Instead, his uncle put him to work at the Carlyle, one of New York's most prestigious Upper East Side hotels.

For the next 56 years he donned a bell captain's uniform to meet some of the world's most celebrated figures.

Last month, having accumulated a lifetime of iconic anecdotes, he hung up his uniform.

"I was hoping I wouldn't meet anyone important, " he said, recalling his first day at work, "when who came out of the elevator only Harry Truman."

The teenager thought it fair to warn the former president about the photographers waiting outside.

"I better give them a good walk, " said the mischievous Truman, who enjoyed a long daily march. Carlyle lore tells how he got back to the hotel and ordered Old Grand-Dad bourbon.

"If you had to walk 15 blocks with those guys following you, " he said to the bartender, "you'd drink this too."

The Carlyle was a quiet alternative for America's wealthy in the early '50s. It was built two decades earlier as a residential hotel to provide "freedom from the servant problem".

When the campaigning John F Kennedy began to visit in the late '50s things perked up. Rooms were booked solid with prominent ambassadors, politicians, celebrities and royalty. "When Kennedy stayed there the lobby was always crowded, " said O'Connell. "He never left without talking to everyone."

In November 1963 the president waded through the usual crowd and said, "See you in a couple of weeks."

Two days later a local shopkeeper ran into the hotel and announced he was dead. "People came out of the dining room, dumbstruck, " said O'Connell, his voice shaking.

One rainy day, Gary Cooper tried to skip the queue of guests waiting hopefully for a cab: "Michael I really need a taxi, " he whispered. The bell captain called his friend Mike Farrell, who had a beat-up Caddy and grand aspirations to own a limo company.

Farrell was a few blocks away so O'Connell grabbed an umbrella and walked the celebrity fare to him.

From then on, Cooper called Farrell when he needed an NYC driver and today the Irishman owns 90 limos.

In the early '80s, Elizabeth Taylor moved into the hotel during her first Broadway role in The Little Foxes. On her way back from a brief hospital stay she noticed a sign the construction workers had erected on a building opposite the hotel: "Liz you're a helluva lady." She had lunch sent from the Carlyle for all of them.

The bell captain was happiest to see Irish guests. After lunch with Indira Gandhi during the UN General Assembly, Taoiseach Jack Lynch came to the lobby for a chat. "It was great to feel that connection to home, " he remembered fondly.

James Cagney stayed at the Carlyle during the making of The Terrible Joe Moran. Cagney was confined to a wheelchair having suffered a stroke so O'Connell met him every morning, sneaked him past the photographers and pushed him to set. Cagney owned a farm and had a particular fondness for Galway so they swapped stories about family, farming and Ireland.

Now O'Connell's easy banter with American icons has come to an end.

The 76-year old instead spends his time with his six children and two grandchildren in a rare Brooklyn neighbourhood where families still gather on stoops, children play on the street and the block resounds with the familiar chime of Angelus bells.