UNO Magazine: Drinking With My Father's Ghost

The following story appeared in the most recent issue of the UNO Magazine, which highlighted stories about familal bonds - both biological and by choice.

See more stories from the Summer 2020 issue of the UNO Magazine.

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A pint of Smithwick’s may not be thicker than blood, but it’s a close second for Hugh Reilly.

In August 2019, Reilly, director of the UNO School of Communication, published “Drinking With My Father’s Ghost,” which serves as one part memoir and one part travel log.

It’s a project that Reilly’s father, Robert, started in 1980 when he, too, was a UNO faculty member, in the Communication department. Robert originally intended the book as an academic analysis of the social impact of Ireland’s public houses. But the elder Reilly passed away in 2004, leaving the book unfinished.

“He always talked about it, but never got it published,” says Reilly, a 1978 UNO graduate. “It wasn’t until 2007 or 2008 that I was looking through his things and found the notebooks he kept during his visits, and that was the turning point.”

It’s not the first time Hugh walked in his father’s footsteps. Robert had led tours to Ireland as early as 1968. Hugh began doing the same in 1993, continuing until what he says was his last tour in 2019. Combined, the Reillys led tours in the Emerald Isle for more than 50 consecutive years.

From 2004 through 2018, Hugh took every opportunity he could during tours he led to visit more than 100 of the several hundred pubs that his father had visited decades ago. The experience brought him closer to his father.

“It was a journey for me — physically, spiritually and emotionally,” Hugh says. “It gave me some time to think about my father and my relationship with my father, and I don’t think many father and sons have that kind of opportunity.”

Not everyone has a writer for a father, he notes. But all fathers — and mothers — have a tale or two to tell.

“People want to tell their stories. Don’t let the opportunity pass you by to ask questions and learn what you can.”