An incredible search for the owner of a US military medal ended in a Donegal pub after a relative with the same name was discovered.
Hugh Farren, the owner of Farren’s Bar in Malin Head, was shocked to discover that people in the US were attempting to track down his family to present them with his grand-uncle’s Purple Heart award.
His grand-uncle, also named Hugh Farren, was born in the same pub in Donegal in 1904 and had been killed in action in World War II almost 80 years ago. Hugh emigrated to America and was a firefighter in Boston before joining the US Navy.
READ MORE: US man spending €700 just to get his hands on two pints of Guinness in Dublin
Hugh died while serving on board the USS Liscome Bay which sank in the Pacific when it was hit by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine in 1943.
There were 916 people on board when it sank and just 272 survived - with Hugh being one of the 644 who died. It is still the deadliest sinking of a carrier in the history of the United States Navy.
Speaking to the Irish Mirror, his grand-nephew Hugh said: “I don’t know when exactly [Hugh] headed to the States but he was born on Valentine's day in 1904.
“He died at the age of 39 [in World War II]. He had gone out to visit his sister in America, he emigrated and he was living with his sister whenever he signed up for the Navy.
“He left Ireland and became a fire officer in Boston. With the war, he didn’t come to Europe he went straight to Japan, which is where he lost his life.
“He was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. According to Ben Quelle all the ammunition was on one side of the ship so it couldn’t have hit a worse place and effectively just created a bomb.
“Hugh’s job would have been as a fire officer on board the ship so while the rest of the people were looking at evacuating or getting off, his job would have been to go and put out the fire so there was no hope for him. Once there was an explosion, he would have been closer to the fire than anyone else.”
Following his death, the prestigious Purple Heart medal was presented to Hugh’s surviving sister, Ellen, who is thought to have blamed herself for Hugh’s death, as she had originally convinced him to emigrate to the States.
However, recently the Purple Heart medal was found by a cleaner in the apartment of an elderly man, a firefighter who knew Hugh Farren but was being moved to a hospice.
Searchers had little information about the medal’s owner apart from the name Hugh Farren carved into the back as well as an old address in the Boston suburb of Dorchester.
Following research by Ben Quelle, Attleboro’s director of veteran services, he discovered a vital clue in his search for Mr. Farren’s relatives when he realized in 1962, the city of Boston named a pedestrian bridge in Dorchester after the military man.
However, that led him to a “dead end” as a typo in the records had recorded Hugh Farren’s sister’s name as Helen when it was actually Ellen and they couldn't find his family.
Failing all else, he put out a public appeal and amazingly a tourist from Boston who had recently visited Farren’s Bar in Donegal’s Malin Head solved the mystery.
“It was amazing through the power of the media that [Mr. Quelle] was able to get it solved because he was at a dead end,” said Hugh.
“The name of the girl who had received the Purple Heart [on behalf of Hugh Farren] was Helen Doherty in his records but in actual fact, it was my grand-aunt, Ellen Doherty. That was why he couldn’t trace any more because there was no Helen Doherty.”
Hugh said that he often proudly tells US tourists who visit his bar about the footbridge in Boston named after his grand-uncle and that was what ultimately cracked the case.
“They had a report out on Boston TV to put a search out for people who might know him and a few people contacted them to say they had been in a bar in Malin Head and a man had said there’s a bridge named after his uncle in Boston,” he said.
“It was mentioned in the report that the bridge was there and they put two and two together.”
Mr. Quelle and the Boston TV news channel NewsCenter 5 made contact with the bar and spoke to Hugh Farren, a barman who explained he was named after his grand uncle, who was awarded the Purple Heart.
Hugh said the story has caused a huge buzz in the community in Donegal and all of the many extended Farren relatives are talking about it.
“It was over 80 years ago but to hear it all come back up now and to be so fresh now in people’s memories, it’s amazing,” he said.
“[The Purple Heart Award] is a big deal in the States and I think [Mr Quelle] was over the moon that he found people who were related to Hugh.
“I think it’s just that his memory stays on and it was important for us as a family to understand and to share that Hugh did die for something that he believed in.”
He is not sure where the Purple Heart medal will end up now but if it ever makes it back to Donegal, it would have “pride of place” in the bar.
“It would be nice to have it in the bar and it would be on show if it was,” he said. “It would have pride of place.
“But there’s quite a number of people [in the family] who would have the same entitlement to it.”
READ NEXT:
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter
