Remembering the four New York GAA men who died on 9/11
Flag At The Placed Zero Name Is September A Victim's Images) By Memorial (photo 11 Spencer Ground Us Platt/getty At Near A
When the Meehan brothers were growing up in New York in the 1970s and 80s, their Inwood neighbourhood was holding on stubbornly to its Irish identity.
Manhattan’s northernmost outpost clung most dearly to its GAA club, Good Shepherd. It was named after the local parish church on Broadway and it flourished thanks to a populous first-generation offspring of the Irish immigrants who flocked there in the 50s and 60s.
Mike Meehan Snr lived for Sundays in Gaelic Park, just on the other side of the borough boundary shared with the Bronx. His seven sons spent each of those Sundays there with him, towing along the youngest boy, Damian.
A talented full back, Damian Meehan went on to play for the Donegal club in Gaelic Park as well as also travelling with New York’s senior team on footballing trips to Ireland.
Meanwhile, he was also deep into a career in finance at Carr Futures whose office was located high up on 1 World Trade Center, at the other end of Manhattan.
He was 33 when he succumbed to the terrorist attacks that changed the world.
On Saturday at Croke Park, a brief moment of remembrance will pay tribute to him and three other stalwarts of the New York GAA scene: Denis McHugh (Rockland GAA), Brendan Dolan (Rangers GFC), and Kieran Gorman (Sligo NY GFC).
"We had him battle-tested for football," one of Meehan’s older brothers Kevin recalled fondly during the week of him and his siblings.
“He had a good eye for the game - he wasn't very strong but he was big into basketball and a lot of that court management gave him the ability to have positional awareness in football and observe the game in front of him.
“We were a force to be reckoned with - we were all sons of immigrants. It was still really powerful back then. It was in our DNA.”
These days, he is retired from the FDNY and living in the Hudson Valley town of New City but on that fateful day in 2001, Kevin was stationed in the South Bronx.
His company was rotated down to Manhattan to cover for Engine 3 and Ladder 12 who answered the call further downtown.
"Nobody from those trucks came home - the trucks didn't even come home."
Kevin was waiting for word from his brother. A lot of the mobile phone towers were down so the confusion rose with each wrongly reassuring rumour.
"I felt quite selfish at the time," he recalls. "Inwood lost 18 people. We lost so many friends that we grew up with. I worked in Manhattan for a year so I also knew too many firemen that died. It was all very overwhelming but I could only think of Damian."
He describes Saturday’s gesture by the GAA as an honour but he will lay low in Rockland with his German Shepherds - a poetic source of comfort given the GAA youth that shaped him and his brothers, "From day one, the motto for the cops and the firemen was 'Never Forget'. It's impossible to forget. It's important to all of us to know that in Ireland, people are remembering. It's a great thing that the GAA is doing, we appreciate everyone thinking for a moment about the people of 9/11. Twenty years later, the pain is still there.”
Paddy Muldoon will also be called to mind for the 40,000 at Croke Park on Saturday.
The former Mayo County Board chairman, and long time honorary president of the Mayo club in New York, passed away last Sunday.
On Thursday in Westport, several of the hordes of Mayo supporters who flew out of JFK for Saturday’s showdown were part of a guard of honour at a funeral they hadn’t expected.
Mick Morley and his fellow Mayo NY clubman Vinny Heraty had been due to visit with Muldoon last Wednesday as part of their return home. The trio were among those who were instrumental in maintaining the strong GAA links between home and the Bronx and beyond.
"There was a line for half a mile on both sides of the street," Morley said before he made his way to Dublin later Thursday.
"It was a great send off for a legend. Paddy was always a peacemaker, getting people back on track. You always need those kinds of people around," he added, laughing.
Originally from Knock, Morley played with Claremorris throughout the 60s and the earlier years of the 70s. He played half back on the last Claremorris team that brought home the Mayo SFC title 50 years ago this year. For good measure, he was also on the Under 21 team that took the top honours that year.
The following year, he moved to New York, making a life for himself in the food and catering industry.
On September 11, 2001, he was at the Dunwoodie golf course, the highest point in the city of Yonkers, just to the north of the Bronx. They had a clear view right down to the southern tip of Manhattan and watched in horror as the buildings collapsed, first the South Tower and then the North.
"It was the eeriest feeling."
He would find out subsequently that Denis McHugh, a son of one of his fellow Mayomen who he played with at Gaelic Park in the 70s, was among the first responders who didn’t make it out.
"His father and all of his uncles played for the Mayo club here. They were from Garrymore. We have a Denis McHugh Cup each year where Mayo go up to play his club, Rockland."
These days, he is the treasurer at the Mayo club but the former two-time chairman is focused on bringing through younger blood to take over the committee long term.
"We have about ten Irish-Americans on the team now. That's the future. They're great players. We're in a pretty good position."
And Saturday? "I'm very confident - I'm more confident than I've ever been. I've been to every final and semi-final over the years. It's time we won one."
On the other side of Saturday’s All-Ireland final and also in possession of a ticket will be Seamus McNabb who arrived in New York in the mid-90s. Alongside stalwarts such as Emmett Woods, McNabb helped get the Tyrone New York club team back in action soon after emigrating.
