Area residents share stories, memories of visit to Ireland

DUBLIN, Ireland — Several Hartington residents recently took the 3,978-mile journey to Ireland to watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers take on the Northwestern Wildcats in the season opener for both football teams.

Roger and Ann Filips, Pam Howell, Gayle and Barb Hochstein, Bill and Karma Schulte, Lee Carl, Peggy Year and Rob Dump all made the journey.

Once in Ireland, they encountered former area residents Russ Hochstein, Tom Kastrup, Jay Stockwell, Pat Stevens, Tim Harms, Pat Wortmann, Rob and Brenda Miller and Father Gary Welsh. Anna Reed, a former Cedar County News intern and current Omaha World-Herald photographer, also made the trip, covering the game and all of the Nebraskans who journeyed across the ocean to watch their football team.

Everybody has their own story to share — their own reason for making the trip.

Roger Filips said traveling to Ireland was on his bucket list. He was most surprised by all of the similarities between the Emerald Isle and the United States.

"Of all of our travels, this is by far the most friendly and welcoming to Americans that I've encountered," Filips said. "The people are very happy to have us here, and more than willing to talk to us."

For Year, the trip was a chance to do something she and her siblings had always dreamed about.

"This is a trip I took for my mom and my sister, both of whom are gone now. My mom was 100 percent Irish, with family names like Buckley, Early, McGlone and Campbell. She always wanted to go to Ireland. I'm very happy I could do this for them and myself. It was a dream come true."

Kastrup said once the game was announced, he and several old friends decided this would make the perfect trip for them to all get together.

While the trip was indeed a lot of fun, it didn't exactly go as planned as Kastrup and three of his friends all ended up with COVID-19.

He wasn't the only one to run into a few issues, however.

Carl, who was the main instigator to get many of the Hartington folks to make the journey, said he was lucky to even make it to Ireland.

He attended the 2012 Notre Dame-Navy football game in Ireland with a relative, and wanted to share that same experience with friends.

This trip was nothing like the last one, though.

Carl calls it the "trip from Hell in a beautiful country."

While his friends were touring Ireland, he missed the first three days of the trip stranded in, first, the Denver airport, then the Newark, N.J., airport.

After arriving in Ireland, he broke his glasses and sustained a concussion after passing out on the sidewalk from exhaustion.

"I only had 12 hours of sleep the previous five days because of stress and being stuck in airports for over 72 hours and not being able to sleep under those uncomfortable conditions," Carl said. "I muddled through and tried to make the best of the trip. I tried not to let on how much my head hurt to the rest of my traveling companions. I didn’t want to ruin the fun for everyone else. There were times when I did have some fun but not as much as I had hoped to have."

Despite his troublesome time in the Emerald Isle, he'd like to go back again.

"I think I will have to make another trip over in the future to make up for this trip. It is an absolutely beautiful country and the people are so nice."