Peter rented a small, furnished apartment –“really cute,” my grandmother recalls– in downtown Red Bank, New Jersey: a coastal suburb of New York. John, Peter’s roommate and a fellow Dublin transplant, had just moved back to Ireland, so the newlyweds had the space to themselves.
“Red Bank wasn’t that much different from Ireland because I came from Dublin, the city, you know.”
Additionally, the Red Bank area boasted a large Irish population. Throughout the sixties, the local newspaper published numerous articles celebrating Irish culture and heritage, appealing to this significant portion of its readership. Red Bank, then, was a sort of middle ground for Mairead. She fulfilled her dreams of American life while surrounded by others from her homeland.
Indeed, Mairead quickly acclimated to life in the American suburb. The day after moving into her new home, she woke with an air of determination. Mairead dressed and walked around the corner to Broad Street, Red Bank’s main drag lined with shops, restaurants, and offices. When strolling past the town’s popular Irish pub, she surprisingly felt no pang of homesickness.
“I never really missed it at all in the start of it.”
After strolling a few more blocks down Broad Street, Mairead arrived at her destination: Steinbach. The department store was long a fixture of the Jersey Shore, with various locations along the coast and eye-catching advertisements ubiquitous in local papers.
After noticing such an ad in the Red Bank newspaper, Mairead decided to apply for a job at the store. She secured a job its baby department, an unlikely assignment given that she knew little about infants and “didn’t want to have children yet.”
Mairead’s diving into the American workforce led to some culture shock. “I didn’t even know the money –the dollars– I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Once she overcame her initial confusion, Mairead fell in love with her department store job. Having been employed since she was thirteen years old, she relished the sense of purpose and responsibility that comes with working.
Mairead continued to work at Steinbach for two years, until she and Peter moved to West Orange, another New Jersey town.
This move was brought about by the couple’s desire to help some Irish friends. Noel O’Keefe and Peter had worked together in Dublin before Peter moved. Noel and his wife, Phillis, were married a few months after Peter and Mairead, and also wanted to relocate to America. However, Phillis had difficulty obtaining a visa.
“It was something with the visa,” my grandmother explains, “I don’t know how it worked.”
Peter was more well-versed than Mairead in American immigration law and avenues around its restrictions. Rather than seeking out an immigration attorney in Dublin, Peter helped the couple make it to the U.S., where they could more easily find a professional to sort out the legal issues relating to Phillis’ visa.
“It’s easier to get an attorney here than it would be in Dublin to help you get to America. They didn’t want us, you know.”
To allow Phillis to legally immigrate to the U.S., Peter claimed her, an official process by which he financially sponsored her and vouched for her via his status as an immigrant already residing in the country.
As there were no vacancies at Peter’s job in Red Bank, he took this opportunity to relocate to a higher-paying restaurant, where he and Noel could work together once again. Thanks to Peter’s help, Phillis and Noel successfully immigrated to the States, and, my grandmother adds, still live in West Orange today.
Peter’s generosity, helping an old coworker navigate the complex, nuanced process of legal immigration to America, proves a testament to the tight-knit culture of Irish-American communities. There existed a network of successful Irish transplants willing to help their compatriots through their own immigration processes, and the immigrants remained connected following their American assimilation.
As Peter settled into his new bartending job at a high-end steakhouse, Mairead acclimated to a new American town.