John Flanagan's Eulogy

This is a story of a man named John Flanagan

also known as Jack to family and friends

My dad was born in 1925 in Glasgow, Scotland the third of four children. His dad died when he was two. He lived in the rough part of town growing up trying to stay out of trouble, going to Catholic school with nuns, not that would have kept him out of trouble.

In Scotland during those times, you finished school at the age of 14 and went to work. When he was 14, it was the beginning of World War 2. He got a job in the shipyards working on ships for the war effort.

At the age of 25 he left Scotland and move to Canada where he met our mom during a dance, which of course he had brought a different date to. But he ended up dating mom for 2-3 years and they married in 1955.

After marriage, dad found work in Detroit where my older brother Harry and sisters Anne and Pat were born. After a few years there was talk among mom and dad about moving to Australia where mom has a sister, but several friends had moved to Los Angeles and they figure it was on the way, so they pack up their stuff and moved to LA, our mom flying with my sisters, and our older brother Harry and dad driving.

Now if you know our dad, he was not always the best at directions and there is an hour long story on how he once drove to the union meeting which was just a few miles away. So I’m not quite sure how our dad and brother made it to LA, maybe our brother was the navigator, of course he was only 4 at the time.

Once in LA, mom and dad saved up for the first house and moved to Redondo Beach, and then me and my younger sister Theresa came along.

When I was two, our brother passed away in bicycle accident on his way home from school.

After that emotional time, mom and dad move to another house across town in South Redondo where our brother Joseph was born.

After a few years with seven of us in a 3 bedroom 1 bath house, we move to Torrance to Sara Drive, to a 4 bedroom 2 bath house.

My dad retired in 1988 at the age of 62

In 1994, mom and dad moved to their final home in New Horizons retirement community.

So now you know the steps he took to get here, here are some of the stories of our dad and our family

Let’s start with who we are. My mom was born in Greenock, Scotland in 1927, only 20 miles away from our dad. By the way, her accent is completely different than our dads. Most either understood my mom or my dad but usually not both. As a family, we have the oldest, Anne who has been married to John Yenny (the Saint) for 23 years (he is called the saint mainly for loving and marrying my sister), then we have Patricia who is married to Michael Leighton for 22 years, then myself and my wife Ronda married for 20 years, and then comes Theresa and her husband Peter who has been married for 11 years, and last is our brother Joseph with his wife Julie who have been married for 12 years.

Our mom and dad have a total of 15 grandkids, with the oldest at 21 and the youngest at less than 2. One of the things our dad always wanted was a soccer team of grandkids; of course after 11 my dad stated that his soccer team needed some substitutes. And that is what he got.

I believe where we started to become the family that we are today, started in the Sara Drive house, not to take anything away from before that time but this is where we grew together into the close family we are today. I use to think that we were a normal family where everyone gets a long and wants to be together, hang out and be the first to call when you are going to have a bbq or party. As we have gotten older we have realized that most families are not like ours, we are a little ab-normal, we are different, and family is the first phone call when anything is going on. We believe that this is the way it should be and we believe this is a testament to both our mom and dad and how they raised us. I believe that it all started with our parents, they believed in taking vacations together at least once a year somewhere-anywhere. Whether it was the local mountains, Canada on the west coast, Canada on the east coast, or Scotland for family and friends, we went somewhere. This continues today where about this time every year we start the discussions on where to go next year. The reason we start during the thanksgiving meal is that there are so many of us now, all of us go on these adventures for at least one week every year, together, whether we meet close or we drive to Colorado like we did this last year to be together and to enjoy each other for what we are and who our parents made us.

Vacations

On these adventures with my mom and dad, we always came home with stories that have lasted a lifetime. Some of these stories include the time in Yosemite where a black bear came up on the deck of the cabin that our mom and dad were sitting on relaxing with each other’s company.

Our dad saw the bear and ran into the house politely pushing mom to the side to get out of his way and shutting the door before mom could even move, leaving mom out on the deck with the bear.

Or the time when he went on a hike by himself leaving in the morning with a small backpack for the entire day. Once the late afternoon came and dad was not back, mom decided to send some of us out on a searching party. We found him walking up the road and he told us of tales of hiking to the top of Wawona point.

