‘Our community will give a good ceád míle fáilte to poor Sean when he arrives next week’ – Marty Ward
PLANS ARE ON track for Irish man Sean Parker, who died alone in England aged 79, with no family, to be buried in Ireland near his mother.
A call was put out for help in finding Sean’s family and friends after he passed away in Medway in England.
He was living in a nursing home after a tough life that included some time sleeping rough in London.
But thanks to the community in a small Galway town rallying together, it looks like Sean will be buried next to his mum early next week.
Medway Council confirmed to TheJournal.ie today that they are hoping to have Sean on a flight to Ireland next week.
“We’re so delighted”
Marty Ward, one of the Glinsk locals who has been researching Sean’s family history, said that should all go to plan, the flight will be on Tuesday.
“I’m just waiting for it to be 100% confirmed,” he said.
If no family were found, Sean would have had to be buried in an unmarked grave in Medway.
Last month, Ward had said:
The community here in Glinsk feel at all possible if it can be verified that Sean is, as we say, if he’s ‘our Sean’ that that the body be repatriated
Though he cautioned that there was still a minute chance that the flight might not take place on Tuesday, Ward told TheJournal.ie:
We’re so delighted. When we started out on this journey we didn’t really think it would happen. And now it has happened with the help of an awful lot of people and the goodwill of so many people indeed.
He said that for him “it shows a community reaching out, really, to help somebody and I think that’s really the value of the whole process. That from a simple beginning really of somebody in this case – Jimmy O’Toole – recognising that this person was possibly one of ours and the whole thing being taken forward so that we could verify that”.
They even had the help of genealogists from Salt Lake City in their quest to determine whether Sean was from the Glinsk area.
It really has created a great stir among everybody, young and old, and I think the realisation that there’s so many people of this generation that are being now affected by emigration, that it’s like history repeating itself.
“With every help that’s been given to Sean Parker, I suppose everyone is wishing in their hearts that no one in the present times would ever end up the situation Sean was in.”
It is hoped that in the coming days Sean’s final journey home to Ireland will be officially confirmed. When he does arrive back, there will be a community waiting to pay their respects as he is laid to rest in Irish soil.
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