Conneely Siblngs Rusheeney

Patrick Conneely was one of 6 sons and 4 daughters born to Maria and Joseph Conneely.  Two of the sons died before the age of one.  My father was the oldest of the 4 surviving sons.

Patrick left Oughterard for the United States in 1949.  He went to live with his mother’s sister Mary Conneely Connors in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.  Another of his mother’s sisters, Bridget Conneely O’Connor, lived outside of Boston in the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts. My father had never met his aunts as they left Ireland before he was born.  Sadly, Mary died within a year of his arrival.

Two days after Patrick arrived in Boston, his cousin woke him up in the morning and told him it was time to go to work.  He had no idea what the job was or where he was going.  His cousin brought him down to the local cemetery where he ended up working for over 40 years.  My father was happy to discover that the cemetery staff consisted of Irish immigrants just like him.

It took awhile for my father to get used to life in the United States.  He was amazed to discover that you could get hot water out of a faucet.  He was also shocked at the amount of traffic in West Roxbury.  He had never seen anything like it in Oughterard. To get to his job, he had to cross one of the busiest streets in West Roxbury.  Luckily, other pedestrians showed him how to cross without getting hit.

My father survived crossing the streets of West Roxbury, married a girl from Rosmuc, and raised a family in the Dorchester section of Boston.  He died in 2016 at the age of 91 and is buried in the same cemetery where he spent the majority of his working life.”