An Irish American on St. Patrick’s Day

To read my last name you would never guess that I am primarily of Celtic descent. Welsh and Scots, certainly. More than anything else, I am of Irish descent. I think that’s what makes us Americans such a wonderful people. We’re a bit of this, a dash of that and a whole lot of something else. We really are a melting pot.

Like almost all of my grade school classmates, I considered myself to be an Irish American. Moving away from my hometown in high school I was struck by the realization that all of those strangers in this strange new town had no idea what my real…