April 5, 1934 – June 9, 2017. Passed peacefully in Windsor, California after a short battle with cancer. She was predeceased by her parents Helena & Jeremiah McCarthy (Ardagh, Bere Island), her brother Michael, and sisters Mary and Kay – Kay McGrory who passed away only 2 weeks before her. She was born on the family farm on an island in the southwest corner of Ireland called Bere Island. She grew up with a loving family attending school on the Island. While her brothers and sisters tended to stay closer to home she attended St. Mary’s College of Nursing in London and then went on to New York with other nursing friends to start her career. In 1965 she met the love of her life, Leon Pollinger, a NY Firefighter, and married him six months later. They settled in Bay Ridge Brooklyn sharing a two family house with Eileen Harrington (nee Sullivan) and her family, her best friend from the island and a fellow nursing student in London, and with whom she spent evenings (some not all) enjoying a vodka tonic discussing the day’s events and family back in Ireland at their dinner tables or on the front steps of the home. Eileen and Leon had two children, Eric and Tara, who they raised in this home and into whom they impressed their values of a strong family and the importance of education. Eileen never forgot her roots and worked each and every year so that the family could spend more than a month back in Ireland on the island where she had grown up. They had a home on the island, a collection of mobile homes, which they tinkered with and added to each year. Also, for 30 years, they ran a children’s sports day on the island which was the highlight of each trip and which impacted many young lives. Her career tended toward the care of the elderly as a private nurse and she would spend the later part of which working at Holy Family Home in Brooklyn. In the late nineties they retired and moved to Windsor, California, near to where their children had settled. It was there that she spent her remaining years, living on a property with her husband of 51 years, her daughter and her family, while caring for her many grand children and the dogs, cats, goats, chickens, sheep, and the occasional horse who also shared the property – all the while returning to Ireland each summer. She always surrounded herself with family and friends, was happiest when helping others, and will be missed by all who knew her. Eileen is survived by her husband Leon, children Eric and Tara, and grandchildren Sarah, Josh, Lauren, Cleo, Will, and Tian Li. She will be buried in Ireland, close to where she was born and to where her parents lie, following her funeral on July 15th at St. Michael’s Church, Ballinakilla, Bere Island Co. Cork Ireland (11AM).
