As you can tell uh by my speech
impediment I’m not I’m not from Kansas
City so you know basically I was raised
in a little town outside dairy called
liati in the north of Ireland right up
in the in the northwest of of the island
it’s a little kind of Market town uh
surrounded by mountains beautiful like
every picture book you see of Ireland
that’s kind of my little town it that’s
that’s kind of what it looks like like
you know had a great childhood loved it
but when my early teen years hit the
troubles hit and um anybody familiar
with Irish
history knows that we’ve had a conflict
there for over 600 years uh but it
really raised its head when I was a uh
you you know like Middle School teenage
just and it was it was pretty bad um the
thing that kind of kept me safe was I
also played soccer um and uh played in
the Irish League kept my amateur status
uh which was what eventually helped me
get to the states around about 1980 81
was the hunger strikes in Ireland the
hunger strikes were um Republic Irish
Republican not not like the Republican
party here this was uh the Republican
movement to um unify Ireland um and they
wanted political status in the in in the
the prisons that they were being kept in
but anyway they started to die um and it
was a Tinder Box in the north of Ireland
then I was uh becoming very very active
as a teenager my father was worried
about me and uh some guy said to me hey
you want to go play football I mean
soccer in America I said well sure and
my dad really encouraged it I never
intended to stay in the States but when
I left it was the summer of 81 and um it
was pretty bit it was pretty bad in the
north of Ireland then and I was a
hot-headed teenager so it was really
good for me to get out of there and and
and that’s what happened you know one
year turned into two um met my met my
wife in college and uh we’ve been
married for 37 years and um uh I can
remember when I came to the states uh
I’d never been on an airplane before and
um my mom made me wear a like a Woolen
suit um and uh we flew into Miami and
everything was good in the airport until
the airport doors opened and I thought I
was going to suffocate I thought man I’m
not going to be able to do this I’m not
going to be able to run in this type of
heat and humidity but I figured it out
and here I am so that’s basically how I
got here