I was born in the Maspeth section of the Borough of Queens in New York City on December 20, 1924. My mother was Anna Francis McMenomey whose mother was Bridget McGlinchey from Stranabrade on the banks of the Elatagh and whose grandfather, John McMenamin, came from the Killygordon area. I didn’t know any of that at the time, not until years later. I think now that an important part of my life has been the search for my birth family and my Irish roots, my Donegal roots.
    The first Christmas I remember was when I was three. Only two months before, I had left an orphanage in Brooklyn to live with my new, adoptive parents, Charlie and Louise Collins, in New Rochelle, in Westchester County, NY. I had been in the orphanage for two years after my birth mother, Anna, died when I was 9 months old. My clearest memories of that Christmas were a tiny Christmas tree, a windup train on the hearth, and a wonderful green leather jacket. Strange, but even though I was three years old then, I can’t remember a thing about the orphanage that I had left only two months before!
    I started in kindergarten when I was five at St. Gabriel’s School in New Rochelle. The teachers were almost all Sisters of Charity, with only a few lay teachers. Midway through that first year, I was "promoted" into the first grade, partly because my mother Louise had taught me so much at home before I ever started school. I think a bigger reason though was that I was so much trouble for the poor young woman who taught kindergarten. I wouldn’t keep my head down and sleep at nap time, I was bored, I thought the games were silly, and they wanted me to play with girls!
    My mother used to call me Mickey in those times, and when I was in trouble, which was often, she’d say, "Du verdammte Irischer, du!" She was first generation German-American and I knew enough German by then to know that meant, "You damned Irishman, you!" I didn’t think much about that at the time. I didn’t know then that had I had been adopted. But she must have often wondered why she had taken in this troublesome little Irish-American kid!
    Grammar school was wonderful and I couldn’t get enough of it. I got good marks but when I’d bring home all A’ and one B, all my tough German mother would say was, "Why did you get the B?" I got a 56 in "Deportment," one month, which I’m still proud of, although I’d better not go into detail about the reason for it. The walk home from school with that report card was a very, very long one. After school, I did the things a lot of boys in that area did, and some they didn’t. I played sand lot baseball, touch football, roller skate hockey while dodging cars in the busy streets, and in the summer spent every day at the beach. But I also spent hours 30 and 40 feet off the ground in the big elm and oak trees on our streets. I’d coax the other kids into coming up with me and my mother would get calls from their worried mothers demanding that she make me stop. I also loved to go alone down to slimy green ponds in the woods alongside the railroad tracks, where I’d scoop up samples to look at under my microscope.
    I was an altar boy (there were no altar girls then) for years and I loved it. It was very special to me. I started in the second grade as a page at Confirmation, all dressed up like Lord Fauntelroy, and continued all through high school. I remember being called from class to serve at weddings and at funeral Masses. The families would send money back afterwards for the altar boys and we liked weddings better because we got more money! The last time I served Mass was as an infantry officer in Japan in 1946. The priest was Japanese. He spoke very little English and I very little Japanese but the Mass was in Latin then and we communicated beautifully.
    In grammar school I was called upon often to do things in assembly, do readings, recite poems, and sometimes sing "Mother Macree" with my best friend, Angelo Catulo, whose mother was Irish and always said that Angie was Italian by Irish consent. For one assembly where the parents were invited, the Irish pastor Father Temple had me recite young Robert Emmett’s fiery speech, given in 1803 just before he was hanged for treason by the British. I thought I did it well and so did Father, but the parents of German, Italian and even the Irish stock didn’t seem very impressed. In high school I did better, did a lot of acting and was even voted best actor in my senior year.
