THE AMERICAN namesake of a Dundee primary school teacher gave a concert at Lawside Convent last night.

Around 18 months ago, Brackens primary teacher Gerry Dignan (49) decided to enter his name into the computer search engine Google to see how many other people have the same name and discovered one living near Chicago—they have been in regular Email contact ever since.

Chicago Gerry (51) is also a teacher, giving them something else in common, and a school trip from the US to Ireland provided an opportunity for the two to meet.

Chicago Gerry arrived in Dundee on Thursday.

An accomplished musician, he arrived at Brackens yesterday to meet his namesake’s pupils and perform some songs at the school.

Last night he performed a selection of music which he hoped would “lift the heart and soothe the soul.”

Dundee Gerry said, “When I put my name into Google I could never have imagined this would happen. I was hoping for a long distance communication at best—I never thought we’d meet.

“Meeting face to face has been really enjoyable and I hope we can do it again.

“We’re around the same age, we do the same job, so we’ve lots of things to keep us talking.”

Chicago Gerry said the friendship underlined the global power of the internet.

“Gerry contacted me out of the blue 18 months ago,” said Chicago Gerry.

“It’s been very nice to make a new friend and we’ve been keeping in touch via the internet.

“It was a really nice surprise and we’ve had many enjoyable conversations.

“I found we had a lot of things in common and our pupils have also been in touch with each other.

“It just shows how powerful a tool the internet can be.”