When Thomas C. O’Leary opened a small Irish pub in 2016 in Portland, Oregon called T.C. O’Leary’s he didn’t expect to see his dream crushed on St. Patrick’s Day, March 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions shuttered all bars and restaurants. Badly shaken, Tom refused to give up on his customers. He relied on his acting chops (having starred in an Irish soap opera), a keen sense of humor, and the steadfast support of friends and family to keep his pub afloat.
After talking with Tom, it became apparent why his pub managed to survive, even as COVID-19 “stay-at-home” orders torpedoed its profits on the biggest business day of the year — St. Patrick’s day. Tom was uniquely equipped to weather adversity and think creatively from the lessons he had gained growing up in Ireland.
An Irish pub & early family life in Ireland
In 2016, Tom envisioned opening a welcoming tavern in Portland, similar to what he knew from living in a scenic village called Killiney in the south of Dublin, Ireland. A “few roads” down from Tom’s childhood home was a local pub called the Druid’s Chair. “It was a smoky, dark, little bar…a very healthy environment for good drinkers,” Tom recounts. At the time, the Druid’s Chair was restricted to men only and had a designated area (“snug”) for women and children. In T.C. O’Leary’s, there is a snug at the front side of the pub which today serves as a cozy section for small groups to gather.
Tom had fond memories of seeing his father, a ferry crane operator, singing in the pub (“Tommy had a big presence…he was always loved in a bar, as much as he loved the bar himself ”). Sadly, Tommy O’Leary passed away when Tom was just 21. His mother was left to raise him and his three siblings. “An Irish mother, she did everything — she pretty much raised us — Mum was a hero to me,” reminisced Tom. In designing T.C. O’Leary’s, Siobhan, Tom’s wife, had an idea to create a wall of photos to honor the contributions of their parents and ancestors. Tom became emotional when talking to me about this wall that displays black and white photos of his own and his customers’ deceased loved ones.
Finding his way to the stage and screen
During his primary school years in Killiney, Tom entered a Feis, an Irish traditional arts and culture festival, that opened his eyes to acting. “A friend and I created a skit and dressed up as old ladies arguing in an airport. We were fully dressed up in wigs and frocks. I have no memory of what we said to each other, but the reception was good, they laughed — and I think it was genuine.”
By the end of secondary school, Tom was beginning to get noticed for his roles in musicals and theater productions. He recalled his Irish language teacher, “a gorgeous woman” coming up to him after one of his performances and kissing him on the cheek, “it was the first time she ever even thought of me as someone that could actually do something — I wasn’t great at Irish, so the attention was nice.”
Next, after a short stint in accounting (“I needed to do something I could fall back on”), Tom, at 23, stumbled into an old friend on a bus who was raving about joining a drama school in Dublin. This sparked Tom to pursue and get accepted into an acting school. “Honestly, when I walked in (to the school), I felt like I had found my people…I’m not a weirdo…there are lots of people that pretend to be someone else or are super into finding this make-believe world — it was a great start.”
Over the next two decades, Tom played roles in Irish theater and television. He may be best known for playing the part of Dr. Brendan Daly on Ireland’s longest-running soap opera called Fair City. Shortly after leaving the show in 2009, he and his wife Siobhan decided to move to Portland, OR to be closer to her family. Tom was immediately drawn to the city’s welcoming culture and community. Through a network of family and friends, Tom began to pitch the idea of an Irish pub, “I found amazing local funders who told me what to do and not to do and they made it possible for us to pull together the money needed to open in 2016.”
St. Patrick’s Day: March 17, 2020
After building a loyal and growing customer base over the next three years, Tom heard about the arrival of a virus in China which was spreading fast with cases emerging in Seattle, Washington (just north of Oregon).
I recently interviewed Tom O’Leary to get a better sense of what he was thinking as March 17, 2020, approached. He immediately pointed to 10 barrels of Guinness beer stacked up along a back patio of the pub and shared the following reflections…
(click above to hear Tom’s reflections)
Along with the half-window, streaming concerts on Facebook, and handing out blankets and hot water bottles to warm customers sitting outside, Tom also used social media to share updates on his pub’s delivery service during the pandemic, like this video produced by the Mulligan Brothers:
E13: Learning how a small Irish pub survived the pandemic