April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
TOUR GUIDE
She brings Albany history to life
Maeve McEneny, 27, uses her acting, writing and teaching skills to guide tours for Albany Aqua Ducks and Trolleys. And "there isn't anything she won't do" to make the tours fun and interesting, said Maureen Lundberg, an owner and operator of the company. "She's magic."
For instance, Ms. McEneny has created theatrical pirate tours and "ghost hunter" tours, both infused with educational facts and historical reenactments about Albany.
A 2006 graduate of Siena College in Loudonville with a bachelor's degree in English education, Ms. McEneny fills her days with substitute teaching, test scoring and tour guiding.
In her free time, she cleans the Aqua Ducks boat, directs and acts in plays, writes grants for children's theater groups and mentors young actors.
On her tours, Ms. McEneny can't help but mention her Irish Catholic roots, perhaps because historic churches dot the routes.
"I can't tell the story about Albany without talking about churches. I know we're condensing the parishes, but the buildings are important," she told The Evangelist, pointing to the example of St. Joseph's Church, which closed in 1994 but has hosted concerts and art exhibits, thanks to the Historic Albany Foundation.
The tour guide is already brainstorming future uses for the recently-closed St. Teresa of Avila Church building, where she was baptized and her parents married.
"We've got to get creative," she declared. "Nothing makes me sadder than an empty historic building."
Ms. McEneny believes her role as a guide is to bring history to life and to "show people what an amazing city Albany is; what potential it has."
Tourists often tell her they've lived in Albany their whole lives without learning about its finer points.
"It's basically literature," Ms. McEneny said of tours she's crafted, like the one focused on German neighborhoods. Another tour's historical theme is "fires in Albany."
Customers range from history buffs to children looking for a fun time, so Ms. McEneny likes to create characters and catch-phrases. "Here I am on this ridiculous boat, and you have to be silly," she remarked.
So, in addition to passing out "quacking" noisemakers, Ms. McEneny sometimes falls back on stories passed on by her father, Jack McEneny, a well-known Albany historian and politician. Five generations of her father's family and six generations of her mother's lived along her routes.
A favorite tale involves her grandmother's lost yellow cat, which a brewer near Lincoln Park found rolling around in beer hops: "He did nothing but drink water for one week and sleep," Assemblyman McEneny told The Evangelist with a laugh.
Those little stories liven up his daughter's tours, the assemblyman noted, boasting that "what makes her tours interesting is the trivia. She puts in the flesh and blood, not just the names and dates and brick and mortar."
Ms. McEneny often turns to her father to research a new topic: "She has very good writing ability, and you just sort of wind her up and she knows where to go," he said. "She was always bent that way. We always had dinner together and there was always storytelling."
Tour customers often tell Ms. McEneny they attended Christian Brothers Academy in Albany with her father or knew her grandmother.
"'Smallbany' stuff comes out," she quipped. "That's what I think is the most fun."
Sometimes, what happens off the bus also entertains her. Passersby have called police when they saw actors dressed as zombies approaching the bus during her ghost tours - and when actors reenact the 1931 killing of gangster and bootlegger Legs Diamond on Dove Street, people sometimes run to the "dying" man's aid.
Assemblyman McEneny said his daughter's finesse for acting stems back to childhood, when her older brother, John, directed his three siblings and neighborhood children in original productions.
Her Catholicism was another role passed down by her family. Ms. McEneny calls herself a Franciscan - partly because her family owned a menagerie of pets, and partly because of the Franciscan clergy who educated her at Siena College.
"They believe 100 percent in what they're doing," she said.
The social justice lessons in college inspired her to attend death penalty protests and donate the proceeds of a play she directed to a Catholic Charities group volunteering in Juarez, Mexico.
Still, she admitted, her advocacy efforts have slipped in recent years: "I wish I were better. I feel like it's the only thing missing in my life right now."
Ms. McEneny wants to settle into a full-time career that involves education. "I'm super busy and I'm all over the place," she said. "But I'm really happy. I've got to find the thing that pays the bills and makes me happy. I want to be that instrument that helps you discover something."[[In-content Ad]]
250 X 250 AD
250 X 250 AD
Events
250 X 250 AD
Comments:
You must login to comment.