By Martin Hintz

Author/renaissance man Ronald Black is the youngest of a family of eight: seven boys and one girl. "Actually, the seventh son of a seventh son," he pointed out. 

That birth order means good luck in any culture.

Black took time away from his computer keyboard to recall his growing up years within a large Scots-Irish family.

Black’s dad, Henry, was born in Scotland and joined the British army, serving as a staff sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC). He enlisted as a young man, just as many Scots and Brits did during the Boer War between 1899 to 1902. The elder Black was sent to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) to fight against the Turks in 1914. Wounded in the left leg, he was sent back to Dublin and stationed at Kings Barracks (currently Collins Barracks) up on the Liffeyside close to Phoenix Park.

The only time that the Blacks left Dublin was around 1915 or 1917 when they were transferred to Gibraltar in Spain with the RASC company. 

"I had one brother, Donald, born in Gibraltar but he died there at a little more than 1 year old. Just within the past few years, my sister and I dug out information as to his burial spot and we had a gravestone placed there with his name on it," said Black.

"During his regiment's term of duty in Ireland, my dad met my mother and married. His Presbyterian family immediately disowned him because my mother was Irish Catholic. So we never knew our Scottish family," Black indicated. "I don't have the information on the meeting between my parents but I do know that he was very welcome in the house of my grandparents on St. Ignatius Road. He was a super-nice gentleman with a wonderful tenor voice. They were very happy despite the fact that he was Presbyterian and she Catholic," he said of his mother’s side.

In 1939, Black returned to Scotland with his father and mother, his Aunt May and sister Jessie for a brief visit. In Edinburgh, Black was shown where his father had lived as a young man.

Black’s father was too old to enlist in World War I but he returned to Scotland again in 1941 to work for a construction company since the family was "very much in need of an income," recalled Black. 

"At that time my brother, Douglas, was in the Middle East with the RAF and my brother Harry was second engineer on a tanker called British Loyalty which was torpedoed in 1941 off of Madagascar by a Japanese submarine. The family was in Dublin and, at that time, consisted of my mother, Aunt May, sister Jessie, brothers Angus and Jim and myself," Black said.

"Aunt May was my mother's sister. Actually, there was some little doubt about the relationship but the eminent Victorians never spoke of family matters to the children," he added.

The elder Black died during World War II and shortly thereafter Black’s mother took him out of the Protestant school he was attending and enrolled him in the "tough school" of St. Joseph's. "I was initially pushed around but eventually accepted because I was a good soccer player," Black recalled.

"Jim was just about 14 years old at the time that we were brought into the Catholic Church and he started working as an apprentice mechanic for a garage close to the Liffey River. Angus was working in the Phoenix Laundry as was my Aunt May. Jessie got a job as a machinist in a factory that manufactured underwear," according to Black.

"One of the kids that I became friendly with at St. Joseph’s was Jim Fitzgerald and several years after leaving school I joined Jim's Mercury Theater group," said Black. There, he met many of Dublin's acting community in the early to mid-’50s. Also part of the Mercury group were Donal Donnelly, May Cluskey and others who became professionals and did very well in Ireland and the States, Black recalled. 

Fitzgerald eventually became head of the drama department of RTE and Donnelly joined Lord Longford Productions in the Gate Theatre. He eventually was a hit on Broadway in Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come, performing with friend Paddy Bedford. Donnelly also had a super role in John Huston's movie of Joyces' The Dead, according to Black.

Black also became very close friends with the late Dan O'Connell who produced weekly shows for Radio Eireann. 

During the Mercury years, the group produced at least one play per year in Dublin. "We were all amateurs at that time. The fun, for me, was about being involved in the theater and the fact that Jim Fitzgerald was the producer/director. From St. Joseph's days, I had enormous admiration for his knowledge of theater, literature, politics and society in general," Black said. 

Fitzgerald’s troupe won the highest honors in amateur theatricals in 1954 when it captured the Newry Cup with Synge's The Tinkers Wedding and O'Casey's Halls of Healing. Later that year, they produced Synge's The Well of the Saints and by this time Frank Cluskey, later Lord Mayor of Dublin and later still a Minister in the Dail, was in the production. 

"His sister May was a well-known actress and later had her own school of acting. The Cluskeys lived right across the road from us and he was my first pal as a young kid. Later on, he was part of Jimmy's group of pals. The last time that I saw Frank was in New York where he was guest of honor at a reception given by the Irish Tourist Board to which I was invited," Black said.

The group hung out on Saturday evenings in the Pearl Bar, just off of Westmoreland Street and close to The Irish Times offices, one of the dedicated "literary pubs" in Dublin where Smylie of The Times and his staff met daily. The place was also frequented by Brian O'Nolainn, also known as Myles na gCopleen. "The coffee shop that we inhabited on O'Connell Street was Fortes, which was close to the Liffey," Black added.

For about 12 years, Black worked in Dublin for a fertilizer company, mainly in the Receivable Office weighing all trucks as they came in and out. "My wonderful schoolmaster from St. Joseph's referred my name to an acquaintance in Morgan Mooney & Company, the fertilizer and acid manufacturing company on Sir John Rogerson's Quay," Black said. 

"After a brief interview in front of the largest coal fire that I had ever seen, a Mr. Hubert Kennedy hired me in the position of junior clerk at the wage of £1 per week," he remembered. "But at first in 1944 and until after the war, most of the traffic was horse-drawn carts. In those days you started at 14 years and, if lucky, went to night school as I did," Black said. "Most kids in our economic position tried to get a job at 14 years of age but I was a little luckier as my sister paid for me to go on to Bolton Street Technical School for day studies." 

