USS John F Kennedy Visits Ireland: Paul’s View

My memories of this time are pretty strong as for the last two weeks of June 1996. The main national radio station was running a competition for people to win one of 50 places to get a tour of the famous JFK (USS Kennedy) or ‘Big John’ as we were told it was also called.

In as much as I thought I’d love to visit the ship I saw that in order to win a place you had to go on the radio and sing a song and that wasn’t something I was going to attempt with my bullfrog of a voice so I put any thoughts of seeing this floating town out of my mind!

A couple of days before the JFK was due to anchor off Dublin at Dun Laoghaire harbour I was in my office later than usual catching up on paperwork work and  the phone rang!

Overseas Phone Call

I heard this American accent straight away asking me if I was Mr. Gartlan, I said yes and he said hi, I’m John Riggs and we are related! Now over the years I’ve had a number of people drop into me including the (now late) Senator Joseph V Gartlan who said we were related so I thought to myself the Gartlan Irish Diaspora strikes again J

Anyway John came across as a true gentleman and said he had done his homework and that his ancestry search had led him to my father (Michael V Gartlan who passed away in 1988) and me Paul V Gartlan (still alive while I type this and hoping to survive the Covid19 virus), notice all three Gartlans mentioned here have a V in their names!

Anyway halfway through this call John casually mentions that his son Troy Riggs is visiting Dublin this week. He would love to meet some of his Irish relations and I was starting to think … oh oh … then he drops the bombshell news that Troy was a Chief Warrant Officer and that I was welcome to visit him if I could on the 3^rd of July …. Well after a short intake of breadth I said YESSIREE!

Honey, It’s True, I Swear It!

I went home and told my wife Mary all about the phone call and she thought I was pulling her leg but when I went out the next day and bought a video camera she knew it was really going to happen. I asked my younger brother Cormac to come with us and to do the videoing which he jumped at the chance of needless to say.

And so it was that we found ourselves on a launch being taken out to the USS Kennedy (JFK). It was very exciting to say the least. We were very intimidated while standing on the deck with all the other members of the public. Then when we were called out of the group by a Navy officer the group looked at us as if we had horns!

Welcome Aboard!

We were led down to the deck where Troy’s office was and he gave us a warm welcome and we chatted for about 20 minutes and then he gave us a complete tour of the ship including areas where the official tour didn’t get to see. It was really fascinating and it has always stuck in my mind as an historic day as I’ll never have that privilege again to see inside an active Naval ship. About an hour into the tour there was an announcement that the tour group had to disembark (see I remembered at least one Naval word) and Troy said that this didn’t apply to us and so we kept on seeing parts of the ship that we would never otherwise have seen.

When Troy took us down into the hold we saw the enormous pallets of beer (Budweiser of course) that was for the 4^th of July party on the ship the next day for the visiting dignitaries from the Embassies of several countries and the various Ambassadors and government officials. I couldn’t believe it when Troy said that no sailor was allowed to take a drink on the ship! I’d realised then that I would have made a lousy sailor J When we finally departed we took a few photos with Troy’s camera and swapped addresses and 24 years later here we all are, still alive and well and writing about some great moments from our lives with this trip certainly  being up there near the top