ONE of New York’s and Donegal’s finest has been laid to rest in his native Glencolmcille.
Jimmy McGonagle passed away in the Big Apple last week, the Donegal Association of New York Donegal Person of the Year for 2012 and a tireless worker for the Donegal New York Gaelic Football Club.
Fr Francis McAteer, PP, told mourners at St Columba’s Church Cashel of his “charismatic personality”
He said he had a great association with the GAA both in Donegal and in America and always had a welcome for an ex-pat.
Members of the Molloy, Heena and McGinley families, all relations of the deceased, read and offered prayers at the Mass.
And a fiddler played a lament by the graveside.
Michael McMahon, a Bundoran town councillor later paid tribute to Jimmy saying he was “a great friend over the years, a wonderful Donegal man and a great advocate for the undocumented Irish in America.”
Jimmy had worked as a despatcher in the New York Daily News and later owned two different bars, including ‘The Sam Maguire’ in the Bronx.
One of his proudest moments was watching his nephew Anthony Molloy lift the Sam Maguire at Croke Park in 1992.
Jimmy passed away just a few days after Jim McGuinness and some of his players took the Sam back to New York.