From Savannah to Georgia: Love, Loss, and a New Family

Billy Galligan - Author

Welcome to the show everybody, and it’s really something I have been thinking about for over a year and here it finally is.! I'm Billy Galligan. I need to start with a confession: if you had told me twelve years ago, when I was a fifty-year-old fella living in Dublin, that I'd end up in Tucker, Georgia, driving a forty-foot yellow school bus and raising three beautiful kids... well, I would have told you to go home and sleep it off. But here we are.

Billy Galligan - Author

It all started because of a drum, a kilt, and a bit of luck. Back in March of 2001, I was in Savannah, Georgia, playing drums with the Irish Air Corps Pipe Band for the St. Patrick's Day festival. The city was this electric, beautiful sea of green under the Spanish moss. After our set, I was sitting near one of the squares, catching my breath with my drum resting beside me, when this brilliant woman named Leanne walked up. We started chatting, and there was this instant, comfortable connection. But reality is a cold shower, isn't it? Within days, I was flying back across the Atlantic, and she was living her life in Georgia.

Billy Galligan - Author

For thirteen years, we kept a digital bridge alive. Emails, birthday cards, Christmas cards, and eventually, these long, late-night transatlantic phone calls. Then, in 2014, Leanne was reflecting on turning forty and she said to me, "Billy, I sometimes wonder... what if the ocean wasn't in the way?" And without a single second's hesitation, I just said, "Then I will move." Now, you can't just uproot a life based on phone calls, so in February 2015, I flew to Atlanta for an exploratory visit. I even found this Irish pub in Decatur called Mac McGee's, run by a lad from just outside Dublin. It felt like a tiny anchor in a massive new ocean.

Billy Galligan - Author

We applied for the K-1 fiancé visa, and in July 2015, at about two-thirty in the morning my time, just as I was getting ready for my security shift at Dublin Airport, our approval emails pinged simultaneously. When Leanne flew over to Ireland to celebrate, I planned a trip to Trinity College in Dublin. Right there in the hallowed silence of the Long Room, surrounded by centuries of ancient books under that massive barrel-vaulted ceiling, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife. She said yes, and by November, I had packed my life and my loyal Border Collie, Lassie, and moved to Georgia. We were married on December 20th, 2015.

Billy Galligan - Author

But if we thought we were going to ease into married life, the universe had other plans. Not long after, we got a call from the Department of Family and Children Services. They had a newborn baby boy named Carter who needed a foster home. But then came the twist: Carter had two older biological siblings, Kaylee and Calvin, who also needed placement. Suddenly, we went from a quiet household of two to a chaotic, bustling home of five. Leanne and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and uttered the phrase that has defined my entire life: "Sure, why not?" We finalized the adoption of all three in April 2021.

Billy Galligan - Author

Now, to support this instant family, I ended up driving Gwinnett County School Bus 2538 -- what I affectionately call my yellow chariot of chaos. And people often ask me, "Billy G, how do you handle fifty screaming school kids behind you without losing your mind?" Well, the truth is, I've spent my whole life training for it.

Billy Galligan - Author

Before the bus, I had a twenty-three-year career in the Irish Defence Forces, and before that, I worked as a porter on the Irish railways. When you're seventeen years old working the Dublin to Belfast line during the height of the Troubles, you learn diplomacy. You learn to read a room, de-escalate tension with a quiet word, and stay neutral. And when I was a military photographer, documenting UN peacekeeping missions in places like Kosovo and Liberia, I learned to observe the tiniest details. When I'm driving my route, navigating tight turns, or resolving a backseat argument over a soccer trading card, I'm using those exact same skills.

Billy Galligan - Author

But the toughest detour we ever had to navigate didn't happen on the road. In December 2024, just before Christmas, Leanne got a callback after her annual mammogram. The wait over the holidays was excruciating. In January, we sat in a quiet consultation room at Northside Hospital, and the doctor told us, "It is breast cancer." The world just seemed to freeze. I gripped her hand, and we decided right then that we'd face it together.

Billy Galligan - Author

We went home and had the hardest conversation of our lives, telling the kids. Kaylee was crying, asking if her mum was going to die. Calvin was trying to be the strong teenager. Carter wanted to know if his toy dinosaurs could help fight the bad cells. We held them close and told them we had a plan. And then, we got some incredible news from the complete pathology report: it was Grade One, slow-growing, and chemotherapy wasn't needed. But because of extensive calcifications in both breasts, Leanne decided on bilateral surgery to tackle it all at once.

Billy Galligan - Author

The surgery in mid-January 2025 went beautifully, and our Tucker community absolutely rallied around us. Our friend Trudy set up a meal train that filled our porch with lasagnas and chicken pot pies. Leanne spent February recovering with incredible grit, and by March, she completed three weeks of daily radiation. Through it all, we took it one small victory at a time. It makes you realize that the most meaningful destinations in life aren't the ones you plan for -- they're the ones you reach when you're brave enough to just say, "Sure, why not?" Safe travels, everyone.