The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

Patsy O'Brien attended St. Peter's High School in New Castle after finishing grade school at St. Paul's despite the
family's move to Christ Our King Parish before eighth grade. At left she is with friends Judy Birnbaum, top left, and
Joan Cochran, seated next to Johnny. The porch is their neighbor's on Van Buren Street.
Francis in the emergency room for three years and
operating room for four years.
John O’Brien made friends for life at Christ Our
King, where he was known in the school yard as one of the
“Big People.” He graduated in the Class of 1958 from
Salesianum High School in Wilmington. Before college, he
enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Eglin
Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle. His sister
remembers family worries about John serving in Florida
when news would unfold about events such as the Bay of
Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles in April 1961 and the Cuban
Missile Crisis of October 1962. Patsy herself was working
in the Operating Room at St. Francis when news broke
about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
John once got into a discussion about his time in
the military with Uncle Jim’s son Pat and Eugene
Gallagher, who served in the U.S. Army during the Korean
War. The talk eventually turned to the military equipment
John had given to his younger cousins Pat and his brother,
Owen, including his gas mask and bag, canteen, utility belt
and blue, two-point dress hat.
“Back in my day, you weren’t allowed to take
U.S. military material home with you,” Eugene observed.
“Yeah, that’s my recollection, too,” John said.
After his honorable discharge from the Air Force,
John attended LaSalle University if Philadelphia (living for
the time with the Sheridans) and law school at Catholic
University in Washington. When someone would ask him
what sort of lawyer he was, his answer would invariably be
“a damn good one.”
As Patsy and John grew, it was not uncommon for
their mother to fix meals for visiting family members,
including Uncle Pat, his wife Catherine and the Sheridans
from Philadelphia. As always, Aunt Delia was the
welcoming matriarch of the extended Gallagher family in
America. As with so many married women of her time,
Aunt Delia’s days of employment came to an end when she
had her children. But her work never stopped. She was a
full-time mother, grandmother, friend and giver to the end.
‘A TRUE GENTLEMAN’
While never abandoning his love of racing, Uncle
Mike found employment in the early 1940s at the Coca-
Cola bottling plant near the western edge of Wilmington, at
Lancaster and Gray avenues. He would walk the 20 or so
blocks to work every day from the family’s home on North
Van Buren. He then worked for the Krueger Brewery at
Fifth and Dupont streets in Wilmington until the brewery
moved to Newark, N.J., around 1951, the year the family
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