An excerpt from the Sun-Sentinel Published: Thursday, March 16, 2000
Section: LIFESTYLE
Page: 1E

By ROBERT GEORGE Staff Writer

Eamonn Dillon ,
A boy of 10, sitting in the front seat of his father's cab blowing a penny whistle through the streets of Belfast from one fare to the next. He took up the uilleann pipes three years later, and he practiced until his bony boy shoulders and arms were sore from pressing that bag against his side, over and over again. His mom banished him to the attic, where she didn't have to hear the awful whine that was all he could manage in the early days.
By 16, though, he won his first all-Ireland contest, and he was master of an instrument that took most players a decade or so just to feel comfortable making notes on. He won again, and toured the United States with a bunch of other winners on other instruments.
He was 22 when he returned home and told his mother that a career with the post office wasn't for him. Seven years ago, he came back to the States, to Fort Lauderdale, where he knew a few countrymen playing in Irish bars.
He joined the circuit, making enough most nights to cover tomorrow's supper. He had to avoid the landlord at the end of almost every month. No phone calls home to Ireland, no money for movies or an occasional dinner out. Even the glasses he needed so he wouldn't have to squint when he drove would have to wait.
If he imagined a future at all, it was a life pretty much like the life he had, pubs with too many requests for Danny Boy and too little pay.