tony

Tony O'Sullivan, an Irish immigrant, shares his life story in an interview. He immigrated to America in 1985 with the intention of traveling for a year or two, but ended up staying permanently. Tony initially worked odd jobs, including bartending, before becoming a teacher in New Orleans. He lived in various states and traveled extensively. Tony eventually became a legal immigrant through a visa scheme. He recently retired and returned to Ireland, but still enjoys traveling. Tony believes in the importance of travel and encourages others to explore the world. Hi and welcome to A Traveler's Wisdom. In this episode, I interviewed Tony O'Sullivan, my fake uncle and father's lifelong friend. I figured he'd be the perfect interviewee because not only has he immigrated to America, but he's also been all over the globe. So he should be able to shed some insight on not only America, but how it compares to the rest of the world. Now, I should mention we did have some technical difficulties, so the quality of the audio is not as high as I had hoped. And there are some places where it cuts out, but in general, it should be mostly comprehensible. Enjoy. Hey, Miles. Hey. What? How are you, man? I'm good. How are you doing? Oh, my God. You're so grown up. I can't stand it. I know. How are you doing? I'm all right. You're growing up and I'm growing up. Oh, my God. Yeah. We spent about five minutes just catching up on family stuff, so I'll skip to the main interview. All right. So do you want to get started with the first one? Okay. Recording's on. So can you give us a brief summary of your life, your name, where you're born, where have you been? So how many minutes do I have to answer this? As many as you need. As many as you need. Okay. So my name is Tony Sullivan. I was born in the southwest corner of Ireland. I was a primary school or elementary school teacher for ten years. And then I was allowed to take a career break where my job was guaranteed for up to five years. And I moved to New York with the intention of traveling the world for one year or two years and then returning to my job. I arrived in New York, stayed on and on and on, and then when the five years were up, I decided to stay permanently because I knew if I ever wanted to go back, I could always go back and find a job as a primary school teacher in Ireland. So, yeah, that's how I came to New York. I was just passing through. Started out there and I decided I would stay in New York for a while and get a job and save some money to keep going. That was the basic plan. I don't know where it went wrong. I went crazy. Right. So where are you right now, actually? Right now, I'm back with a walking distance of the house I was born in, in Kinmare, Ireland. I moved back here about four years ago from New York and came back to retire, basically. Right. I still like traveling and that kind of thing. I have family here. And so, you know, the draw of family is very, very strong. Right. And I thought it would be a good investment to buy a year and continue traveling. And so my family will take care of the house. But with COVID and everything else, I just found that I'm here. Now, I do travel to and from home. Last year, I went to Mexico for four months a year because I can't stand the cold, wet, dreary Irish winters. My poor old body, my joints can't deal with the damp weather here. So I like to travel through the winter. Right. Thank you. So how and when did you arrive in America? I came here in 1985. I actually came first in the summer with a group of Irish teachers. We went to Whistler, Pennsylvania on an exchange program with 40 teachers for about, I think, about two weeks. No, actually, it was year 484. And then I went back and actually that year they introduced career breaks for teachers. So I decided to avail of it, applied and got the year off. And then I came back to my cousins, first cousins in New York. I decided I'd start there, stay with them, up in Woodlawn and Bronx where all the Irish live. And then three or four days, well, not three or four days, the very next day, I headed downtown looking for a job in Manhattan. I thought I would, honestly, I wouldn't go teaching, but having grown up and worked in bars, I decided I would work myself as a bartender, even though I was illegal. I was illegal. I'd even go back and proceed to get a job. Right. Tony was actually very lucky here, as just one year after his arrival, Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 into law, which prohibited employers from hiring anyone they knew to be an illegal immigrant. On a railway, part time, and then I think it was a six, yeah, they went to Florida for the winter again. No, I was in California then. I was working there in a restaurant there. And I got a call from the railway in Cape Cod to know that I could come back and work there. I had an assistant director who was in Denver, so I thought, oh, that's a nice title to have. I went back and was there actually working and I met your dad. And that's how I know your dad. Oh. He said, arrest this immigrant. Huh, I didn't know that. He went downhill from there. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's funny. I never knew how you guys met. That's interesting. Yeah, we met at the railway. Yeah. We met on the railroads, working on the railway. And then we shared a few houses together. Kathy, our boss, our good friend now actually, she lied and told everybody we were her cousins from Ireland and her cousins from America. So we were living down the road just up the Kennedy, down near the Kennedy compound. Yeah. And another house, another time she got into a house and the guy who owned it, he wasn't living there, his father was looking after him. And we woke up one morning and there was a note on the table saying, I don't know who you are, but get out of this house. So we had to leave. Oh, my God, the story. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. All right. Great. So what would you, upon arriving, what would you say was like your first impression? Was it what you expected or was it different? Well, yeah, I think because a few months before that I'd been here for a holiday. I knew it was going to be tough. I knew it would be difficult to find a job. But I knew I could get a job. And I was willing to do anything, really. It was only for a bit of fun, to make a bit of money, to keep traveling. I wasn't looking for a career because at that stage I wasn't planning on staying around. And, yeah, it was big. It was big. Yeah. It was big, noisy. And fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you were on Coney Island. I was out. I was everywhere. I had to mention all the places, all the states. I had to mind all the places. I think it would take me ages. I can't remember how many states I lived. I lived in some crazy states. You've probably seen more of America than I have, to be honest. I don't know. But, you know, back then being illegal wasn't too difficult. Right. Every place I went to they'd ask you for your social security. And I would use a phone number from home. My phone number, the school phone number, my aunt's phone number, my uncle's phone number, and just add one extra digit to it. I think it was nine digits