Kate and I wrote this song with the Mooney family.
She finally caught her breath, in the fields of Carolina,
bound for Orlando on the Silver Meteor
Left from Pennsylvania Station, with her sister Mary,
cheap clutching the letter from the boy she met at St. Jerome’s
At 100 miles an hour, everything but the horizon is blur
But she took courage in his words and she agreed she wasn’t keen on waiting out the war
Flying blind, flying blind
He’d gone to city college, signed his name up with the Navy
Learned to fly Black Widows over the Gulf of Mexico
He left a girl in New York City, who promised him she’d wait for him
But there’s little comfort in the waiting when you’re on the brink of war
Three hundred miles an hour, in moonless midnight cockpit, and all that he could think about was a girl
So he sent a letter back to the Bronx, tucked a poem inside it, and told her he wasn’t too keen on waiting out the war
There’s something reckless, ‘bout the Irish, when it comes to love and dreaming
They’re not afraid as, they should be, when it comes to what they believe in
Grampa never wrote another poem after the war, put his medals in box when he got back to his wife in ’45
But they made sure they, built a family, not afraid flying blind.
When his oldest son told him, that she had said yes. He yelled “Thank God, my son is saved”
He jumped up on the bar to sing Danny Boy, and the piano played
Now his grandson has his name, like his father did before him, and it’s the proudest thing that he owns
They carry memories of playing catch in Jersey, the Jets and Yankees and eating grandma’s cake out on the porch.
There’s something reckless, ‘bout the Irish, when it comes to love and dreaming
They’re not afraid as, we should be, when it comes to what we believe in
Grampa never wrote another poem after the war, put his medals in box when he got back to his wife in ’45
But they made sure they, built a family, not afraid flying blind.
Not afraid of flying blind, flying blind