LibGuides: Freeport Authors: P

Parker, Julie F.

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Julie F. Parker was the protestant chaplain at Hofstra University. She is married to the Reverend Bill Crawford who was the minister at the Presbyterian Church in Freeport. She is a marathon runner and has a purple belt in karate. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hamilton College

Patterson, Raymond R.

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Raymond R. Patterson was a poet, writer and professor emeritus of English at CUNY. He was born in Harlem and earned his B.A. in political science at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and his M.A. in English from NYU. He ran the Langston Hughes Festival from 1973 to 1993. Besides his poems, he also wrote two opera librettos, “David Walker” and “Goree.” His poetry has appeared in the Transatlantic Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, ELF and many anthologies. He has lived on Long Island in Roosevelt, Freeport and Merrick and read his poetry at the Freeport Memorial Library.

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Peden, William Harwood

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

William Harwood Peden’s father was a banker and both his parents were active in the Freeport community. His mother was involved with library activities and was an avid reader. Peden enjoyed the boating and shellfishing available on the south shore. In high school, he was on the track team and graduated with the class of 1930. He went to the University of Virginia where he earned his B.S. (1934), M.S. (1936) and Ph.D. (1940). He taught English at the University of Missouri from 1946 through 1979. He contributed articles to the Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review of Books. He was a Guggenheim Fellow

Phelan, Patricia M.

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Patricia M. Phelan graduated from Adelphi University with a degree in English. She was a managing editor in the college department of St. Martin's Press. Additionally, she worked as a senior manuscript editor for Van Nostrand Reinhold. She is now a free lance editor and serves as agent and publicist for novelist Tom Phelan, her husband.

Phelan, Tom

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Tom Phelan was born in Strahard, Mountmellick, County Laois, Ireland. He is a former Roman Catholic priest who graduated from St. Patrick’s seminary at Carlow in Ireland. He served as a priest in Brighton, England from 1965-1970. He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and in 1972 worked in a parish in Rockville Centre. He earned an M.A. in pastoral counseling in 1972 from Seattle University. He was assigned as a priest in Mineola, Freeport, and Syosset. Until 1974, he taught English literature at Harriman College. After he left the priesthood, he married Patricia Mansfield. He worked in the Garden City school district.

