| Casey Sheehan’s Irish Links
By Sean O' Driscoll
Casey Sheehan, the American Soldier whose mother is holding an anti-war
vigil outside President Bush’s Texas home, was planning to tour Limerick
and Cork when he returned from Iraq.
His mother Cindy’s protest outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford,
Texas has won international attention, and hundreds more anti-war protestors
gathered to join her campaign.
Sheehan released Casey’s last two letters to the media, showing his excitement
at arriving in Shannon for a brief layover before being flown to Kuwait.
Both letters mention his meeting with Linda Ward, a bar supervisor at
Shannon airport who told him about the Sheehan family and its links to Limerick
and Cork.
Speaking from her home in Ennis, County Clare, Ward said that she remembered
Casey Sheehan as polite and very curious about his family background. He
told her that he wanted to meet Sheehan family members in Limerick and Cork
when he finished his Iraq tour. The pair began talking after she noticed
his Irish name on his military ID badge. She heard about his death about
three or four months after he and six others were killed in a bomb attack
while trying to reach injured soldiers in Baghdad.
In a letter written to his family’s California home from a staging camp
in Kuwait, Sheehan, 24, recalled meeting Ward and said “she told me about
the country and the different things to do. She also informed me that my
family name is well known here.”
Four days before his death, he added a second letter, again mentioning
Shannon and that the Sheehan family was well known in Ireland.
According to Cindy Sheehan, Casey woke her up in the middle of the night
to talk about Shannon and his hopes of returning to Ireland.
“He was on his way to Mass, and we talked about when he stopped in Ireland
to refuel. We’re Irish, so he found an airport employee that was telling
him about the history of our name, the Sheehan name,” she told a San Francisco
newspaper after his death.
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