Gino searches for late father's origins

Seamus Enright

 

A Sligo councillor's search for information about his late father's family has taken him to Cavan.

Gino O'Boyle's father Seamie passed away tragically in 2015 without knowing where he came from, and now his son had revived that quest in honour of his late father.
'The last place my dad was before going to Sligo was the McCabe household in Tullyvin,' Gino told The Anglo-Celt this week. 'Whether he was brought there or what, the last known place he was, was the McCabe home in Tullyvin and they warmed a bottle for him before bringing him to Sligo.'
Seamie, who was elected to Sligo County Council in 2014 before his son was co-opted in his place, arrived at the Nazareth House orphanage in Sligo on July 25, 1957. It's believed he was around six to eight months-old at the time, and this month marks 60 years since Seamie made that fateful journey through the Crockauns mountain range.
'He was brought to the Nazareth by Maureen McCabe and Cyril McCaul [both since deceased]. This was organised by a Fr Patrick Gallagher. What we've found out is he was sent there with the intention of his birth cert arriving at a later date, but that never happend,' Gino tells the Celt.
'When we went searching for this Fr Gallagher there was a story about him coming home from New York, which he possibly did. We thought he must have been based in Cootehill or Tullyvin, it turns out he was from Rockcorry so we were looking for the right person in the wrong places.'
What's making Gino and his family's search for information all the more difficult now as time goes on, is that people who might know anything from that time are now deceased.
'We paid a visit to a fella on the Monaghan side and he said 'Sure what would I know' and then he started crying and he said 'all I know is Maureen and Cyril dropped him down and Paddy Gallagher organised it'.
'The way he reacted we knew there was something there. But then the poor man died. Another line of enquiry we were dealing with - she also passed away.'
Gino and his family have carried on the search, which was first started by Seamie's wife Mairead, but to date they've struggled to uncover key snippets of information they believe might eventually solve the mystery about his father's origins.
'The picture we do have, the curtains in the background, anything! Anything, any bit of information that might take us to the next step. I mean his name was James or so we've found out, but because there was another boy by the name of James in the Nazereth already, the nuns called him Seamie.
'[Dad] always wanted to know, then he had us, and life got in the way. He had a hard life, he was on the street aged 15 until the bishop at the time Christy Jones got him a caravan. He later moved to a house, but there's always that thing deep inside you, 'Who am I? Where do I come from?' We've been contacted by family members and while there was some help it has still brought us no answers. The Nazareth have helped as well but unfortunately the majority of nuns working when my dad came in are also deceased.
Gino says that somebody somewhere has answers they're looking for and is pleading to these people to come forward before anyone else passes away.
'Nobody deserves to go through life not knowing who they are and where they came from. There's a story behind my father, I can't have his story go without us finding out,' says Gino.