“I can remember the day I left like it was yesterday. I came to New York at 16 on August 10th 1962. My brother 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 11 pm, five or six games would be played under the lights. Anyone who didn’t have a job would meet someone who would find a job. 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 7 am, and we left the house at 6:30. She came 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 working in Alaska for ten years. I worked at Point Barrow, as far north as you can on land. We built a hangar there for arctic 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 daughters are married to two men of Irish heritage.

When I left 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.

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

John lives in Woodlawn, New York City. He is originally from Lynally, Screggan, Tullamore, Co. Offaly and is Paula Nolan’s uncle.