“I can remember the day I left like it was yesterday"

“I can remember the day I left like it was yesterday. I came to New York at the age of 16 on 10th August 1962. My brother’s Pat and Tommy Joe drove me to Shannon Airport and my brother Coleman, who had been in New York for two years met me on the other side. My father passed away in 1953 when he was 66 and I was just 7. We shared the same birthday, April 14th. That year he died four days later. 

In New York, you’d never miss Gaelic Park every Sunday. There were thousands of Irish there. From 11pm, there would be five or six games played under the lights. Anyone who didn’t have a job would meet someone who would find a job for them. If you were willing to work, there was always plenty of work.

The thing I missed most when I came here was my mother. I was the baby of the house and we did a lot together. We cycled to mass on the first Friday of every month and every day during Lent. Mass was at 7am and we left the house at 6:30. She came out to visit in 1964 and stayed for six months. We had a great time. I took her to ‘The Worlds Fair’, the Statue of Liberty and many more places. 

In ’69 I started work in Alaska and was there for ten years. I worked at Point Barrow, as far north as you can go on land. We built a hangar there for artic research. The following year we worked in Nome, building houses for the Eskimos. I worked all over Alaska.

I got married to a lovely girl from Galway in 1975. We have two beautiful girls and four grandsons. Our girls are married to two men of Irish heritage. 

When I was leaving my parish of Rahan in 1962, our parish priest was called Fr Judge. I never had the pleasure of meeting Irish American Fr Judge, the chaplain for the fire department. He was one of the first on-site the day the Twin Towers came down and was blessing the people who had passed away when he was killed himself. That was a sad day.

This is the first time I have been down here since I worked here after 9/11. For years before 9/11, I worked at the Trade Centre and I was back here the day after. The day the Twin Towers were knocked was the first day in 25 years that I happened not to be at work. I volunteered at Ground Zero for three weeks and then worked here for six months.

A few years ago, I developed prostate cancer. It’s said that one in three gets prostate cancer but for men who worked at Ground Zero, two out of three got it. Luckily enough I had all the coverage and I had robotic surgery a year ago. The doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in Madison Avenue looked after it and now I’m doing really well”.

~ John Mooney, 

Woodlawn, New York City.

(originally from Lynally, Screggan, Tullamore, Co. Offaly).