Copyright 2006 Boston Herald Inc.
By JOE FITZGERALD
The Boston Herald (Massachusetts)
Leave it to Dan Mahoney to find a firefighting connection to his confirmation class.
“Kids don’t read the way they used to,” the 76-year-old pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Charlestown observed. “It seems everything has to be seen on a video these days in order to be fully fathomed. We use them, too.
“But the basics, thank God, never change, so while I’m talking to our ninth-graders about the sacraments, I always get around to the four virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude.
“I tell them those are the qualities that make a good firefighter, but they’re also a foundation for building good character. No matter what your religion is, or even if you have no faith, those four virtues will always serve you well. That’s what I tell my classes, and what I tell probies, too.”
Probies, if you came in late, are firefighting trainees.
Mahoney, whose 50th anniversary as a parish priest will be formally celebrated next weekend, has spent 41 of those years as a Boston Fire Department chaplain, appointed in 1964 by the man who ordained him in 1956, Richard Cardinal Cushing.
“Fifty years,” he mused aloud, as if trying to process the enormity of it all. “I still remember Cardinal Cushing’s words that day. He told us, ‘There are two things to remember about being a priest; be prayerful and be present.’ I’ve tried to be both. Now here we are, 50 years later; it’s gone by in the blink of an eye.”
For the last 38 of those years, Mahoney, a Haverhill native, has been a fixture at St. Francis, revered throughout Charlestown where episodes of his ministry have become the stuff of local legend: crawling into the cab of a crushed truck to pray for its dying driver; rushing into a burning synagogue in hopes of saving its sacred Torah; personal checks discreetly delivered to local residents in need, not all of whom were Catholic.
But his tales invariably focus on others.
“The hardest part of my job is going to the home of a family to tell them they’ve lost their husband and father,” he said. “The second-hardest part is being with them at the hospital when the end comes.”
Back in 1999, Dick Murphy, 64, two months shy of retirement, suffered a fatal heart attack at Engine 42 in Egleston Square after returning from a call.
Soon, Mahoney was racing to Beth Israel Hospital.
“His wife Millie and all 11 of their kids were there, along with a cluster of firefighters,” he recalled. “Just moments after Dick went to be with God, one of his sons asked, ‘Father, can we have a prayer service?’ So right there in that family room on the fourth floor, just outside the cardiac care unit, we had a time of prayer, all 38 of us.
“Each was given an opportunity to offer his or her own petitions, and what I will never forget is how, in their moment of grief, I heard them praying for the safety of other firefighters. Oh, did that touch me. In the midst of all that sorrow I heard them praying for ALL members of the Boston Fire Department. I couldn’t help thinking, that might have been the best tribute of all to Dick, to have raised a family like that.”
Try talking to Mahoney about Mahoney and all you’ll get back will be stories about someone else.
So perhaps his story is best told by the inscription on the Dan Mahoney Fountain at the Firefighters Memorial Park in Sullivan Square, just down the hill from St. Francis. It notes the fountain’s appropriateness, symbolizing “the saving nature of water, the tool of the firefighter and the priest.”
Father Mahoney personifies the best of both.
Happy anniversary, padre.