"I was supposed to have a meeting at the World Trade Center that morning and I asked my assistant, Paddy McDonagh, to go there instead. Luckily the meeting was cancelled but sadly, a few of the guys we were supposed to meet with lost their lives, including Kieran Gorman who was involved with the Sligo club after having played many years."
Martina Molloy moved to New York from Pomeroy in the late 80s and had coincidentally flown back from a trip home to Tyrone on September 10, 2001.
"At that stage, I was doing private nursing in the Upper East Side and I was in early on the Tuesday morning so I called home because I had forgotten to phone my mother the night before after I landed late. While she was giving out to me about not calling home, the TV was on in the background and I saw the second plane go in.
"I ended up working straight through to Thursday because they shut down the city. It was a little surreal. I remember walking out on Park Avenue that evening and seeing all the taxis had stopped and the smoke billowing up. The smell and the sound of the fighter jets coming and going - something I'll never forget.
"That weekend, I took the Staten Island Ferry and I looked back at Lower Manhattan... it broke my heart to see the skyline so changed."
Martina’s friend Corina Galvin, originally from Belcarra and now a Queens resident, was doing work for a client that fortuitously had moved that summer from 130 Liberty Street, across the way from World Trade Center, up to midtown. Having had a late night at the office the night before, she took her time Tuesday morning and did something she never did: she tuned the TV to the morning news and discovered the unfolding nightmare.
When it emerged that there was a chance of the All-Ireland final date being moved to September 11, she faced a struggle over where she wanted to be and whether or not she wanted to fly.
"It gave me chills. I was supposed to be home during the final's original date but the change gave me pause... do I really want to be doing this?"
Molloy was equally conflicted.
"When I saw it, I was like 'oh God really'. It's the challenge of being in a celebratory mood for anything on a day like that. I do a lot of healing work and it's always a day when I do a lot of meditation. So I'll need to shift gear a little bit.
"But I also think that given the past year and a half, what everybody's been through, it's just lifted everyone, my family, my community in Pomeroy. COVID was so high in the north, especially in Tyrone, so I can feel the despair in people. This has given people a lift so I'm happy from that point of view."
But does her sense of community spirit stretch to the suffering of Mayo fans and the potential heartache her county will cause? She's diplomatic.
"Hopefully this will be something we can be unified by. We'll be celebrating something on Saturday - maybe a celebration of life and coming out the other side. I'm hoping that's what happens in New York too for the Irish community."
Galvin is more focused on Mayo winning, naturally, and on shaking off memories that stretch even further back.
"There is so much weight on this game with the tragic date but also - on a much less serious note - the 70 year-gap to the last win. I just think this is our time. I hope it is. It might change the meaning of the September 11 date for us."
Elsewhere in New York’s GAA community, there is also an effort to glean new meaning out of the events of 20 years ago.
At the end of August, the Liberty Gaels lifted the North American Senior Camogie Championship for the fourth time in seven years of existence. But for one of the club’s co-founders, this was a success tinged with sadness.
In the week leading up to that trip to Boston, events in Afghanistan were causing angst for Jane McCooey who learned and thrived at the St. Patrick’s Camogie Club back in Keady, Co. Armagh.
"What struck a chord for me as the Taliban were pushing in was the impact this would have on women," she said via Zoom this week, flanked by Mayo native Amy Brett and the Red Hand duo of Michelle Hackett and Lauryn Hollywood.
"It's horrible to face this at any time but it was amplified for me because it was the week that we were preparing for our biggest event of the year.
"At training all summer, I was watching our girls learn and bond and grow. Being able to enjoy our heritage, our culture, and our identity over here, the power of that really hit home for me. That contrast with the plight of women in Afghanistan was difficult for me and I really struggled with it for a number of days."
Their final training session before the big weekend in Boston was an opportunity to hand out jerseys. It was also a chance for Jane to ask her club mates what they knew about what was happening in Afghanistan.
"Some knew and some were completely unaware and wanted to understand more. So it made my mind up that I wanted to help raise awareness too."
The Liberty Gaels returned to the Big Apple with good memories and good plans to host a painting fundraiser at the Rockland GAA Club on Friday, September 24th.
All proceeds from "Paint & Sip" will be donated to Women for Afghan Women, an organisation striving to protect the rights of Afghan women and girls, both in Afghanistan and those arriving in New York seeking refuge.
"As Irish immigrants, you come to America knowing that you have a real chance to be successful and we are also able to express ourselves. We have that liberty to be able to speak out. The fact that they can't ... it's just really hard."
Liberty Gaels are doing their bit to move us past the awfulness of 20 years ago and so are the Meehans. Damian Jnr, born in early 2000, now attends college in Texas while his sister Madison, a daughter Damian Snr never met, is about to begin college herself.
"His widow JoAnn has been a super mom,” Kevin Meehan tells me. “She has dedicated her life to those two kids."
- To find out more about the Liberty Gaels Paint & Sip fundraiser supporting Women for Afghan Women, click here.