Marissa Berry was pretty sure that becoming the 2023 Philadelphia Rose of Tralee “wasn’t in the cards for me.”
The Rose of Tralee Center in Ireland instituted a policy for the 65 Rose Centers around the world that stipulates that each send competitors to the 64-year-old community festival only every other year. It had become unmanageable to have 65 Rose candidates competing in Tralee, a town of about 23,000 people in County Kerry.
“I was under the impression that Tara Ryan (the 2022 Philadelphia Rose) would continue for another year and the next year I would be too old,” says the 28-year-old Berry, who reigned as the Philadelphia Mary from Dungloe in 2017 and now helps run the event for its chief sponsor, The Donegal Association of Philadelphia. The Mary from Dungloe event, like the Rose, is part of an international festival held every August since 1967 in Dungloe, Donegal.
But the cards were in her favor—Philly was up in 2023. Berry entered and on Friday, May 12, she walked away with the crown at the gala held at The Commodore Barry Arts and Cultural Center (The Irish Center) in Philadelphia.
It was her second try for the honor. “As the chairperson of the Mary I always tell the girls to come back. We had a couple of Marys like Katrina Terry (2018) who won on their second time or, in the case of Maddy (Madelyn) Devlin (2019), their fourth because she just liked it. I finally put my money where my mouth is,” laughs Berry, who is also vice president of The Donegal Association.
A graduate of West Chester University and a commercial insurance underwriter at United States Liability Insurance in Wayne, the Havertown resident is planning to make the most of her year as Philly’s Rose.
She has a dual platform: First, as a third generation Irish-American with Mayo roots, she wants members of the Irish diaspora to work at strengthening their connection to their own roots. She was fortunate, she says, that her grandparents, whose parents came from Ireland, maintained relationships with the family left behind. Her great-grandparents instilled a love of the Irish culture in their children. Her grandfather, John Berry, was a founding member of the Young Irelands Gaelic Football Club in Philadelphia.
“I remember being at my grandparents’ home and opening up the Irish Edition and seeing all the girls’ photos and bios on the page for the Rose. My grandparents told me, ‘You can do that someday. I guess I took that to heart,” she says.
Berry has been to Ireland many times to visit her cousins and her brother who did his masters at University College Dublin “and never came back,” she says, laughing.
“I tell people that Ireland is my second home,” she says. “I have people say to me, well you’re so well-travelled. No, I’m not. I go back to the same place every time. I’m not well-travelled at all, but I appreciate the sentiments. And I’m sad to leave every time.”
Her second goal is to raise awareness of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD. “When people hear ‘ADHD’ they think of a little boy who can’t sit still in a classroom,” she says. “It’s much more than that. I was a diagnosed with ADHD as an adult just last year.”
The most common developmental disorder diagnosed in the US, ADHD is frequently missed in girls and women because their symptoms are more likely to involve inattention rather than the stereotypical hyperactivity found more often in boys and men. According to the non-profit organization, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), the prevalence of ADHD in females is almost the same as it is in males although girls are diagnosed at about half the rate as boys. About 4.4 percent of adults have ADHD.
Because she was a good student, no one noticed anything different about Berry when she was younger. Except for Berry herself. “There were signs,” she says. “Things were harder for me that shouldn’t be so tough. I’m always forgetting things. I have time blindness—I don’t know what ‘half an hour’ means. If I tell you I’ll be ready in half an hour it will take me an hour. I have to watch Netflix with the captions on, not because I can’t hear but because I have auditory processing problems. I have to ask people to repeat themselves all the time. I also have problems with emotional regulation and object permanence. I work at home and have to stay on the first floor where I can see the kitchen or I won’t eat all day.”
She’s also a good employee (“I’m a Type A in some things,” she confesses) so only she saw the struggle she was having in meeting her production quotas. Her job is to work directly with insurance agents and get their policies processed as quickly as possible. “The company I work for is very service oriented. Service is number one,” she says. “But I can talk to an agent on the phone, then get up and go to the bathroom and then start washing the dishes and not know what just happened. Fortunately I’ve never been in trouble. Getting help was for my own personal development.”
Through her company’s generous telehealth benefit she connected with a psychiatrist who finally put a name to what Berry always thought of as her “personality quirks.”
“It was such a relief,” says Berry, who now takes a medication that helps her stay focused. “I’m not longer saying, ‘Oh my God, what’s wrong with me?’ The important thing is that once you know what to look for, you know how to look for help.”
She’ll be traveling to Tralee in August for the three-day festival and for her it will be old home week. She’ll have a cheering section not only of her parents and siblings but of her Irish cousins and her friends from the Mary festival who’ll be coming in from London, Toronto, and New York.
She’ll be talking about ADHD when she’s there and hopes that others like her take away the most important message she has to deliver: “It doesn’t have to stop you from getting what you want in life.”
She’s living proof.
Photo of Marissa Berry and her boyfriend, Billy Drennan, taken the night she was crowned, by Tom Keenan