    I won a scholarship to Iona College in New Rochelle, which was a good thing because my parents couldn’t have afforded to send me to college. Iona College was run by Irish Christian Brothers, about a third of them born in Ireland and the rest Irish-American. They were one of the finest group of men I’ve ever known. It was a new College then, only in it’s second year. When I was a freshman, the sophomores were our "seniors." It grew to about three hundred when WW2 started and went down to about twenty during the war. I can remember sitting in the Italian delicatessen across from the college, eating a big Italian sandwich and drinking beer and listening to President Roosevelt on the radio tell the mothers of America that he would never send their sons into foreign wars. Two years later I was in the Army.
    After basic training I was put in the Medical Corps, probably because I had been a pre-medical student at Iona, became a 2d Lieutenant. I quickly volunteered for the Infantry, which was not very bright but I didn’t like the idea of being shot at when I couldn’t shoot back. I was "retreaded" into an Infantry officer at Ft. Benning, Georgia and soon after was sent overseas, just as the war ended. I was very disappointed then but looking back, I think the timing was wonderful! Once in Japan I volunteered again, proving that I really wasn’t bright, this time for Jump School with the 11th Airborne Division. I qualified as a Paratrooper, a Glider Rider, and a Pathfinder, ended up as a company commander and then an Exec, then went back to civilian life.
    Back at Iona, I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor after all and switched my major to chemistry. We were a trial to the poor Brothers. We had left for the war as naïve kids but we came back as not very respectful, somewhat cynical "old men." In the first year back, I rowed on the crew, second oar in the eight-oared varsity shell. We were a mess. The first oar, an ex-waist gunner in a B-17, had shrapnel still in his shoulder, I had a broken back from a bad jump, and there were other assorted wounds and injuries. We also drank too much beer. We didn’t win a race! The second year I ran out of money, quit the crew and got a job after school at a plastics factory. I went to school from 8 to 3, then ran a plastic-molding machine from 4 to 12. The machine cycle was 90 seconds, 15 seconds to pull the molding out, box it and close the machine for the next charge. I propped my books up in front of me and for the first time ever, read every textbook from cover to cover. I got pretty good marks that year.
    Needless to say, the atmosphere at Iona was very Irish. In both years after the war, the entire student body and all the Brothers marched down 5^th Avenue in Manhattan in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The first year, when the parade had stopped but not yet disbanded, one of us, I think it was Tommy O'Toole an ex-carrier pilot, saw an Irish Bar up a side street near us. He yelled and pointed and we all stampeded, a howling mob of students running for the bar. As far as I know, none of the Brothers joined us! The following Monday, Brother Loftus, the college president, told us that if we did that again the next year we would all be expelled. Then he relented and said, "At least, if you have to go to that bar, walk, and quietly." And that's what we did the next year, but you never saw anyone walk as fast as we did!
    After Iona, I went to Fordham University in the Borough of the Bronx in New York City and in five years there earned my Masters and Doctorate degrees in Organic Chemistry. Fordham was a lot different then Iona. For one thing, it was run by the Jesuits, the organization men of the Catholic Church, nice but tough. For another, we had to work much harder because all along the way there was a winnowing out process when suddenly some of my friends would disappear! As usual, I never had enough money but with the G.I Bill and a graduate assistantship I squeezed by, barely. I married beautiful Lois Healey with one year to go. Ground beef was the cheapest meat back then and Lois probably knew at least a dozen ways to cook it. For that last year, we were happy but hungry.
    Things got better after graduate school. I went to work for E. I. Du Pont. It was a good life with the usual assortment of difficult times and wonderful times. Thirty-eight years and three fine children later, we had averaged a move every 4-½ years, lived in several states, some twice, and spent four years in Germany. I spent most of those thirty-eight years in research, authored a few patents, and retired in 1991 as a Senior Research Associate.
    I had been writing poetry for years, finally began to get some published, and was an officer and finally president of the North Carolina Poetry Society. The year after I retired from Du Pont, I went back to school and earned another Bachelor’s degree but this time in creative writing with a concentration on poetry.
