Tommy Ring moved from Cullen to New York in 1957, one of many that left behind what was known as the decade of doom. He featured this week in an article about the Seniors Christmas Lunch at the New York Irish Centre:
… While measures of success can be hard to quantify, on an anecdotal level, the regulars at the New York Irish Centre appear to have had no regrets, and were able to push past feelings of homesickness and loneliness to build lives here, often ending up in Irish-centric enclaves like Woodside in Queens.
Tommy Ring, who left Millstreet, Co. Cork in 1957 as a “strapping young lad” at the age of 20, was motivated by the same thing that drove so many of Ireland’s youth over the Atlantic at that time: opportunity.
In New York, he found it in the form of a career spanning 43 years as a ramp serviceman in two of the city’s major airports; 10 of them at JFK and 33 at its sister airport, LaGuardia.
And unlike the diaspora of the previous century, there wasn’t as much of a sense of finality in moving to the US.
“I used to go back to visit [Ireland] twice a year,” he said, referencing one of the perks of working for the airports. “We got free travel after 15 years.”…
[Read the full article in the Irish Times]
[TWA Skyliner Magazine July 1984]
I go back to Knocknagurrane every year .Sad to see your house is no longer there.Peg shine my Mum died two years ago age 102 .Im sure like me I don’t know many people in the village anymore .But I know all of them in the church yard you would know me as Greta Shine Merry Xmas.
I know the Rings of Cullen we’ll his brother John worked in the creamery down the road. They lived in a cottage in the village of Cullen by the dancing Corner. Known as Luibín na Rinke.
Yes John, the same Rings. John retired from the Coop in 2013, but passed away in 2016:
http://www.millstreet.ie/blog/2015/03/26/death-notice-john-ring-cullen