Name of Waterford man missing for 75 years engraved on family headstone

Teenager vanished from his home when he was just 16 years old and has not been seen since

Frank O'Neill at the family grave in St Mary's Cemetery in Ballygunner, Co Waterford, where he had his missing brother's name engraved. Picture: Noel Browne

A 79-year-old man who has been searching for his missing brother since 1947 has had his sibling’s name engraved on the family headstone, so he will “always be remembered”.

James “Jimmy” O’Neill vanished from his home on Leamy Street in Waterford when he was just 16 years old.

The then-teenager, who worked for the local Clyde shipping company, would have celebrated his 91st birthday on November 26 last year.

Jimmy was never seen again, and despite several Garda investigations, public appeals and DNA tests, Frank O'Neill has never been able to find his brother.

He told the Irish Examiner: “Someone had said to me many years ago, why don’t you get something made or designed for your brother. 

"But when it came to 75 years in December of last year, I said I have to put something up, as I may not be around for much longer.

“I won't be going into the family plot, but I needed to leave something behind. God is not listening to me, despite never missing Mass and my prayers for Jimmy, there’s just no sign of him.

“I have the whole area covered by putting his name on my family headstone. It means if I am gone, and if Jimmy had any family, they might come back here and see that I never forgot him.

Picture: Noel Browne

“All those years gone by, Christmas and birthdays, it’s very very hard and I’m the only one left. I have to accept it, I don’t know if someone out there knows something, but if they do, they’re not saying anything.” 

The latest Garda figures for 2022 show there were 10,510 missing people in Ireland.

Frank believes his brother “stowed away” and that somebody must have helped him, but being the youngest at the time, he can only rely on things he heard in the family.

He said: “I do remember one woman saying to my mother ‘Jimmy is grand’ and my mother said ‘would you take a card to him?’ and she said ‘no I can’t I’d get the other woman in trouble’. Imagine that? A cloak of silence."

Jimmy said his mother Bridget and father James both died “broken-hearted”.

He said: “Whatever happened, and why he had to go, and I do believe he stowed away, my mother died crying for him all night and my father was heartbroken. 

"It destroyed our family. A lady in the ward said ‘who's Jimmy because your mother was crying for him all night’."

Frank, who never married and had no children, sold the family home in recent years and has moved to Dunmore East.

He said: “There was one record on a ship manifest around that time that said James M O’Neill and the age was similar, but it brought us nowhere."