    Through all those years I had wondered about my birth parents and my birth family. I didn’t do anything seriously to find out about them, mostly because I suspected that my birth mother hadn’t been married and I didn’t want to cause trouble for anyone by suddenly appearing. After I learned when I was small that I had been adopted, I had snooped through my parents papers and found a baptismal certificate for Robert Francis McMenomey, born December 20^th, 1924 and baptized January 6^th at St. Columba’s Church in Manhattan in New York City. So I knew my name had been McMenomey and in all my travels in the years afterward I looked in phone books for the name but never found anything. Finally in 1988, the need to know had grown insistent enough that I finally began to search in earnest for my birth family and my roots.
    My first step was to contact the Catholic Home Bureau in New York City. I knew that they ran the Catholic orphanages in the New York area since I had been in touch with them to get birth and baptismal records in the name of Collins for my marriage in 1952. In 1992, after almost four frustrating years, I gave up on them and contacted the New York State Department of Health. I soon found that New York was a state with "closed" adoption records. The only information about birth parents that they would give out was what was known as "non-identifying information." Then the first of several miracles happened.
    In 1994, after two more years, I finally received the "non-identifying" information on my birth parents from the Dept. of Health. It told me a little bit more than I had expected. It said that my birth mother was 29, single and Roman Catholic when I was born in 1924 and that she "died in 1925 from appendicitis." When I talked to the Dept. of Health people, they said that I probably would have been given my mother’s name. So I contacted newspapers and public libraries in the New York area trying to find records of my mother’s death under the name of McMenomey and found nothing. Since I was living in North Carolina that wasn’t easy. Early in 1995 I gave up and hired a genealogical investigator, Marsha Dennis, who lived in New York City. In two months, she found a death certificate for an Anna Frances McMenomey who died, aged 29, in September 1925 from a ruptured appendix! It showed that Anna’s father was John Francis McMenomey, born in the U.S., and her mother was Bridget McGlinchey, born in Ireland. We had found my birth mother!
    The investigator then went on to find that my mother had had a sister Margaret who died at 10 months and two surviving brothers, Joseph and Peter. She found that John Francis’ father was also named John, born in Ireland and married to a Mary. She also found that Anna was buried in a large plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY along with her sister and brothers, her mother Bridget, her father John, his father and mother John and Mary, and eight others. I wrote to the cemetery to find out all I could about the people. I was told that a Rose Brennan was "present holder of the deed" for the gravesite, I couldn’t contact her directly, but they would forward a letter for me. I didn’t know then that Rose was born Rose McCartney and was a daughter of Annie Pat Ban McGlinchey whose father was Pat Ban McGlinchey of Stranabrade farm on the banks of the Elatagh River in the Glenfin.
    I learned later that Rose was cautious about my letter when it came because there had been warnings of "con" men operating in her area. When she called her brother Charley McCartney and asked him for advice, he offered to call me to decide whether I was what I said I was. So one wonderful late summer day in 1995 my phone rang and a voice said, "You had better sit down. You don’t know me but I’m Charley McCartney and I think we may be cousins." Apparently I passed the test because he told me about all my cousins in the Glenfin and that Pat Ban McGlinchey and my grandmother Bridget were brother and sister. Once Rose heard from Charley that I wasn’t a "con" man, she went through her old pictures, found one of my grandmother Bridget and one of my mother Anna and had Charley send them to me. In just a few months, at the age of 70, I finally came to know who my birth mother and grandmother were, had their pictures on my desk and learned that I had "family" in Donegal!
    Charley lives only a three-hour drive from me here in North Carolina and I have visited with him and his wife Maddy. When I planned a trip for April 1996 to meet my "McGlinchey" cousins, Charley paved the way with letters and phone calls to them, a list of their names, addresses, phone numbers and relationships, and even extensive written histories of the McGlinchey clan. There is no way I can ever thanks Charley and Rose enough for what they did for an old orphan!
