The owner of Eastern Minerals left quite a legacy – and that legacy was built by a man whose word was his bond and who very badly wanted to do the right thing when it was necessary.
For many, many years Mr. Mahoney bore the brunt of serious efforts to dislodge him from his business and its place on Marginal Street. Some of those efforts were extreme.
Others less confident in themselves would have lashed out at their adversaries.
Not Mr. Mahoney.
He outlasted his adversaries – and he out gave them.
During the past decade and for many years before that, Eastern Minerals became the city’s most generous benefactor.
Mr. Mahoney preferred that his generosity go unnoticed and that it be taken for what it was – generosity.
It was a protocol that served him well. It is a protocol his children will carry on without question because it is what he would have wanted.
He was a common man with the uncommon talent for business.
Throughout a long life, he was as busy as a successful businessman could be.
Yet his first responsibility and love was his family and later in life, his grandchildren.
His wake at the Dolan Funeral Home in North Chelmsford revealed an enormous outpouring of emotion for him from the hundreds of friends and associates who attended it on Tuesday afternoon.
His children decorated the waking room and reception area with hundreds of photographs of Mr. Mahoney at different times in his life with his children and grandchildren and at his business sites all over the world.
None of them was more compelling than the obituary photograph we are running showing Mr. Mahoney in his bowler hat with the signature Macanudo cigar in his mouth – and the sparkling blue eyes filled with life and curiosity.
Those of us who knew him well, and who respected him because he always respected others, could see him raising a glass of wine in toast to his family at the Christmas table and reciting one of Yeat’s great poems:
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at all of you, and I sigh.
Our condolences go out to the Mahoney Family.