“My mother wasn’t happy when we left for America. Katie was the daughter she never had, and they got on like a house on fire. All her eight grandchildren were now in America, and I don’t think she ever forgave me for taking away her grandchildren and ‘daughter’.

It’s hard when you’re so far away. Sometimes it would hit you that you can’t be there. It’s not like you can stop by, and that’s especially difficult when things are happening at home. When my mother died, I couldn’t even go to her funeral. I knew if I did, there was a high chance I would not have gotten back into America. Even though I was an illegal immigrant, I had the financial responsibilities of a mortgage and a family. They would have been left here on their own if I didn’t get back in, and I couldn’t risk that. I hope my mother understood my predicament.

We had been in the states for three and ¾ years and were on the verge of getting green cards when my mother died. My two eldest children, Joan and Ken, had to grow up quickly. They had moved back home to Ireland, having not settled here and had to make all the funeral arrangements. My brothers Tom and Micky went home for the funeral, but we couldn’t, which was very hard. Four months after the funeral, in August 1992, we got our green cards and went home then.

Tragedy struck in October when my brother John had a heart attack. Tom, Micky and I travelled home, but John was on life support when we arrived. We were with him at the hospital one day when the two boys said they’d go downtown to get lunch. I decided to stay. The next thing I knew, the nurse came in and said we would have to take John off life support. “When?” I asked. “Now,” she said. I frantically started calling all the pubs my brothers might be in around the town but couldn’t get them. It turned out that they were in the graveyard. They weren’t back on time before the life support was turned off.  John had gone by the time they returned, and they were fuming. That was the 1st of November 1992. Both my mother and brother were gone within six months of each other. John was only 58 when he died.

Pat Troy from Kilcormac had a restaurant in Virginia, his own radio show, and he was well got with the politicians. He used to buy the front and back pages of the journal for the Offaly dinner dances. When he invited the Offaly team to Washington in the 1970s, we all went to his house, and there was a mighty spread of food and drink. He wined and dined us to the last.

We filled out more forms when we applied for the green card because you could apply as many times as you wanted. We drove to Washington with them, and Pat had a table set up there and was helping people. I still believe we got our green cards through him. Several out here still never got their green cards and can’t go home because they wouldn’t get back in. They miss so many happy and sad family occasions as a result. There was a girl from Cork who wore out rubber stamps filling out forms for everyone. She worked at Sam Maguire’s pub, and at the end of it all. She didn’t get the green card herself.

We’ve been very lucky in life and have no regrets about our decision to move to America all those years ago. We looked into the fire in Tullamore in 1988 in the small hours of the morning, trying to decide whether we should move. Katie made the point that we didn’t want to be looking into the fire twenty years on, wondering how life would have turned out had we not gone. Those words were all I needed to make my decision, and the following morning, I called my brother to set the wheels in motion”.