HENNESSY, Joseph (K.) 1932-

PERSONAL: Born September 22, 1932, in NY; son of Andrew and Florence (Keogh) Hennessy; married August 31, 1960; wife's name Mary (deceased); children: Susan, Janet, Joey, Sharon. Ethnicity: "Christian." Education: Federal Aviation Administration, airline dispatcher's certificate. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Flying, model trains.

ADDRESSES: Home—3 Maple Dr., Caherdavin Lawn, Limerick, Ireland. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Shannon Airport, worked in operations for Seaboard and Western Airlines, 1952-57, dispatcher and station manager for Transocean Airlines, 1957-60, director of Shannon Air Ltd., 1962-65; Intercontinental Airlines, representative in New York, 1960-62; Air America, operations manager, 1965-70; Seaboard World Airlines, Idlewild, NY, dispatcher, 1970-72; writer.

MEMBER: Scribblers (Limerick, Ireland; founding member), Limerick Flying Club.

WRITINGS:

Shannon Die . . . Never (fiction), Circular Press, 1978.

Also author of The Curate's Lady, Hollis Books, For Town and Country (sequel to Shannon Die . . . Never), The Airline; The Zhars Legacy, and The Irish DMZ; author of e-books The Irafia, My Godson's Father, and The Hijackers,www.nospine.com, and of plays In Holy Matrimony, Roots, The Widower, and Justice. Also author of short stories and poetry.

SIDELIGHTS: Joseph Hennessy told CA: "I don't need to be motivated to write because, if and when I get an idea, I sit down and start pounding on the computer keyboard. A computer is much more user-friendly than a typewriter. Three or four misspellings on a typewritten sheet in my book would require the whole thing to be retyped.

"I have had great difficulty in finding publishers interested in the material I write. It is farcical and humorous, and I get the greatest pleasure to hear people say they enjoyed the humor. Many years ago here in Ireland, a publisher's editor told me that the company was not big enough to publicize my type of writing, but not to be disheartened as there were publishers out there who publish such work. I have more rejections than most.

"At the moment I have one novel published in the United States by Hollis Books. In the Catholic Church, priests are not allowed to marry, and some feel that, as a result of this, the church is not getting the number of priests it did in the past. So I wrote a farcical story, The Curate's Lady, in which the people in Rome rescind the rule of celibacy, which is fine, but then each cleric watches the other to see who will make the first move. A local bishop becomes aware of this and decides to more-or-less order one of his curates to go out and find himself a wife.

"The first story I wrote back in 1972 I called Shannon Die . . . Never. Shannon Airport, here in Ireland, was the designated landing point for all inbound traffic from the United States. At the time Ireland was dependent on the tourist trade, and the idea was that passengers offloaded at Shannon would go on to visit the West of Ireland, which at the time was what now would be called a Third-World area. As well, aircraft of the time did not have the fuel capacity to fly westbound to the United States; hence, all European carriers landed at Shannon for fuel before facing the long journey across the North Atlantic to Gander in Newfoundland. The only reason they were landing in Shannon was for fuel. It was obvious to airline people that, as more sophisticated equipment came on the scene, there would no longer be a requirement for carriers to land in Shannon for fuel. In my story, I wrote about the actions taken by employees in Shannon when the Irish government is forced to allow U.S. carriers to land in Dublin. One of the Irish employees has a sister whose son works at Cape Kennedy. In the attic of his mother's home are boxes of drawings that he had made while at college. On hearing of her brother's [employment fears], the sister sends some of these drawings to him in Ireland. The maintenance departments of the various carriers operating through Shannon get together and start building a spaceship to go out into space and bring back their own tourists. (In 1993 the Irish government was finally forced by the lobbying of big-business interests to allow U.S. carriers to fly directly into Dublin.)

"The Hijackers is the story of an aircraft hijacking planned by a disgruntled employee of the company. The Irafia is a humorous story about how Irish nationalists and unionists living in the United States get together and take on the Mafia. My Godson's Father is a human-interest story, telling of how the troubles in the North of Ireland affect two neighboring families of different persuasions living in the South of Ireland.

"I also wrote a play called Roots. When the television miniseries of the same title was shown here in Ireland, my three older children convinced my youngest daughter, Sharon, then about six years old, that she had been adopted. They had told her that she was black and that her father was named Paddy Kintae and she had come from Africa. They said she had been sent to a hospital in Ireland when she was very young, and the hospital had taken out her blood and she became white. They then convinced her that, when Sharon was twelve, she would have to go back into hospital to have her original blood reinstalled. Her color would change and she would have to return to Africa. Neither my late wife Mary nor I knew this was going on until one day, obviously terrified, Sharon came to me in floods of tears. This incident resulted in my play."