on the phone or eight digits or something. Yeah. And that's how I remembered everything. And it worked for a while. People didn't check one proof or anything. But then the second year I was there working for the race boat, they got huge grants from the states and they got involved. So they became very strict with hiring. The third year, they couldn't even hire me to do anything. And I understood that, you know. Yeah. And they knew all the guys. So when I became legal, I applied for... So hold on as I think of this. So I was there five years illegally. And then I had to make a decision whether or not to stay as an illegal. So I stayed. And then I got really ground up a bit. It was getting more and more difficult. So I was actually living and teaching in New Orleans in a private Catholic school there. They just couldn't find any teacher. They knew I was illegal. They didn't care. They wanted somebody, you know. Right. They came in with a visa scheme. I think it was either the Morrison Visa Scheme or the Donnelly Visa Scheme. I can't remember which one I applied for. And at the time, you could put in as many entries as you liked. So I only hand-rolled 300 entries. Oh, my God. I had 100 with my address in New York. I had 100 with my address in my sister's house in Dublin. And I had 100 with my address in Lantaukish. And I was in New Orleans one morning. And people were getting their visas. And I knew I wouldn't get it. It was overtime. And I was really depressed about it. I thought, what do I do? And then my sister called and said, you've got a visa. It went to her home in Dublin. So then I had to go back to Dublin, get a paper stuff, blah, blah, blah, and come back there. That's it. Wow. Yeah, wow. That's a lot. You have to buy the book, Mike, when it comes out. You have to buy the book. Yeah. All right. You said it was like a, you know, not really a home, just a stop on the way, right? That was the initial plan, yeah. Right. And I never really made the decision that I'm going to stay depressed my life, you know, which is strange. I never planned on returning home to Ireland. I was open to everything and anything. You know, when it came to retiring, I didn't retire. I got out earlier. I got out at 62 from a teaching job in New York. I just wasn't feeling well. I've got a lot of problems with Lyme disease, if you know. Yeah. For context, Tony is referring to the fact that he was bitten by a Lyme-infected tick at a young age and contracted stage 3 Lyme disease, which has caused him chronic pain, especially in his older years. I thought of going to Portugal or somewhere. I looked at South America. And eventually I thought, I want to keep traveling. So maybe the best thing to do would be to buy a place in Ireland where my family could be. So keep an eye on things. That was the story. That was the plan. So after all your time in America, did it change how you, like, saw the world or saw yourself or, like, change your attitudes towards anything? I think so. I believe in travel. I've always promoted traveling. Everybody has said, just travel, travel, put a bag in your bag. I always say nobody ever regrets traveling, but a lot of people regret not traveling. Right. I've always said, even 40 years ago, I said, once kids graduate high school, they should be forced to leave for two years. And six years should be on voluntary work around the world, and one year should be just traveling all over the world. So it did, I got a better world view. I mean, I had a good open world view, but I had a more, a better perspective, like, meeting different cultures, everything else kind of thing. Definitely. It also made me realize, by the way, how good life has been in Ireland. You know, the LSE, at the time, exchange was amazing here. Free education, free college for everybody. You know, excellent care for the elderly. No crime, no crime. It was a good country, and I always thought I could go back if I wanted to. I always kind of knew that. Right. What would you say is the most unique thing about America? After you've been to Mexico, India, all these places, what would you say is the most unique? I don't know, because America is so, so, so large. I mean, definitely about America, I'm going to talk about the East Coast, right? Right. Massachusetts, where you are, New York, where I was. But I also lived in California. I also lived in New Orleans. It's different everywhere you go. I think what I liked about New York and Cape Cod was just it was so open. You know, you can do whatever you like. If you work, you can get ahead. You know? Right. There's opportunity everywhere. And maybe that's what it is. By the fact that I'm quite male. Because when I was in other states, it wasn't like that. Right. You could see the minority groups. One thing I had a major problem with was the South. I couldn't cope with it. And it's also true everywhere I've worked. I worked internationally in New York. As you know, I worked in an international school there. So you got people from all over the world. Right. Just learn. You just get the broadness of horizons, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I also realized that America was not this country's world. Right. Sorry. No, no. I know. To me, America is the greatest terrorist state in the world. What it's done in Africa, what it's done in Central America, South America, Vietnam, all these things have disappeared in other countries just to protect their own interests. Sorry. I shouldn't say that. But it's true. Oh, no. It's true. Yeah. You don't have to worry about that. I think that they're the best in the world. They are not the best in the world. Yeah. Our American Studies class is kind of going against that old, like, indoctrination thing of America's number one, and we're going through all these units and the retreat. Yeah. As a fact, they won't say it's their history. Yeah. They won't say it's their past. Yep. You know, they have to say to the American indigenous people, I mean, you know, what happened was wrong. And say it was wrong. I didn't do it, but we must recognize it. Others did it. Just admit it was wrong. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, here we go on up to the basis. Yeah. Well, that's what's good about Massachusetts, that we're kind of a step ahead of the rest of the country on that. On that front. Yeah. And Georgetown doesn't get anywhere close to anything except the jails. Yeah. Oh, God. All right. If you could go back in time, would you come to America again? Would you do anything differently, go to a different state, or avoid it? I don't look back and say I could have, should have, would have. It starts going back. It doesn't change anything. But I think I should have, I would have liked now if I had kept traveling around the world. Right. You know, the whole world, but then that didn't happen. I would have liked to see more of the states, try different things. But it was difficult being illegal as well at the time. Right. It was difficult. But it was a great adventure. It was a fantastic adventure. I'm so regretful. Yeah. It's a great country. It's a great country. Right. We're great people. Yeah. Yeah. We're great people. Yeah. 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