Later that night we all went down to the Wawona hotel for an after dinner drink; as we walked through the bar and past several men, I believe they were the local rangers and firefighters for the Yosemite Park, they all looked at our dad and said “Hey Jack”. After we sat down, we all ask dad how they knew him. Of course the truth came out, the tales of hiking turned into tales of hanging out with these men all day at a bbq drinking a few beers and playing horseshoes about a mile from the cabin that we were staying in. These family vacations have taken all of us together all over the western US from Yosemite to Yellowstone, from Big Sir to Estes Park in Colorado.

Growing up in Torrance

As we got older living in Torrance at the Sara house, us kids would bring home friends, and then later boyfriends and girlfriends. As our friends entered the house, they would meet our mom and dad. The funny thing, most people couldn’t understand a thing they were saying with their Scottish accent. So as dad would ask a simple question like “What’s your name?” the friend couldn’t understand what he was saying so they would just stand there with a smile or just say a yes or no. Our dad’s next question depending on what the friend answered was something like “You’re not real bright are you” of course this would make your friend again say yes.

This of course would just make my dad tease the friend more and more. I believe this is where my dad just started to call the friend, boyfriend or girlfriend whatever named he pleased. This was the way you truly became one of the Flanagan family, you got a new name from dad. Boyfriends and girlfriends were never referred to by the correct name, even after they became sons and daughters when they married into the family. There were also special names to us kids like “Fat Nan the Boxer” or maybe “Teeny Fatroon”.

All of the time, this was just our dad’s fun.

Our dad had a way in turning everything into fun. Whether this was telling long winded jokes like “You know my brothers a cripple” or how he would go on about how he went to his union meeting, he was all fun with us. He would just sometimes mess with us. Once he told us to meet him at a local establishment in Hawaii during a Thanksgiving vacation and called it “The House of the Three Brothers”. He told us when to meet him and our mom and how to get there. When we did it, it was called some Hawaiian name but out in front there was a sign talking about the live band “Now playing the The Thomson Trio”

Now of course we walked around for a while and then realize that band had the three brothers and this was the place he was talking about “the House of Three Brothers”.

Our dad was a great singer; he could sing almost any kind of song. One of his favorites was “Please release me let me go”. One of the songs he got stuck on for a while was a song by Rod Stewart in the late 70s and early 80s. He would walk around the house singing “Do you think I’m sexy and you want my body”. He would be singing this song and trying to snap his fingers as he sang, sometimes with his shirt off after mowing the lawns.

Now this might not be the prettiest site, but to us, it just cracked us up.

Our dad was also a handyman, one of those guys you could call with a problem and he could solve it. I remember working here on a job with my dad in this Nativity church. Of course this came with the statement to me that “I need you for a 5 minute Job” For dad, a 5 minute job usually took close to all day. We spent many of 5 minute Saturdays in this church only to come back for another hour on Sunday for mass.

Dad would always help out the all of our houses that we moved into, whether pouring slabs of concrete for steps, hanging pictures, fixing pluming, or just hanging out in front of the house with a beer in his hand waiting for one of us to get home.

The last few years before dad retired from work, when gas prices were high, dad bought a moped. He would drive it every day to work so my mom could have the car. And him being a handyman, once when his brakes started to squeak, what does a handyman use, WD-40. Of course WD-40 is oil, so now the brakes didn’t squeak anymore, but the brakes didn’t work anymore ether.

I found out the hard way with my dad asking me to “test drive” the “new improved” brakes on his moped.

Being a handyman, you need stuff. Of course sometimes this meant when he came by my work he would look around to see items he needed, and a joke one of my friends would always say was to keep those hands in your pockets, I want to see those pockets before you leave.

Once our parents moved into New Horizons, or dad would call it Lost Horizons, he became the local handyman. He became the fix it man. People would call with a small problem and dad would fix it, sometimes getting a payment in his favorite beverage.

Because New Horizons is fairly large, after a while, dad bought a scooter to cruise around in. This scooter became another memory for the grandkids in which they got to ride the scooter, racing through the complex, honking the horn, and having fun with their granddad.

I have been told by my brothers and sisters that I was the special one with dad, not sure if that meant that I belonged on the short bus or not, but we were all special with dad. We were all special, all of us in different ways; this is including all of the in-laws, grandkids, all of his friends and his kids’ friends and neighbors old and new.

All of us have a special relationship with dad. He was a wonderful husband for my mom, a father to us kids including all of our friends.

He was one of the good guys, always happy and stirring a small pot of fun.

There is a recent song that has come out and part of it goes “God is Great, Beer is good. I think if there is a easy way to describe my dad is he is somewhere in between these two.