James Rada, Jr. With the announcement that a Thurmont landmark, the Shamrock Restuarant, will end its 56-year-run on December 30, 2019, The Catoctin Banner thought it would share some of its reader’s memories of the Irish-themed restaurant. The late Mike Fitzgerald opened the Shamrock in 1963. He said in a 2014 interview that the restaurant…

James Rada, Jr. In early March of this year, Mike Fitzgerald’s children performed a sad duty in honor of their father: they made his casket from standing dead trees that Mike had harvested years earlier. Donald “Mike” Fitzgerald passed away on February 28, 2016, in the log home that he built himself. He was eighty-five…

Mike Fitzgerald’s Emmitsburg James Rada, Jr. Editor’s note: This is a reprint of a 2014 story we ran about some of Mike Fitzgerald’s early memories of Emmitsburg. It might be Rube’s Crab Shack now, but in the 1930s, the building that sat on that piece of property was a chicken house…literally. “My father got a…

James Rada, Jr. It might be Rube’s Crab Shack now, but in the 1930s, the building that sat on that piece of property was a chicken house…literally. “My father got a tractor and dragged a chicken house down the road to there,” says Mike Fitzgerald. Two gas pumps were added and the site became a…