By Sean O' Driscoll

An Irish woman who was the last person mentioned in the late Casey Sheehan’s letters home has said that President Bush should meet with his grieving mother, Cindy, who has been camped out at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in her efforts to meet with the president.

Linda Ward, a bar supervisor at Shannon Airport, told Sheehan, an Army Spc., all about his family history in Ireland only hours before he arrived in the Middle East. Two weeks later, on April 4 of last year, he was killed during a volunteer mission to save injured soldiers. He was 24.

Casey’s last letter to his family mentions his excitement at meeting Ward and being in his ancestral homeland. His last phone call home was also about his trip to Ireland, barely mentioning life in Iraq.

This week, Ward said that she remembered Sheehan as polite and very curious about his family background. He told her that he wanted to travel back to meet his family in Limerick and Shannon when he was finished his tour of duty in Iraq.

Contacted by the Irish Voice, Ward said she hadn’t heard of Cindy Sheehan’s high-profile protest outside the president’s ranch, but said that she hoped that his mother got to speak to Bush about her loss.

“I knew that she had been meeting with other bereaved families and speaking about it, but this is news to me,” she said.

In his last letter home, shown to the Irish Voice, Casey expressed his delight at his visit to Ireland. He was killed in Iraq before he could mail the letter and it was found in his luggage when the army sent his belongings home.

In it, he describes his excitement at being in Ireland.

“While we (in Shannon), there was also a National Guard unit from Sacramento. I spoke with the sergeant major of that unit and let him know I was from Vacaville,” he writes.

“I also spoke with one of the airport employees. She told me about the country and the different things to do. She also informed me that my family name is well known here.”

Four days before his death, he added a second letter, again mentioning Shannon, again excited that the Sheehan family was well known in Ireland.

“I spent $1.30 for a Coke out of a soda machine and got 70 cents back in euro coins. I got to speak to one of the employees at the airport. She told me about the country and said that our last name is very well known,” he wrote.

According to Cindy, Casey woke her up in the middle of the night to talk about Shannon and his hopes of returning to Ireland.

“He was on his way to Mass, and we talked about when he stopped in Ireland to refuel. We’re Irish, so he found an airport employee that was telling him about the history of our name, the Sheehan name,” Cindy said.

He told his mother about Ward and their meeting. Cindy said it was typical of Casey to concentrate on a positive encounter and not on the war in Iraq.

Ward said that she remembered Casey coming into the airport’s transit bar and sitting at the counter with some friends. “We talked about the Sheehans and I told him about the ones that originated in Cork. Hundreds of them came through the airport every day at that stage but I remember the conversation very well,” she says.

“But then when I heard he had been killed in Iraq and saw his picture in the paper, I knew it was him. I suppose you could say that is was the usual conversation you might have with people with Irish roots, about where they are from and that, but he was very enthusiastic about it.

“He asked me a lot about whether he could take a trip to Ireland when he came back and how he could find his family and that kind of thing. He was really into it,” she said.

Ward said it was three or four months after he was killed that she heard that he was dead. She said she he tried to get in contact with Cindy after hearing that Casey had been killed.

“It’s hard to see how the war is just going to end but it would be good if President Bush meet with her anyway,” she said.

In other details of Casey’s last letters, he spoke of his difficulties of leaving his family behind before he boarded the plane for Iraq.

“The married soldiers had their families to see them off, and all I had was a call home the night before. Mom cried her eyes out over the phone, not the first time it happened either,” he wrote.

In another letter, dated March 31, 2004, Casey had arrived in Iraq.

“Hey Family. I’ve finally made to Iraq. Luckily for us, there was no threat to our convoy. How is everyone doing? I wish I could be home for Jane’s graduation,” he wrote.

As his mother’s Crawford vigil entered its second week this week, bitter divisions emerged between her and the family of her husband, Patrick Sheehan, who has reportedly filed for divorce.

Asked by MSNBC host Chris Matthews why members of the Sheehan family had written a letter condemning her actions, Cindy said that they were all from her husband’s side of the family.

“We’re always been politically on different sides of the fence,” she said. “I have always been a Democrat and they have always been Republicans, so we’ve always had a good-natured kind of debate within that family.”

She said that her in-laws barely knew Casey.

“They barely had a relationship with him. They call him their beloved Casey. He was my hero before he was killed. I knew him so well,” she said.