    When I came to the Glenfin in April, my cousins and their families welcomed me with open arms. I met Liam McGlinchey of Convoy, Seamus Herron (the Red Seamus) of the Gorey, Josie Herron at Stranabrade, the first McGlinchey land in the Glenfin and with the old house still standing, John McMahon at Kiltyfergal, Father Peadar Arnold of Tamney, and Kathleen Broderick-McLaughlin of Tullamore. I went to Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Succor with the old church next to it that Bridget used to walk to from Stranabrade. John McMahon took me to the cemetery at Kilteevogue where so many of my McGlinchey ancestors and relatives are buried and spun wonderful tales about it all. Liam drove me everywhere, including a visit to Tony McGinley at Larglarkin, not a cousin but a man with a head full of history and wonderful stories that were a joy to hear. On later visits I met more cousins, Bernard McGlinchey of Kilmacrennan and another Seamus Herron (the Black Seamus) who lives just behind the OLPS church. It seemed that every time I turned around I would hear, "This man’s your cousin too." Every time I visit the Glenfin, I feel as if I’ve come home.
    There’s an irony in that feeling. The first time I visited Ireland was in 1976. I stayed in Donegal Town and didn’t find many McMenamins at all. I remember sitting on a gravestone with the sexton of the church next to the ruins of Red Hugh O’Donnell’s castle. When I asked him where the McMenamins were, the old man pointed with his pipe toward the north and Barnesmore Gap and the Bluestacks. He said, "Up there in the Gap it’s crawlin’ with McMenamins." My next trip wasn’t until 1988. My wife and I stayed at Jackson’s Hotel in Ballybofey, asked a lot of questions about McMenamins but didn’t learn anything. Now that I know how many times my McGlinchey-side cousins are at Jackson’s for one reason or another, I realize that I must have passed them many times there without knowing it! In 1992 I visited four towns on the west side of Loch Neagh where I had found there were a concentration of the McMenemy name; not quite my spelling of McMenomey but close. Nothing came of that although I made many good friends. I was disappointed by then at the possibility that my roots weren’t in Donegal because of my special feeling for it. The McMenemy people had much fun telling me that I was probably going to find that my ancestors were probably from Northern Ireland and may have even come from Scotland! Then finally came the great discoveries in 1995 and 1996 and I knew that my feelings had been right, that I was from Donegal.
    I’ve found my McGlinchey family but I’m still looking for the McMenamin connection. I know they were Glenfin people too. The father of Bridget McGlinchey’s husband, John Francis McMenomey, was a John McMenamin who at the age of 18 came to New York City in 1847 on the ship "Marion" with his 19 year-old sister Susan, his widowed mother, Mary Gallagher, and a boy John, about 10 month’s old. John McMenamin came from somewhere within a few miles of Killygordon. His father Owen had died in Ireland, we think not long before the family left. John had three other sisters, Anne, Bridget and Mary but when they came over I don’t know. I know that in 1853 they and their mother were somewhere in New York and Susan in New Jersey. The little boy John is a bit of a mystery. He couldn’t have been John or Susan’s son because they were both listed on the shipping records as single. We think he is the John listed on the records of St. Patrick’s Church at The Cross as the son born in the summer of 1846 to Patrick McMenamin and Jane McGlinchey of Belalt townland. We think that Patrick and Jane, in that first terrible year of the famine, asked my great grandfather John to take the boy to be raised by other relatives in America. That makes us fairly certain that Owen and his family were somehow related to Patrick or Jane. And so my search goes on.
    I think my story of searching for relatives and ancestors in Ireland is typical of that of thousands of Irish descendants in America and other countries. Some have been luckier than I, some not as lucky. In the libraries and on the Internet you’ll find thousands of them every day, male and female, young and old, from every part of the world, all looking for little miracles and that final sense of connection. I hope that they all find the same warm and welcoming people and the same sense of being home as I do each time I stand smiling in the soft rains and gentle suns of the Glenfin.