By Sara Barker
Any student or faculty who has been on campus for the last three years probably remembers a day when preachers stood at the Scramble Light and yelled their mission to passerby.
However, they’re likely to remember one instance in particular when, amongst a throng of students crowding the sidewalk and yelling back, a tall, curly-haired underclassman stepped in and drowned out everyone with bagpipes.
Three years later, now-junior Eamon Hegarty is much more than just his set of bagpipes.
“Thankfully, there haven’t been any instances when I’ve had to break them out as of recently,” Hegarty said with a laugh.
Music and entertainment started early for Hegarty, who says the arts run in his “big old Irish Catholic family.”
Irish-ness is a double-whammy for Hegarty, whose dad grew up in Ireland and whose mom carried the culture with her.
“My grandma always wanted a piper in the family,” Hegarty said. “She tried to get my mom to learn when she was a kid, and she just didn’t gravitate toward it.”
Hegarty’s mom introduced him to the world of entertainment at an early age, even auditioning him for and landing him a spot in a Safe Auto commercial as a child.
When Hegarty was in the fifth grade, he took his first music lessons on guitar, but he wasn’t a natural Les Paul.
“I was terrible at it,” he said.
But, unlike his mom, Hegarty said bagpipe lessons stuck for him. As a multi-instrumentalist, Hegarty now also plays the piano, accordion, Irish whistle, ocarina, pipe organ and tuba.
“Just about anything with a keyboard I can figure out,” he said.
With as much experience and passion he had for music, ultimately Hegarty decided he didn’t want to pursue it as a career after studying upper-level music theory and looking at how difficult it was.
“I guess I’ve always kind of been an entertainer,” Hegarty said. “I like to make people smile and make people laugh, and music is a great vessel for that.”
Now, his dream job would be to write for a show like Saturday Night Live, and possibly utilize his musical expertise to help him write sketches that other people wouldn’t be able to.
In the meantime, Hegarty is keeping up his bagpipe skills by gigging for birthdays, funerals and weddings.
And even if he makes it in the world of entertainment, Hegarty said he won’t forget that his alma mater let him make a mark on its history, even if it were through squawking louder than everyone else.
“To think that I left some kind of legacy like that,” he said, “I feel honored.”
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