Obituary of John Begley

John (Sean) Begley

Born: October 4, 1926; Curragh View, County Kildare, Ireland

John Begley was born to Margaret Feely (one of 9 children from Kildare, Ireland) and Jack Begley (the eldest son of 16 or 17 children from Glenanaar, County Limerick, Ireland). His father’s family, John’s uncles included patriots whom fought and died for Ireland’s freedom and in the civil war that followed. He was one of three children along with his elder sister Ellen and younger sister Breeda. His father was a groom and trainer of race horses in Ireland and England. As a boy, John spent some summers around the family homestead at Glenanaar at the edge of Ardpatrick in southern Limerick. There he spent time with his uncles and aunts and created life-long ties to the Begley family. John’s father’s work resulted in the family moving from Ireland to England and back as the races moved seasonally. He attended school as a young boy in Limerick during the time McCourt wrote about in “Angela’s Ashes” and rebuked his account of the misery and quality of the education there. However, moving back and forth from Ireland to England and back made the Begley children outsiders in school in both countries. In Ireland for example, learning your subjects is compulsory in both English and Irish (Gaelic). John fell behind as he progressed due to time spent in England and frustrated the nuns with his determined refusal to learn Irish. However, this stubborn determination would serve him well later in life.

As the children grew to the young teenage years, the family found themselves at the beginning of the war with Germany living in England. Maggie, their mother, and a lovely woman, became sickly with very high blood pressure. Between her worsening illness and adding the stress of the German bombing, they had to return to Kildare in Ireland. There, John fell in love with a young girl and she wanted to eventually marry him. As she was the daughter of a wealthy doctor and John was from the lower working class, he knew that her family would never permit such a courtship which up until the end largely remained their secret. This also drove John’s determination through his life and fueled his desire to make something of himself despite his meager beginnings. Also, around this time, Peace didn’t save Maggie, for sadly she passed when John was about 13 or 14 around 1939 or 1940.

As the war progressed and work in Ireland was hard to find, many traveled to England to enlist or to work in heavy rescue retiring wounded from bombed buildings. John decided to leave his home in Ireland at 16 years of age and traveled up to Northern Ireland. After a short time there, he enlisted in Britain's Royal Air Force in 1943. He signed up to be a pilot, but at that time, there were sufficient numbers of pilots (thankfully as the mortality rates for RAF pilots was unfavorable). He served as an airplane mechanic and traveled to Scotland, Egypt, France and Malta – where he was stationed for two years. Malta was the staging ground for flights to Germany and was one of the most heavily bombed places in all of Europe by the German Luftwaffe due to its strategic importance to the Allied air attack.

After the war ended and John served his four years, he returned to Ireland where he worked for Pan American Airlines at Shannon Airport and lived with his mother’s sister’s family, the O’Dohertys in Limerick where he enjoyed great kindness. By then, his sisters had moved to London and John followed as he calculated his next path. He was determined to find opportunity in North America, with the hope that his sisters would join him. However, His younger sister Breeda fell in love with a fine lad and ex-sailor in the British navy during the war, William Hicks. Bill was a close friend who had spent leave in Malta with John, and his family lived in the same building where Ellen lived. The couple, seeking their own new beginning and opportunity attained a sponsor and immigrated to Australia. While John had similar plans to immigrate, but west rather than east. He was sad to see Breeda and Bill so far away as having his family and his lovely sister close by was very important to him.

So while Breeda and Bill immigrated to Australia for their new life, John immigrated to Canada, where he had difficulty gaining employment. Some doors were closed to him such as one of the country’s major department store in Toronto which at the time refused to hire Catholics. With his years of experience working on airplanes in and after the war, he applied to work at an engine manufacturer, but when he was only offered an apprenticeship, he walked away. So to make money he gained employment as a door to door encyclopedia salesman. He made good money at this but felt that many of his customers couldn’t even really afford the books he was selling, so he looked for other opportunities. Ultimately, he was unhappy in Toronto so he decided to take a trip down to New York City to see what it was like. He fell in love with the city.

Given John’s immigration status, he had to return to Toronto and then back to London in order to attain a visa and legally immigrate to the United States, which he did. He rented an apartment in the northern tip of Manhattan which was full of Irish at the time. Then, he coaxed his sister Ellen to immigrate as well and they shared an apartment. They convinced their father, Jack to come to America as well. Jack found work as a race horse groom and trainer and traveled to different parts of the US with the race circuit. John and Ellen and Jack lived together, though Jack was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. John adored his father and nursed and bathed him as his health failed and he weakened. Tragically, Jack lost his battle at 60 years old and succumbed in 1950 when John was just 24 years old.

In New York City, John set his mark and put his determined streak to work. He pursued his General Equivalency Diploma so he could attend college. He attended St. John’s University in Brooklyn and made friends with other Irishmen there. In order to pay for college on his own (the veteran GI Bill, which helped pay for college and help finance homes for so many in America did not apply for John as he was a member of a foreign military), John, worked multiple jobs. He applied for a low level position at Bankers Trust stating that he would “sweep the floors” if necessary. He was hired in the Trust Department doing whatever job was required, and with vigor and a smile. On weekends, he augmented that income intermittingly by waiting tables at Loraine Murphy’s restaurant in Manhasset on Long Island and driving a taxi.

