Kevin Moran, 81, bricklayer, volunteer at Irish American Heritage Center

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Kevin Moran

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Updated: September 1, 2011 12:18AM

Songs have been sung, pints have been raised and romances have begun because of the magic that Kevin Moran crafted with his rough, strong hands.

The work of Mr. Moran, a master bricklayer, is the reason people can gather around the big, stone fireplace that is the welcoming heart of the pub at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center.

Mr. Moran, whose hands were so calloused and worn that his fingerprints were largely worn away, volunteered to design and build the fireplace in the Fifth Province Pub and another at the heritage center, 4626 N. Knox. They are so big and inviting, patrons almost feel they can pull up a seat inside the hearths.

He also donated his time to lay out the pub’s gleaming Versailles-pattern slate floor, designed by architect Kevin Sherman.

“He loved his craft, so he took great pride in doing his work absolutely correct, right, true level,” Sherman said.

Mr. Moran, a native of Tirnauer, near the village of Newport in County Mayo, Ireland, died of lung cancer last month at Skokie’s Midwest Palliative & Hospice CareCenter, He was 81.

Though he had only an eighth-grade education, Mr. Moran read three newspapers a day and three books a week. He could talk with most anyone about global politics and also recite poetry from memory. He spent a year of his retirement building homes for Habitat for Humanity in Humboldt Park and Evanston, and he often volunteered for supper duty at the Franciscan homeless shelter on the West Side.

At the IAHC, Mr. Moran was instantly recognizable by his smile, his strut and his head of hair, the envy of other men. He had a way when it came to telling a story — and a crushing handshake, too.

“He had these enormous [County] Mayo hands, the hands of a worker,” said Tim McDonnell, the center’s executive director.

Mr. Moran volunteered to lay “thousands of bricks, cement block and much more — plastering, concrete — lastly, just plain old manual labor,” Irish American News columnist Tom Boyle said. “He served on the [IAHC] building committee from Day One and served on the board of directors.”

He picked up his work ethic early on. One of 12 children, Mr. Moran left home at 17. He wound up in England, where his older brother, Ted, taught him his trade.

He came to Chicago in 1956. Though he had papers to prove his masonry skills, he was hit up for a bribe when he tried to join a local union, according to his wife.

“He went through all his apprenticeship, and he was a skilled bricklayer,” his wife, Anne Moran, said. “He felt like. . . why should he have to pay somebody off to get into a union?”

Instead, he worked for a year at a union job in Lake County, where his work ethic so impressed a union agent that he told Mr. Moran to try again in Cook County. This time, he was ushered in to the local with no bribe required.

He met Anne in 1959 at a dance at the old Keyman’s Club at Madison and Cicero. Mr. Moran was amazed to learn she had emigrated from Ireland on the same day he had.

“He thought he and I were always destined for each other,’ she said.

They married in 1961 and settled in Skokie, where Mr. Moran built their house brick by brick. He worked at McNulty Brothers and Lally Brothers construction companies. His jobs included the Auditorium Theatre, Marshall Field’s and many banks.

The Morans enjoyed travel. In 1997, they toured Israel with a group from Old St. Pat’s Church. At a dinner the night before they left Israel, his wife said he performed “The New Land,” a poem he’d memorized by Irish poet Sean McCarthy. “There was three busloads of people. He had a standing ovation,” she said.

If you observed Mr. Moran on his trips, you might see him break away from the group and run his hands along a wall, admiring the brickwork.

“Those old towns, the construction, he loved that,” Anne Moran said. “He was mesmerized in Rome at St. Peter’s.”

He also had the gift of patience. He let his daughter, Monica Hirschhaut, accompany him on side jobs as his little helper, starting when she was 9. She was with him when he built three homes in Morton Grove.

“I used to love to tag along,” she said. “I carried bricks for him, and when I was older I could mix cement for him. I’d get his tools.”

Mr. Moran is also survived by another daughter, Sheila Reimer; a son, Daniel; sisters Delia Regettle and Lelia Moran; a brother, Geoffrey; and five grandchildren. His son Kevin died before him.Services have been held.

The first brick in the new “Wall of Names” outside the IAHC will be inscribed for Mr. Moran — “one of the center’s greatest volunteers.”