Mary C. Heneghan, 76, made Irish culture her stock, trade and passion | Featured Obituaries







Mary C. Heneghan


March 1, 1946 – July 31, 2022

Doctors told Mary C. Heneghan on July 15 that the longtime leader of the Buffalo Irish Center had only a couple of days to live.

Mrs. Heneghan had other plans.

The center was asked months earlier to reimagine and operate this year’s Buffalo Irish Festival, and she was determined to help see that effort through to the festivities last weekend at the Outer Harbor.

She did so during the two weeks beforehand from a hospital bed.

“She never started something that she didn’t finish,” her daughter Mary Kay said Wednesday morning when eulogizing her mother in St. Teresa Catholic Church on Seneca Street.

Mrs. Heneghan, who owned Tara Gift Shoppe in South Buffalo, died at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center on Sunday, Aug. 7, the day the festival closed. She was 76.

Her final hours symbolized a decadeslong determination to assure that those with roots on the Emerald Isle honor their ancestry.

“Those who knew her, knew that she had a secret power; she could convince anyone to volunteer and join the mission to preserve traditional Irish culture,” the Irish Center Board wrote on the nonprofit organization’s Facebook page. “A tireless worker on behalf of the Irish-American community she was; the singer, the poet, the writer, the story teller, the dreamer. Because she inspired others to do so.”







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Mary Heneghan, chair of the Buffalo Irish Center, with the statue of St. Patrick saved and restored by Joe Kelley.


Sean Kirst/Buffalo News file photo


Mrs. Heneghan became Irish Center board chair more than two decades ago and was its longest-tenured leader at the time of her death. She was president of the Gaelic American Athletic Association and owned Tara Gift Shoppe.

“She was the charismatic leader (of the center), it’s heart and soul, the mistress of discipline,” US Rep Brian Higgins said when eulogizing her. “She’s the boss.”

“Nothing got by her. She paid attention to the retail and the detail,” Higgins told mourners who included Irish dancers in costume and members of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians and Daughters of Erin in sashes and full regalia.

Mrs. Heneghan helped forge or improve the Irish Center’s Emerald Room, pub, library, Gaelic language and cultural classes and annual Irish Luncheon.

“Every event, committee, feis and festival, she was in charge,” Mary Kay Heneghan said. “She was a force to be reckoned with.”

Mrs. Heneghan was born in Mercy Hospital and grew up in South Buffalo. Her father, John Breen, who moved in 1922 from Kilmihil, County Clare, and mother, Katherine Scanlon, instilled their cultural heritage at an early age, both at home and on frequent trips to Ireland.

Love for her father’s homeland and the family’s roots in her own South Buffalo community intensified after she met Thomas Heneghan, who had moved to the neighborhood in 1955 from Kilmaine, County Mayo. They married at St. Teresa’s in 1965 and moved to West Seneca a couple of years later. The couple moved to East Aurora in the mid-1970s. Thomas Heneghan died in 2019.







LOCAL Irish Center mural CANTILLON

A mural was painted at the Irish Center after a burglary in 2018 caused more than $12,000 in damage. Supporters donated enough money for the mural to offset the cleanup costs. From left are Mary Conway Reiser; Mary Heneghan, chair of the Irish Center; Mary Casey Lynch and her brother Brendan Casey, all part of the core families that helped build Irish heritage in Buffalo.


By Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News file photo


Mrs. Heneghan was a teacher at Winchester Elementary School in West Seneca when she decided to leave the profession in 1980 to open a gift shop across Abbott Road from the Irish Center. She named it after the Hill of Tara in County Meath – seat of the high kings of Ireland in the early Christian era – and offered Irish crystal and other collectibles, knitwear, jewelry and more.

“I believed that it was going to fulfill my dream, and it did,” she told WNED-TV for a “Making Buffalo Home” segment two years ago.

The gift shop became a regional touchstone for all things Irish, from Celtic concert information to hiring a bagpiper. It also quickly became a daytime waystation and call center for the Irish Center, which wasn’t staffed every day.

As a result, Mrs. Heneghan was soon enlisted to take a more active role on the Irish Center board.

Along the way, she and her husband also instilled the love for all things Irish in their four children, Mary Kay, Buffalo City Court Judge Shannon Heneghan, and sons Thomas P. and Barry.

Mary Kay, Shannon and Thomas took Irish dance when they were young and Barry spent a semester studying in Ireland. Dancing didn’t stick with Thomas, who in recent years has taken over the helm at Tara Gift Shoppe, but it led to a career for Mary Kay, an international Irish dance judge and owner of Rince Na Tiarna School of Irish Dance, which has turned out champion dancers and Broadway and London West End dance performers.

“I could never have imagined it,” she said, “but I got an opportunity to carry on this tradition with my mother by my side. She was my unwavering support.”




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Jorge Oliveira

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