He and his friends at St. John’s traveled in Irish circles and put on dances. They were advertised in the papers as the Healy, Begley and Murphy Dances. These lads were inseparable, and planned to continue to law school together and use the same trio namesake for their future law firm partnership name. They traveled up to East Durham, the Irish Alps in the Catskills in the summers, and one particular trip they booked in advance was at a dude ranch just north of East Durham. However, when they arrived at the “dude ranch”, they found just a pasture with a single horse tied to a post!

At one particular dance at New York’s Irish Arts Center, John spied a woman across the floor on a date with an acquaintance. At the end of the night he followed them outside and after the friend hailed a cab, opened the door for his date, walked around to the other side door to get in, John jumped into the cab next to the women. The friend yelled, “Begley, you wolf!”. It was love at first sight. After a relatively short courtship with Evelyn Cooney, who looked a bit like Grace Kelly, they were engaged to be married. They married on October 9, 1954.

John graduated from St. John’s in 1957. As planned, he started law school, but as it became more demanding, he decided to hand in his resignation at the bank. His boss, a man of Irish decent as well, had grown really fond of John due to his intelligence, attitude and unwavering work ethic. He said that he had some influence and may be able to get John into the executive training program. John responded by saying, “I thought only rich men’s sons were accepted into the executive training program.” John was an exceptional exception. John saw that this was a significant opportunity and so he quit law school and joined the bank’s junior executive ranks in 1955. He attended the American Institute of banking and the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration. John would rise and remain at Bankers Trust Company for 15 years, before moving on to another bank, Irving Trust Company where he would remain for 17 years until the bank was acquired by Bank of New York when he was 63 years old. He took on the Chief Credit Officer of an Israeli bank named United Mizrahi Bank where he retired at the age of 67 due to absence caused by an accident while on vacation which left him hospitalized for several months.

Following John’s marriage all through his career, his world changed with just two halves, his work, which included many colleagues and clients which became his only regular active friends, and his family. There was no room for anything else. John and Evelyn moved into an apartment on Vermilyea Avenue near the northern tip of Manhattan in the Inwood area. At the time this area was thick with Irish immigrant families. There, they had their first child and son John Jr in 1955, their second child and son Dermot in 1957, their third child and first daughter, Deirdre in 1960. They would then move to the suburbs on Long Island, where they bought their first house in Farmingdale in around 1962. There, they had their fourth child and third son, Neil in 1963, and their fifth child and second daughter, Oona in 1968. In 1971, they all moved to a brand new home in Fort Salonga. During its construction, they visited it weekly to observe its progress. They were happier in Fort Salonga with the additional space, though the cherished regular visits, the shared Thanksgivings and Christmas holidays, became less frequent with Evelyn’s sister’s family also in Farmingdale, the Walters, due to the increased distance. John sacrificed a four hour daily round trip commute for that larger home and property for his large family which had outgrown their home in Farmingdale.

John’s career flourished at Irving Trust, working at 1 Wall Street, Rockefeller Plaza and other locations. He brought his children in to work regularly on St. Patrick’s day. John even got the family dog, a golden retriever puppy from a client that couldn’t keep it and kept it in the bank vault all day until he returned home with it! At the same time, the kids grew and went to college which John saved and sacrificed for years, and all went on to work. John was even able to help Deirdre, Neil and Oona find their first jobs in the city through his many business friends and connections.

In the early 1980s, John and Evelyn purchased a condo in the Plantation Golf and Tennis Club Venice Florida, where they vacationed and the family occasionally gathered for a few holidays. Later, they sold the family Fort Salonga home in 1989, and rented a new condo in Commack. They loved Florida and the Plantation so much that place to design and build a home in the Plantation. When John had an accident there in 1993 while on vacation, he had an extended hospital stay which forced his retirement at 67. At that point, John made the plantation their full-time home.

In 1998, Evelyn lost her fight with cancer suddenly. John sold their house and moved into a condo locally. After a year, he decided to return to Long Island and bought a townhome in Manhasset where he and Deirdre lived for 16 years until he moved into a new Townhouse in Westhampton Beach in 2016. A few years after moving to Manhasset, John met Anne Francavilla of Hampton Bays in around 2001. Intrigued by her business sense in real estate in the Hamptons and her very active life they became close companions, shared vacations, weekends and many memories together and with both the Begley and Francavilla families (and Neil’s in-laws, the Pinatas of course!). They traveled to Italy, other places, and were very active which together which with healthy living and rigorous exercise (did 2 miles a day on the treadmill right up to April of 2018), was John’s fountain of youth up until his sudden death on June 29, 2018.

We adored him, he was our hero and best friend. We weren’t though with him yet, but Gods will be done.

John is survived by his five children; John Jr. and Susan Begley of Northport, New York; Dermot and Lisa Begley of Jupiter Florida; Deirdre of Westhampton Beach, New York; Neil and Catherine Begley of Plandome New York; and Oona and Thomas Cree of Dorsett, Vermont; eleven grand-children: Rory, Kate, Devin, Ryan, Cheyenne, Caitlin, Tyler, Fiona, Shayla, Finuala, and Orlaith; and his companion Anne Francavilla.