with gray hair, soft blue eyes and a gentle brogue, reminisced about his youth in Ireland and shared his hopes for a long and friendly exchange between Salt Lake City and Thurles.
Thurles, a working-class town of about 10,000, in the heart of County Tipperary, "is not on the beaten path for tourists," notes Father Carley, 54, now pastor of the St. Joseph the Worker Church in West Jordan.
"It's a simple, down-home place, where music and dance is a way of life. It's an old market town with narrow roads. You won't find touristy things, just ordinary folks going about their daily business."
The oldest of five children, Patrick Carley took up Irish dancing as a boy and participated in the Irish sport of hurling -- a game resembling field hockey. After graduating from high school, he decided to make the priesthood his daily business and, at age 23, became the first person in his family to leave Ireland.
"I decided to go where there was more need," he says with a smile, recalling his arrival in Salt Lake City in 1969. "The mountains didn't look like any mountains I was familiar with, and the air was very dry. But as a nervous, first-time priest, I was much too busy to be homesick."
Returning to Thurles every summer, Father Carley soon began taking tour groups of Utahns to see the sights of his hometown. In 1978, he helped found Utah's Hibernian Society to give those with green roots a way to celebrate traditional Irish dance, music and poetry.
"When I first came here, there wasn't even a St. Patrick's Day parade," he says. "That first year, I was the commentator on the parade stand, largely by default because the other guy didn't show. There I stood at the last second with a list of entrants, ad-libbing as everybody came by."
Ever since, he has been the one Utahns call when they need to know about anything Irish. Researching a paper on Utah's first Irish families? Ask Father Carley. Hoping to learn traditional Irish dance? He's given dozens of lessons and is still light on his feet.
Just don't expect to see him starring in "Riverdance." "I do folk dancing," he says firmly, "not step dancing. That stuff is too complicated for me."
But in matters of diplomacy, Father Carley is no novice. He helped persuade the Salt Lake City Council to make Thurles an official sister city, and on March 17, he'll kick up his heels at the St. Patrick's Day Ball after the papers are signed.
Will he celebrate with green beer? The pastor winces. No way. He'll take a pint of golden Cutthroat, any day.
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