In 1956, Black’s fiancee, Pauline, a young Dingle lass, and he decided to emigrate to Chicago where they stayed with cousins until they married in 1957. The Blacks just celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary in August of 2004.

"I fortunately met Pauline in January, 1954. She was in digs with other young ladies from the country on St. Ignatius Road in the house of my best childhood pal, Joe Leahy," Black said. 

Early in the new year, the girls had a party to which Black was invited and, as was customary, the male invitees all met earlier in McGoldricks, the local pub, to ‘warm up" for the party. During the evening, Pauline was playing the piano and Black started tinkling the keys with her and that, he said, "is how we met."

Black then escorted Pauline to the movies on the following Saturday evening. "We both spoke Gaelic during our school years. But unfortunately, the drive to speak the native language had greatly subsided in the 1950s. We can still converse on a very basic level," Black indicated. However, her father Bartley was a native speaker who had come from Connemara, joined the Gardai and was transferred to South Kerry, ending up in Dingle.

Through Pauline, who had arrived in Chicago three months prior to his arrival, Black started to work at Encyclopaedia Britannica on Michigan Avenue as a typist in the credit and collection department. He left that company in 1970 in the position of East Coast administrator. 

The couple returned to Dublin for about six months to see how they would like living there if they ever decided to return permanently. The couple rented Paddy Bedford’s house which he bought from the proceeds of his leading role in Up the Down Staircase with Sandy Dennis. 

"My position with Britannica had become a pressure tank and so we decided to relax in Ireland and traveled to England and the Continent," Black said.

But they came back "penniless to New Jersey," Black stated ruefully, staying with cousins on Pauline’s side until they got jobs. In the interim, Pauline worked as a hat check lady in Downey’s on 8th avenue, one of New York's best-known literary and theatrical restaurants. "We knew the family and all the Irish bartenders there," said Black.

Eventually, Pauline became re-placed with Aer Lingus in New York City, having been with the airline in Chicago for a couple of years before Black was transferred to New York with the encyclopedia company. "Again through Pauline, I started working in a small travel company where I learned the basics about incentive travel and corporate group travel," Black said.

With Pauline's Aer Lingus position, they were able to make several trips to Ireland each year. "But since her parents died, we haven't been to Dingle for some time," Black reported. "Now, we go to Dublin where one sister lives in Raheny and one in Killiney." 

Earlier this autumn, Black returned to Ireland to visit his sister, Jess, who had not been feeling well. During the trip, he had an opportunity to go down to Gorey in Wexford to see a niece and her family who were staying in a get-away home overlooking the beach and Irish Sea. The house belonged to another niece who lives in Dublin. 

"One of the great pleasures of visiting Gorey was to see the countryside where my mother’s father, Michael Roche, was born. Her mother came from a small town in Tipperary," Black said.

In early 1972, Black was hired by the American Hotel of New York, which was part of the Loews chain at time. He started in the group department and eventually became the East Coast director of sales for Hyatt Hotels After 10 years, he went on to Fiesta Americana Hotels of Mexico, spent time with Rockresorts, Orient-Express Hotels and just recently parted company on friendly terms with Mariott Resorts of the Caribbean.

Black is currently doing about 15 hours per week with James McGrath & Young, a promotional design company -- mainly occupied in producing brochures for the hospitality industry, airlines and related travel firms. There, he provides sales and marketing assistance and writes copy. Two of the McGrath company’s main clients are CIE Tours and Tourism Ireland. The company’s resident/owner is Jim Bitros, one of Black’s old friends, dating back go back to when he joined the Americana Hotels in 1972.

The Blacks have lived in northern New Jersey for a number of years, just on the Hudson River across from Manhattan.

"My interest in literature began when I was very young, thanks to my sister,

Jessie, and another gentleman whom I worked with in Dublin and was introduced to the great English classicists," Black said. "I had written short stories and articles quite a long time ago in Dublin, without having the benefit of publication and did a bit of promo writing in my hotel and travel industry careers, he pointed out. 

"I wrote mainly about distant lands to which we were sending people and also day-by-day travel itineraries. I like to write in the bedroom looking over at Manhattan with our cat, Cleo, sitting in a critical pose on the desk or on my knee," Black said.

"Later on, I became a total Joycean. Before Bloomsday became what he called "a circus" in Dublin, Black capitalized on his travel background by bringing interested Joyceans over to Ireland on the special day. He took them on tour to the many places mentioned in Ulysses, The Portrait, Dubliners and addresses where the man himself lived.

"The Joycean trips were a personal joy. I had met and gathered a group of fellow (and fems) Joyceans. I conducted the tour of Dublin and to the source of the Liffey in the Dublin mountains and would have different participants read aloud from Joyce’s works that referred to the specific location that we were in at that time. We usually had about 10 people and my brother, Angus, was our driver," said Black.

To celebrate Oscar Wilde’s 150th birthday on Oct. 15, Black promised he would hoist a few in a local pub in North Bergen. He recalled that several years ago, there was a really nice restaurant close to his office on Madison Avenue called Wilde’s. "It had pictures of Oscar and many of his epigrams throughout the restaurant. The place was owned by two Belfasters," he concluded.

Then it was back to work for the seventh son.