The Briggs/Courtney story

My father, John Briggs, came to the United States from Ireland in his early 20s. His parents had lived in New York City for a year or so around 1930, but returned home to Ireland because of my grandmother's yearning for her country and her family, and the Great Depression.

Throughout his childhood, my grandfather always urged him to move to America when he grew up. Together they listened to New York Yankees baseball games on shortwave radio, and my grandfather often talked to him about how much he had loved his time in America.

My grandfather (John Joseph Briggs) was born in Waterford City to parents who had roots in County Wexford. His father died young - when my grandfather was only 7 years old - while working in northern Scotland for HM Customs. In the early 1920s, after his mother had also died, my grandfather moved to Cork City.

In Cork, he continued his work as a printer. Through that work he became friends with the man who would become his father in law, my great grandfather William Courtney.

My grandparents married in 1926 in Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in 1926, the same church in which her parents had married, and which is still in use today. They raised their children in Pic Du Jer Park in Ballinlough; in addition to my father, they had another son and a daughter.

My father lived in America until his passing in 2019. He brought his mother to America to live with him and our family after she was widowed, and she spent the last 16 years of her life with us. She would often say that America was a nice place but Ireland was her home.

My father loved America and was one of the most patriotic people I ever knew. He embraced the American way of life and proudly served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

I feel blessed to have grown up in a home where I heard stories of Ireland, and I still have cousins in both Cork and Waterford. I have visited Ireland a few times over the years and love the country. I can’t wait for my next visit!