The Canal Bridge by Tom Phelan
Call Number: [FREEPORT AUTHOR] LI R FIC PHELAN
ISBN: 9781628723144
Publication Date: 2014-04-01
In 1913, before there is a rumor of war in Europe, two lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, Matthias "Matt" Wrenn and Con Hatchel, decide to see the world at the expense of the king of England and join the British army. A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they find themselves in the slaughterhouse that was World War I. As stretcher bearers, the two men witness the horrors of the battlefield and the waste of human life at the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele. Meanwhile, back home in Ireland, Con's sister and Matt's lover, Kitty Hatchel, yearns for their safe return and reminds them of their carefree childhood on the banks of the local canal, as well as their hopes for the future. Brilliantly and movingly narrated as a chorus of voices from the community--Matt, Con, Kitty, and others--The Canal Bridge tells the story of how the young men take Ballyrannel to war with them, and the many ways they bring the war's devastation home. At war's end, the Ireland the friends left in 1913 no longer exists, for the Rising against the British in 1916 has changed everything. In a land now riven with sectarian tensions and mounting bloodshed unfolds the love story of Matt and Kitty. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Derrycloney by Tom Phelan
Call Number: [FREEPORT AUTHOR] LI R FIC PHELAN
ISBN: 0863222536
Publication Date: 1999-12-31
Paddy Burns and his family moved into young Benny's house when his parents died, but their treatment of him falls far short of compassion. Missus Brady is determined to help get them out of Benny's house but Paddy is not leaving without making his dissatisfaction about the situation known and Benny finds that he's in for a surprise when he does finally manage to reclaim his home. Set in the 1940s, this is an engrossing and richly human story of an Irish rural townland with a feast of language to rival Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood'.
In the Season of the Daisies by Tom Phelan
Call Number: [FREEPORT AUTHOR] LI R FIC Phelan
ISBN: 0946640971
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
The story of Seanie Doolin, surviving twin of a brutal civil-war murder in the Irish midlands, forms the core of this extraordinary debut novel. In 1948 the Town, shadowed by its buried past, prepares for a visit from de Valera and President O'Kelly. Over twenty-four hours events and individuals converge as, one by one, the men who were there that dreadful night in 1921 speak out - schoolteacher, doctor, butcher, priest, victim - each with his own involuntary vision of hell. Seanie Doolin, a man-child tortured by poetry and grief, roams the hills repeating one talismanic word, Camarawn. His pain and loss, the presence and purging of evil, love's redemption, and the pathology of ancient animosities within ordinary lives, is conveyed in language that is simple, direct and emotionally devastating. In the Season of the Daisies is a powerful work of literature which introduces a voice new to Irish fiction.
Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told by Tom Phelan
Call Number: [FREEPORT AUTHOR] LI R 811.54 P
ISBN: 9781628724288
Publication Date: 2015-02-03
Part human comedy and part mystery, Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is an enthralling, masterful story about what holds a village together and what keeps people apart. When journalist Patrick Bracken returns to Gohen, the Irish village where he was born, he knows the eyes of the townspeople are on him. He has come home to investigate two deaths that happened decades earlier when he was a child, deaths that were ruled accidental. But Patrick knows--and believes the whole town knows--they were murders. He knows because he and his best friend, Mikey Lamb, were witnesses. And so Patrick goes to see eighty-year-old Sam Howard, the lawyer who conducted the inquest into the death of missionary priest Jarlath Coughlin. As he questions Sam and Sam's vibrant, loving, gossipy wife, Elsie, he seeks acknowledgment of a cover-up and an explanation of why the Protestant establishment would help conceal a crime among Catholics. During their give-and-take--about this and the nearly simultaneous shotgun death of Lawrence Gorman (aka Doul Yank)--what emerges from their collective memories are a pungent, wry portrait of village life in Ireland and a tangle of human relationships, some twisted and some that show our better side. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Nailer by Tom Phelan
Call Number: [FREEPORT AUTHOR] LI R FIC PHELAN
ISBN: 9780615434414
Publication Date: 2011-06-07
Is there a serial killer in Ireland? In the midland counties of Laois and Offaly, two former members of the religious Order of Saint Kieran, which once ran Dachadoo Industrial School, are murdered within weeks of each other, their bodies found nailed to the floor. In this gripping novel Tom Phelan once again brings the artistry and courage of his discerning eye to a disturbing and emotionally loaded subject. Nailer reveals the dark side of the Irish Catholic Church and targets decades of abuse of Ireland's most vulnerable citizens. ***** "A hard-hitting thriller."--Books Ireland "A compelling story."--Leinster Express ‎"Is revenge ever justified? Tom Phelan's gripping detective story challenges his readers to grapple with the possibility that revenge should be a part of a justice system...Awesomely well-written novel."--John Walsh, editor, The Hedgemaster ***** Author Tom Phelan, who is a former priest, grew up in the long shadow of one of Ireland's most notorious institutions for boys, Saint Conleth's in County Offaly. The reputation of the place was such that as children, Phelan and his contemporaries were often threatened with being sent to Saint Conleth's if they didn't behave. According to the Irish writer John McGahern, "The true history of the thirties, forties and fifties in [Ireland] has yet to be written. When it does, I believe it will be shown to have been a very dark time indeed, in which an insular Church colluded with an insecure State to bring about a society that was often bigoted, intolerant, cowardly, philistine and spiritually crippled." Tom Phelan's Nailer is both a riveting whodunit and a deeply affecting indictment of the Catholic Church's grab for power after the British departed from Ireland. Nailer shines a light on a very dark time in Ireland's modern history. Tom Phelan, reared on a farm in County Laois, is the author of IN THE SEASON OF THE DAISIES, ISCARIOT, DERRYCLONEY, LIES THE MUSHROOM PICKERS TOLD, and THE CANAL BRIDGE. His first novel was selected by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series and was a finalist for the Discover Award. Read more at www.tomphelan.net.
We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It by Tom Phelan
Call Number: LI R B PHELAN
ISBN: 9781501197093
Publication Date: 2019-03-05
In the tradition of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Alice Taylor's To School Through the Fields, Tom Phelan's We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It is a heartfelt and masterfully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1940s. Tom Phelan, who was born and raised in County Laois in the Irish midlands, spent his formative years working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a farm that was often wet, muddy, and back-breaking. It was a time before rural electrification, the telephone, and indoor plumbing; a time when the main modes of travel were bicycle and animal cart; a time when small farmers struggled to survive and turkey eggs were hatched in the kitchen cupboard; a time when the Church exerted enormous control over Ireland. We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It recounts Tom's upbringing in an isolated, rural community from the day he was delivered by the local midwife. With tears and laughter, it speaks to the strength of the human spirit in the face of life's adversities.

Pietsch, Walter

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Walter Pietsch, a former hospital; administrator, was the chair of A.R.I.S.E. in 1991 (Americans Removing Injustice, Suppression, and Exploration) located at P.O. Box 11057, Westbury. This organization is concerned with a variety of issues including: election and tax lien reform, ending United States aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and the economic blockade of Cuba. Its stated mission is “to expand the democratic process.” Its membership protested the war at the Freeport Post Office every Saturday. Pietsch instituted a court action challenging the Persian Gulf War in Pietsch v Bush et. al. His suit was denied because “the plaintiff did not have standing merely because as a citizen of the United States he has an ‘interest’ in seeing the government act constitutionally.”

Pirodsky, Richard

Biography by Cynthia J Krieg, Village Historian

Born and raised in Freeport, Richard Pirodsky graduated from Freeport High School. He works at NYIT as the Director of Media Services at NYCOM (NY College of Osteopathic Medicine.).