5/29/08

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The Cardinal said he prayed the Rosary with him not long before he died. In the course of the eulogy, the Cardinal said Mr. Flatley had been afflicted with the debilitating disease that took his life for two years.
The Cardinal began by offering his condolences to Mrs. Flatley and the rest of the family.
“We are here above all to pray for Tom. That is what he would want,” the Cardinal said.
“Tom Flatley certainly embodied the injunction of St. Ignatius of Loyola who said: ‘Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you.’
“Some people might try to define Tom Flatley by his wealth, but those of us who know and love him realize that it is his faith in God and his love for his family that define him.
“It is hard to imagine anyone with a stronger work ethic or a stronger faith. One of Tom’s foremen, commenting on Tom’s involvement in whatever work was being done, said Tom did not consider any work below him. If there was a paper cup on the lawn in front of a building, and Mr. Flatley got to it before you did, you were going to have a bad day. Tom Flatley could be demanding, but he was most demanding on himself. He was a simple man in his taste and lifestyle eschewing any pomp and pretense. Tom was a man with a clear vision of life, a profound faith and passionate love for what really mattered to him: his family, his Church, his community, his work, his native Ireland, his adopted country, the countless causes he supported to make this world a better place.
“He never lost sight of the fact that we are in this world on a temporary visa and at the end of our sojourn we get to go home. In Tom’s case, it was a ‘work visa.’
“In today’s society, nothing could be considered more tragic than to amass great wealth and achieve the highest success and then to die. Tom, on the other hand, was a believer. Tom knew life is not a dress rehearsal; he lived it to the fullest.
“He knew that death is a part of the journey homeward, that ‘life is not ended but changed.’ Jesus teaches us that death is like a grain of wheat that falls to the earth and dies and then comes forth in abundant new grain. Jesus describes death as His returning to fetch us and take us back to the Father with Him. St. Francis speaks of Sister Death who leads us to God.”
The Rev. Peter Casey, pastor of St. Agatha Church, was one of concelebrants of the Mass. Several dozen members of the clergy participated in the service. The Rev. William McCarthy, founder of Father Bill’s Shelter in Quincy, was among those celebrating the Mass.
Marvin Gordon, president of the Fuller Village board of directors, credits Mr. Flatley with being responsible for the existence of that senior complex. He said, “Tom Flatley was absolutely critical to the existence of Fuller. Everyone knows that he and I worked to gain the financial support of all the institutions in town—the hospital, the Archdiocese, the churches.”
He said Mr. Flatley was the key reason the state Attorney General’s office decided to award the project to the local group rather than to a major healthcare developer who was bidding against the local group.
“He liked to do things anonymously,” Gordon said. Last year when a series of buildings at Fuller were named in honor of local individuals, Mr. Flatley refused to allow his name to be part of the program.
“I feel like I’ve lost a brother,” Gordon said.
“He was an extremely generous man.” He said that often Mr. Flatley refused to allow his contributions to be made public and added that much of what he knows he cannot talk about because he had promised he would keep the secrets.
He did say he knew Mr. Flatley had donated extensively to healthcare clinics in underdeveloped countries.
“I learned more from him about business and about using judgment having tea with him at Bruegger’s once a week than I did in two years at Harvard Business School,” Gordon said.
Selectman John Shields said he “was a force of nature.”
Shields, who won election to the board last year with the support of Mr. Flatley, said he had learned an incredible amount from the man who received his own education “in the school of hard knocks.”
“I reported directly to Tom Flatley when I worked for him,” Shields said. “I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from him. Just being with him for 10 minutes you would learn something. He was two steps ahead of everybody else.”
Shields pointed out Mr. Flatley had helped make the community work.
Mr. Flatley donated money to renovate the old Howard Johnson mansion into a temporary school administration building during the construction stage of the town’s school building project. The building was eventually torn down to make way for the second phase of Fuller Village.
Ed Baker, Milton Times sports editor, met Mr. Flatley in the late 1970s at the health club at the Sheraton Tara. Mr. Flatley owned the facility back then and worked out at the club on a regular basis.
“His death is a loss to Milton,” Baker said.
“He was a real competitor in sports just like he was in business. He liked to compete in games better than he liked to watch sports. He played tennis three or four times a week.
“We played in the Falmouth Hospital tennis tournament. He was a good tennis player even up to two years ago.
“He used to run races or I would see him on the Cape riding his bike alone on roads where there was not much traffic. He liked the isolation.” –PD