Galway In Days Gone By

Homecoming hero

The first holiday party of Irish-Americans to arrive in “the old country” this week included Mr. P. J. Geraghty, who has been a police officer in Boston for several years, told the “Tribune” that large numbers of Irish-Americans, many of them Galwegians, will visit Ireland this year now that peace has been restored.

Mr. Geraghty’s voyage was not without an adventure in which he displayed heroic conduct which does him infinite credit.

Travelling aboard the “Scythia”, as a member of the Hon. Peter F. Sullivan’s party, the boat ran into a heavy swell 200 miles from Boston where the Labrador and Southern waters comingle and made matters unpleasant for the passengers.

One lady – a Mrs. Cooney, a native of Ennis – was being shot overboard as the result of the rolling of the vessel when Mr. Geraghty grasped her and a child she had in her arms, saving her from a watery grave.

Mr. Geraghty, however, in his heroic rescue, was thrown violently against the deck rail and so badly stunned that he had to be medical treated.

A modest hero, he spoke of the incident as if it were one of the ordinary day occurrences in his police work in Boston.

Pictured: The bicycle race at Coolarne Sports on June 14, 1970.