In Memoriam

Over the past 15 years, Palestra janitor Dan Harrell has established a system to his work.

He arrives to college basketball's most historic gym most mornings around 5 a.m. and proceeds in his typical fashion -- he turns on classical music, letting it reverberate through the steel beams that solidify the basketball Mecca.

Harrell is the first to admit that he is not versed in the particulars of classical music. He probably will not be able to cite the composer of a particular piece, or the key.

Yet he has always appreciated the teamwork of an orchestra. Like the basketball teams that he watches throughout each winter season, or the Penn sprint football team on which he acts as the defensive line coach, each musician in an orchestra works together for a common goal.

The individual produces music for himself, but when fused with his peers, a form of art is created.

During the second weekend of October, Harrell turned on the music and proceeded to start his work like always.

This time, though, it was more than his appreciation of teamwork. Harrell heard a voice in the music.

One week after his niece, Melissa, had died in a car crash, Harrell recognized a chord that flowed through the notes.

"There's no other way to explain it, Missy spoke to me," Harrell said.

To Harrell, the message was clear. The music told him to travel to Belfast, Ireland and bring back the orchestra that had touched him more than any other in his life.

Missy told him to bring over the Saint Malachy's College Orchestra to help fund a concert that would support a memorial for her.

"It was a natural feeling that I needed to help, and they responded," Harrell said. "This is like going to a friend, going to a brother, somebody who knows you.

"I wouldn't have thought of a concert if I didn't know St. Malachy's."

Within a week, a dream was born.

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In the spring of 1993, Tony Overend marched onto Franklin Field to tell a few athletes who were practicing for the heptathlon and decathlon that they needed to get off the track.

This was the Penn Relays, after all -- the operations manager for Franklin Field wanted to ensure that the field was in top condition for the largest outdoor track meet in the country.

But when one of the runners turned around and asked why he had to stop his training, Overend stopped in his tracks.

"He spoke back to me in my native tongue, which is Irish," Overend said.

"We just got to talking, and they called us the next year they were coming, and we fostered a relationship."

Growing up in Belfast himself, Overend grew close to the St. Malachy's runners and their coach, John Morrin, who is also the principal of the school.

The next year, he introduced his friend Harrell to the kids from St. Malachy's -- it just made sense.

Overend first met Harrell in 1986, his first summer in the United States. After fleeing Belfast because of the religious strife between Protestants and Catholics, Overend emigrated to Philadelphia and found a job bartending downtown.

His co-worker just happened to be Harrell.

An illegal alien at the time, Overend largely relied on Harrell during his first years.

In August of 2000, Overend took Harrell to Ireland along with a Philadelphia high school-age boys soccer team. All of the travelers stayed at the dorms of St. Malachy's -- the school would not have it any other way.

While there, the soccer team went 2-1-1 in its competition.

The highlight of the trip for Harrell ended up being a different team.

"I think there are a lot of parallels between his field -- sports, and my field -- music," said Father Gerard Magee, the leader of the St. Malachy's College Orchestra. "Just in terms of the discipline and how the fellows pride themselves and work together in orchestra. And I think he was fantastically impressed by it."

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A senior at Villanova when she died in a car accident on the morning of Sept. 28, 2003, Melissa Harrell is remembered as a precocious individual who brightened the lives of all those she knew.

Melissa had been involved in Main Line activities for her entire life, epitomized by her time at Cardinal O'Hara High School in Springfield, Pa., and a little over three years spent at Villanova.

While at O'Hara, Melissa thrived through her experiences in the arts, leaving behind her talent in the form of a mural on the wall of her beloved high school. In the mural, she speaks through her art of Jesus, and getting the most one can out of life.

"When I go back to O'Hara, I feel more that I am going back to Missy," her father, James, said.

When it came to deciding the best way to build a scholarship in Melissa's memory, benefitting Cardinal O'Hara and future art opportunities seemed logical.

For Dan Harrell, there was little doubt that the St. Malachy's Orchestra was the only way to help remember his niece -- the arts to support the arts.

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People who interact with Harrell are naturally drawn to him. At basketball games, he sticks out as the janitor who mops the floor with gold shoes.

At his 2000 college graduation, he painted his mop red and blue and wrote on it: "Class of 2000." After 10 years of taking classes in Penn's College of General Studies, Harrell proudly walked across the podium in Franklin Field to receive his diploma.

While at St. Malachy's, the administration invited him to teach classes on American history. He only taught three classes, but friends of Overend tell him that students clung to every word.

"Danny doesn't want anything from anybody," Overend said.

When he called Jim Murray for help in hosting the St. Malachy's Orchestra, the former Philadelphia Eagles general manager felt he had no option but to help.

This story marked the Philadelphia landscape. Murray contacted Carolyn and Sydney Kimmel and asked if they could also help the cause. They responded by finding tickets for the entire St. Malachy's Orchestra to a sold out concert at the Kimmel Center, in addition to opening up practice time at the concert hall.

The Melissa Harrell Benefit Concert tomorrow is more than a concert for an individual's memory, but represents a community rallying around a cause.

"This is the human race, a time when the whole world's in a turmoil," Murray said. "To see young men who are learning gentle music and really explaining their culture to our culture, seeing not how much we're different, but how much we're the same."

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On Friday, the orchestra assembled in Saint Thomas of Villanova Church for Good Friday mass.

Villanova -- the site of three years of thriving exuberance by Melissa. Saint Thomas, in particular -- the site of Melissa's grandparents' wedding.

Just coming to Saint Thomas was tough for James Harrell.

On Good Friday afternoon, he stands outside of the church in a rare moment where he is alone. He looks out at the traffic on Lancaster Avenue and the clear sky in the background.

He only gets a moment, though. Dan quickly approaches and wisps him up in conversation.

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Tomorrow night at 8 p.m., 65 members of the St. Malachy's orchestra will play for the memory of Melissa Harrell. Cardinal O'Hara will be the immediate benefactor.

But the fruits spread beyond a family, an orchestra, even a nation.

Last Thursday, the orchestra had their first practice in the United States. Less than 24 hours after their plane landed at Philadelphia International Airport, Father Magee opened the first practice in America with "The Star Spangled Banner," followed by the Irish National Anthem.

For Philip Denvir, a 19-year-old violist, this is the first time he has been to the United States.

"It's a bit of a culture shock," Denvir said. "It's exactly what I was expecting, which is exactly what I wasn't expecting."

On the trip, the orchestra has performed in the Kennedy Center in Washington, practiced in the Kimmel Center and saw what for most of its members was their first professional baseball team -- the Trenton Thunder -- play a game.

Their meals have been hosted and venues that typically welcome the most prestigious performers in the world have opened their doors to St. Malachy's.

Yesterday, the group played at the St. Malachy's school in West Philadelphia -- a school with the same name but drastically different social dynamics.

Tomorrow's concert could have occurred with any orchestra in Philadelphia. After all, there are several talented groups of musicians in the area that could have helped to raise money for the Melissa Harrell scholarship.

But for Dan Harrell, this was his vision; he heard music and immediately associated it with one thing -- St. Malachy's.

"If you're in sports, you have a perfect game plan, sometimes, a perfect play," Murray said. "That's what Dan Harrell's done -- nothing but net.

"He's a dreamer who's looking for the buzzer beater .... What's going to happen here? This is everybody wins. To see everybody rally around this girl's memory -- this is what Philly is."

Arriving during the core of Catholic Holy Week, the St. Malachy's College Orchestra has arrived to honor the memory of a sparkling light.

In the process, it has brought communities together from across oceans.

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