Showing there s a way out
S. Boston businessman helping kids of Limerick
When money was needed for air fare to bring 60 kids and a priest from Limerick, Ireland, to Boston for three weeks next July, Billy Higgins didn’t think twice about coming up with $27,000 of his own.
“I had a hard time growing up and I think it’s important to show these kids there is a way out,” Higgins, 44, now a South Boston businessman, said recently. “What we’re trying to do is to give these kids a better childhood and a sense of dignity. I think we can do that through sports.”
Rev. Josepth P. Young, a 32-year-old Catholic priest who has been working for the last eight years with disadvantaged boys and girls of Holy Family Parish in the Southill section of Limerick, is the reason Higgins has let his work slide at his various business interests – his Nautilus fitness center, his service station and his used car business – to organize a dinner to raise funds for the Father Joe Young Association on April 16th at Pier 4.
About the Gaelscoil Sheoirse Clancy School
Gaelscoil Sheoirse Clancy was founded in 1986. The demand for a Gaelscoil came from the local community and it’s success is a tribute to the people of Southill. Parents who exercised their constitutional right to opt for the education of their children through Irish have stood by the school through many adversities.
