Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
If there’s one place to be other than Ireland on St Patrick’s Day it has to be New York. This city celebrates its Irish roots like no other. The whole place is a swathe of green and a giant party that began early this morning is set to continue into the wee small hours of tomorrow.
I’m hear not specifically to celebrate St Patrick’s Day – though I shall – but to attend a different type of celebration. Tonight at the Home of Jazz at Lincoln Centre, The Smile Train cleft charity will celebrate its tenth anniversary and some 500,000 surgeries. An impressive number of those have been funded by the collective generosity of the travel retail community, which has generated donations well in excess of US$1 million over the past two years.
Tonight – in recognition of St Patrick’s Day – famous Irish tenor Ronan Tynan will sing to guests at a special Smile Train concert. He will even perform a song he has written about The Smile Train’s work, called A Mother’s Plea.
It’s an honour to be here as a representative of the travel retail community. 500,000 surgeries is a lot of transformed smiles and it’s great to be part of an industry responsible for so many of them.
