Mayoman’s death ’a wake-up call’

Mayoman’s death in New York ‘a wake-up call’


Anna-Marie Flynn

IRISH-Americans living in New York have requested a census of senior citizens after a Mayoman was left dead for more than a week before his body was detected.
The circumstances surrounding the death last month of Anthony (Tony) Gallagher, originally from Bellacorick, have shocked the Irish community in Queens, New York, into planning a census to keep track of immigrants. Mr Gallagher, aged 72, was believed to have been a week dead before firefighters broke into his New York apartment and discovered his body in mid-December.
Westport native Ciaran Staunton, of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform in New York, said such shocking circumstances need to be avoided in future and believes a census system is the way forward. “No one knew he existed. That’s the problem. That’s what we intend to change,” he said.
“None of our elderly immigrants should be ignored like this. Tony’s death has been a wake-up call for our community.”
Requesting the authorities do more to assist elderly Irish abroad, he said: “The Government is spending €900m a year on overseas aid to the non-Irish. I think charity begins at home. People like Tony were the ones who mailed home the money to Ireland in the 1950s and ’60s.
“If we had kept back just ten per cent of the money going to Ireland over the past ten years we could have funded our own outreach groups to maintain contact with our vulnerable Irish elderly here in the US. Going forward we must do this,” added Mr Staunton.
Officials believe a parking ticket found on his car was the first indication that the Mayo native had been dead for some time. The deceased was reported to have suffered a heart attack with the alarm raised several days later. A caretaker at the apartment complex called emergency services after noticing Mr Gallagher’s marked absence from the area.
Mr Gallagher emigrated to America as a teenager before working as a carpenter in Alaska and New York. In the 1990s, his wife Josephine, a native of Co Leitrim, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and had to be placed in a nursing home four years ago. The couple had no children.
Anthony Gallagher is survived by his wife as well as a brother who lives in Massachusetts and a sister who is a nun and lives in California. Locals described him as a very active member of the community while his brother, Eddie, said he last saw him just weeks ago during a family Thanksgiving celebration when he travelled to see him in Massachusetts.
Community leaders gathered at a memorial Mass for Anthony Gallagher at the New York Irish Centre in Long Island City and he was buried in Holyoke, Massachusetts.