Northern Irish Teen-Agers Learn About California--and Each Other

Jean Anderson and Joanna McLaughlin giggled and agreed about the high points of their trip to Southern California: sunny weather, a ride in a telephone-equipped Mercedes and pizza--with lots of pepperoni.

In fact, the only thing the two 14-year-olds said they really disagree on is who gets the shower first in the morning.

Over the last six weeks, Jean and Joanna have become fast friends while staying with the family of Sierra Madre residents Sharon and Bill Duffy. But back home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, their different religious backgrounds might have prevented them from ever speaking to each other.

Joanna, who is Catholic, and Jean, who is Protestant, are two of 95 students ages 14 to 17 who are staying with American host families in the United States this summer as part of a program designed to foster cultural understanding--and build lasting friendships--among Catholic and Protestant teen-agers from strife-ridden Northern Ireland.

Jean and Joanna are among six Northern Ireland teen-agers visiting California this summer as part of the Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland Inc. The others are four boys who are staying with host families in Westlake Village and Simi Valley.

Since its founding in 1987, the project has arranged for about 390 boys and girls to spend six weeks with host families in the United States as a sort of grass-roots approach to an age-old conflict, said Peggy Barrett, 60, the nonprofit organization’s national president in Manheim, Pa.

“A lot of (participants) change their way of life. Even their parents . . . get to know one another and become friends,” said Barrett, who was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Northern Ireland.

Host families pay all of the students’ expenses in the United States, including air fare to and from Northern Ireland. Typically, the host family must raise about $2,000. Since the organization is nonprofit, the expenditures are tax-deductible.

Sharon Duffy said she decided to initiate her own fund-raising campaign after learning about the program through a notice in the newspaper on St. Patrick’s Day, 1989.

Of Irish descent herself, Duffy said the benefits of the program have been well worth her time and money. Jean and Joanna have virtually become part of the Duffy family, which already includes two boys and a girl, she said.

“It’s a responsibility, but for what you’re getting in exchange, you can’t put a money value on that,” Duffy said. “Now it’s starting to be kind of sad because they’re going home. I don’t know how many years it will be before we get to Northern Ireland, but we will, and when we do we’ll stay with them.

“I’m sure that we’ll have a lifelong friendship.”

In addition to tourist attractions, Duffy has taken Jean and Joanna to a Sierra Madre City Council meeting and a local courthouse to show the girls “how our system of government works.”

Duffy also arranged for the girls to go on a ride-along with a Sierra Madre police officer, and she has taken them to her Catholic church for Mass each Sunday.

Jean, a Protestant, said she found Mass similar to other religious services she has attended. “There’s only one God,” she said.

The program also requires host families to introduce visiting teen-agers to a local police and fire department, and encourages other civic-oriented field trips. The idea is to show the students how authorities operate in the United States.

“After a few weeks, they remark about how there’s no stop points, no barbed wire around police stations,” Barrett said.

Over a diet soda on a recent hot afternoon at an ice cream parlor in Sierra Madre, Jean said that if more students knew about the program, “there would be a long list. Everybody wants to come to America.”

Project organizers hope that the teen-agers will forge lasting friendships that will one day have a healing effect in Northern Ireland.

“We think the only way to start is through the children. And they deserve more than what they’re getting,” said Eileen Kane, the organization’s Northern Ireland coordinator. “If we can touch them and start to change their attitudes, hopefully, 10 years down the road, this will have real impact.”

Jean, who is a touch gregarious, and Joanna, who is slightly shy, say they will write to the Duffys and stay in contact with each other after they return home tomorrow. “We’re all going to remain friends,” Jean said matter-of-factly.

And that, Kane said, is what it’s all about.

Bucy is a regular contributor to The Times.