With apologies to McNamara’s Band — Hennessey, Tennessey toodles the flute while Mehaul — Mehaul? — the pipes do play…
Wherever you were at the lunch hour, you should have toddled over to the O’Senior Center to see Mehaul O’Leary, the best-known authentic Irishman in Culver City — and a candidate for the City Council on April 8 — dance up a storm.
Faith and begorrah, he had ‘em rockin’ and clappin’, although for generational reasons no one in this crowd was going to holler out, “You rock, Mehaul.”
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Mehaul O’Leary, astride the raffled $1300 motorized scooter, with Debbie Cahill, Senior Program Specialist, at the Senior Center.
The soul of congeniality, Stephen Fry, Culver City’s favorite Mr. Piano Man, deserves a (St.) Pat(rick) on the shoulder for putting the crowd in the mood to receive Mr. O’Leary with his lilting music that elevated the roof several feet.
Win or lose on Election Day, Mr. O’Leary probably will be attired a little differently than he was this afternoon —
A pleated khaki-colored Irish kilt, green polo shirt, brown sox and brown high-top shoes, topped by an electric green derby that insisted on jumping around.
You should have seen the smiling Irishman at the magical hour of 12:15, tilting and slanting as he Irish Jigged his way down the narrow aisles between tables, toward the stage in the front of the large room, to the rhythmic clapping and giggling of the huge, high-spirited crowd.
It Was Environment Paradise. The quintessential Green Building.
Environmentalists must have thought they had died and gone to Dublin, so awash in brilliantly vivid green were the hundreds of o’seniors who thronged the O’Senior Center
Whatever trumps the hot phrase of the day, a Perfect Storm, this collision of sizzling ethnicity and aroused o’seniors — while McNamara’s Band toodled in the background — exploded in St. Patrick’s Day-flavored delight.
In the twinkling of an Irish eye, which was smiling, Mr. O’Leary explained his presence and his present at the Center:
A Miracle Maybe?
“My name is Mehaul O’Leary,” he told the crowd, “and who said something good can’t come of a bad thing?
“A year and a half ago, a friend of mine was badly injured in a car accident in London. She was riding in the backseat of one of those old London taxis that didn’t have seatbelts.
“She was involved in a 60 mile an hour car crash. The taxi was doing 30, the other car was doing 30, and they crashed head-on.
“She almost died. Everything was severed, all the way to her spinal cord. She was paralyzed from the waist down.
“When she got well, we decided we wanted to bring her on a vacation over here,” said the man who hopes to be the first Irish immigrant to be elected to a City Council seat on the Westside.
“And so we decided to buy her (a motorized wheelchair) to get around in. But I didn’t realize she was more determined than your average woman. Not only did she recover from the internal injuries, she also walks now again,” and the crowd broke into applause.
What Could He Do?
The 40ish Mr. O’Leary pointed to the miracle vehicle.
“So what were we going to do with this?
“I’m not planning to need it for awhile.
“I thought we might as well see if somebody over here could use it.”
And so they held an opportunity drawing.
Mr. O’Leary, who never once mentioned his candidacy, turned to a nearby table where he espied the only other City Council candidate on the premises, Loni Anderson.
He asked Ms. Anderson to join him on the stage.
Dipping her hand inside a smart looking container, Ms. Anderson plucked out the name of the winner, one Marie Masterton, who was not present.
And Now to Business
While Jeanne Winn and Jeff Dwyer entertained the o’seniors with Irish melodies in the background, Mr. O’Leary talked, effusively, about his campaign.
He has eight rivals in the race for three open City Council seats that climaxes with the election three weeks from tomorrow.
“Fantastic, fantastic,” Mr. O’Leary said, “that’s how my campaign is going. I can feel the momentum. I see the responses I am getting at the various forums.
“We won’t know until it translates into votes. But it looks good.”
Second Time Around Is Better
Mr. O’Leary said again that his second run at a Council seat is so much better than the first. “On a daily basis, good things are happening,” he said. “I have a much stronger knowledge of the issues than I did the first time. When you hear me answer the questions, I am more confident, more knowledgeable.
“Two years ago when I would answer, I was grasping.
“The energy was there. The heart was there. But the knowledge wasn’t quite where it needed to be. I have spent the last two years making sure to close that gap.”
