[img]2744|left|||no_popup[/img]For hours last night at Joxer Daly’s, celebratory-minded people poured into the rockin’ Irish pub to the merry melodies of a house band. Mehaul O’Leary’s bartenders needed skates to pour the needed libations that stimulated a noisy and orderly throng pouring out the door onto Washington Boulevard, smilingly saluting America’s wounded warriors.
Attired in his standard horn-rimmed spectacles and a neat, traditional short-sleeved white shirt, proprietor O’Leary resembled a button-down daytime businessman as he surveyed the kelly green results of his Sept. 11 tribute to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Mr. O’Leary, who doubles as the vice mayor of Culver City, estimated that the Wounded Warrior Project he co-hosted with realtor Mike King was a record-setter.
In a pub built for under a hundred customers at a time, Mr. O’Leary fundraising projected that even with fundraising entry fee of $20 per person, three times that number people shoehorned into Joxer Daly’s. “The amount we will raise for the Wounded Warrior Project will blow the money we raised in previous years right out of the water,” the jubilant Mr. O’Leary said.
He recounted the story of how and why he started making fundraising for the truly needy Sept. 11 victims and their families a tradition for the pub.
Plaintively, Mr. O’Leary said the every-year event was born on the first anniversary of the Sept 11 tragedies “because it just made sense. We had to acknowledge that first we were attacked and that there were victims of the attack who needed support.
“The government was slow in responding. So, I thought ‘are there are victims’ families who have a need now, financial or otherwise, while the government decides how they are going to appropriately react.”
In the pub business, a guy will make friends. Mr. O’Leary has.
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How to find needy/worthy families victimized by 9-11?
How did Mr. O’Leary find a family to help?
“Through a New York police officer friend of mine, Ben Monasseri, a colleague. Ben and his wife Ana introduced me to a New York police officer who said ‘Here is the family of Michael D’Agostino, who died on 9-11. They need help.’”
When Mr. O’Leary inquired, Mr. Monaserri’s mind immediately flashed back to a boyhood pal, John Connelly, who also grew up in Astoria Queens to make a career out of the NYPD.
Mr. Connelly found and suggested the D’Agostino survivors, and —
From there, the Joxer Daly’s Sept. 11 fundraising has built an exemplary dozen-year tradition.
Faces in the Crowd
Out front of Joxer Daly’s, the familiar Chabolas, Jerry and Janet, were marking the special occasion with their friend Michael Hamill.
“I am here in support of the Wounded Warrior Project,” said Mr. Chabola. “I think it is great that Mike and Mehaul have put this event together. The wounded warriors we are honoring have allowed us all the opportunity for freedom, the opportunity to speak as we will, the opportunity to do the things we do.”
Janet Chabola spoke of her twin brother who is a wounded warrior from the Vietnam War. “Nothing in my life is more important than honoring our veterans,” she said.
Mr. Hamill said he came to Joxer Daly’s “out of respect for the wounded warriors who gave life and limb so we can have the freedoms we enjoy. This is a fantastic event.”
