Funeral Mass Eulogies

Delivered by Lee Ann Carmody

From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for coming to say good bye to George. I have always known that he had many, many friends. The outpouring of love, support and compassion that my family has witnessed in the past week has been overwhelming. It has warmed our hearts in a way that is indescribable, and has been permanently etched in our minds and hearts. We will be forever grateful to all of you. There could not be a better testament to the man I am so very proud to call my brother and my father is so very proud to call his son.

I know that some of you might be shocked to be at an event that George is actually on time for, but luckily for us, the limo did not break down and we did not need an EZ Pass and clearly oversleeping was not an issue for him today.

Six months ago, when I sat down to write my mom’s eulogy, I thought it was the toughest and most important thing I ever had to do. Sadly , I was mistaken. However, the easy part is that I do not have to paint a picture of George for you. Each and every one of you have not only an overall image of the kind of man my brother was, but an intimate understanding of him just because you were his friend.

I always thought that George and my mother were very different types of people, and in some respects they certainly were—I would say that George’s life was a tad more shall we say “colorful” than my mom’s. However, in the most important ways, they were so very similar. My mother was beautiful inside and out, and those who knew her could certainly attest to that. My mother remembered everything. If it was important to you, it became important to my mother and it was committed to her memory forever. My brother George is exactly the same way—beautiful , actually stunningly handsome on the outside, and even more importantly, magnificently beautiful on the inside. So very many people have come up to me over this past week and told me not only did he remember what drink George knew to serve them at Rocky’s, but also and more importantly, he remembered family members, events and just about anything that they had ever discussed with George. My mother was always a lady and my brother was always a gentleman.

George had a way of making everyone feel important—and to him, everyone was. He had a heart of gold and was generous beyond words. From the homeless man on the street, who George always gave a few bucks to, to the cab driver who he tipped $15 for a $5 cab ride, to the guy who made the best pizza in Brooklyn (you know I mean you Omar), to his employees, to his customers at the bar, to his customers that he sometimes had to escort out of the bar, to the waitress who served him dinner, to his delivery men, to the local dignitaries, to friends and family members. For him it was simple and natural—he treated everyone the same way—with respect—all of the time.

To say he was a people person is an understatement. To say ” he would give you the shirt off of his back” was no exaggeration. His dear friend Elo, (Matt to me) just last week told me a story about a trip he and George made to a Jets game (sorry I can’t remember to where). While they were walking into the stadium George removed his Jets jersey and put it on Elo. When Elo said, now you don’t have a shirt he said “yeah, yeah, its all good, I wanted to get another one anyway.” That was George.

Every conversation I had with my brother began exactly the same way, the same way “Hello, it’s your brother—everything is OK” (even when it wasn’t) and ended the same way “it’s all good—love ya”. George never wanted to burden us with his troubles and in the rare times he did, I know it was so very difficult for him. He never wanted to be a burden to anyone—ever.

I’d like to take a moment to talk about what it was like having George as a brother. For as far back as I can remember, we hardly argued and there was little drama. However, I must admit, even at a very early age I was a little jealous of him. He was the handsome, really smart brother with the great tan and blonde hair—which I might add, turned brown and wavy when puberty set in—he got curls and I got hips and pimples. I guess when he was around 8 or 9 and I was 13 or 14 and my teenage girl hormones kicked in and I began a prank that is very vivid in my mind and lasted for quite a while. One day, I very matter-of-factly said to him, you know George, you were adopted. It’s not like mommy and daddy don’t love you, it’s just that you were adopted. I told him we all had brown hair, and at the time he had blonde hair. My mother would yell at me, telling me to stop teasing him and I did, for a while anyway. Every once in a while, the adoption story reared its ugly head. One day, my dad had to take George to little league registration—an event which required a birth certificate. We just talked about this story recently and my dad remembered how closely George studied his birth certificate. Oh, of course I told him that was fake too.

Even when he was little, he’d come home from school and if he had a test that day, my mom would ask how it was. His answer was always “cinchy”—and to him it was. George was always a reader and to this day still is. Not much in the way of décor in his apartment, but there are loads and loads of books and magazines, all of which he made time to read. He is by far the most intelligent person I have ever known. Wish I could have gotten him on Jeopardy.
We had great summers at the Point in Gerritsen Beach, a big group of kids playing together all day, fishing, dragging, swimming. We had fun visits to my grandma’s house in Port Richey Florida every Easter, where we fished and swam off of her dock every day. George had a love for the water and the beach and for fishing which has lasted throughout his entire life. In fact, he was supposed to have been fishing on Monday—how I wish that plan had come to fruition.

As I stated earlier, George was the smart brother—”really smart”—but NEVER, NEVER a smartass. I’ve had many conversations over this past week with friends who were amazed at his knowledge about so many different topics and let’s not forget his rainman-esque talent of memorizing sporting events, athletes, dates and scores. All effortlessly tucked away in his brain until someone needs to know how many passes Bob Griese completed in the 1972 Miami v. Jets game in Miami.

Second to his love of people was his love of sports (although I think his love of sports sometimes interfered with his love of people, particularly his girlfriends). I always say it takes chutzpa to be a Mets Fan AND A Jets Fan AND A Rangers Fan—and boy did that man have chutzpa and eternal optimism! One of the things on MY bucket list was that HE got to see the Jets in a Superbowl. To his buddies that he tailgated with and shared seats with and traveled all over the world with, know that those were many of the happiest times of his life. Keep the faith boys!

My dad was his hero and he absolutely adored everything about my mom. He marveled at the way my father could build or fix anything and admired that fact that he was the best fisherman ever and never hesitated to ask for his advice. My mother was always a great comfort to him—physically with a great dinner and emotionally when he needed some cheer and motherly love. He was forever grateful for both of them for never judging and always supporting him. They shaped him into the amazing human being he became, except for the tardy part—that was all George—my parents were never late for anything—ever. In addition to his love for my parents, I know how much he loved his nieces and how very proud he always was of them. Like my mom, who very rarely bragged, he never shrugged off the opportunity to speak about Jillian and Elizabeth when asked, and just like my mom, sometimes even when he wasn’t asked.

My brother’s life was way too short and I still can’t really believe that he is gone. However he lived a life that many, even if they lived to be 100, would never experience. He lived his life larger-than-life and on his own terms. He was not a wealthy man when it came to his finances, but if you could measure his wealth in terms of his friendships, his humanity, his love, his spirit, and his passion, he was by far the wealthiest man I’ve ever known and that, as we so very well know, is what was most important of all to George.

Keep your precious memories and stories about George close to your heart and smile. He is in a place where there is no stress, no financial burdens, no broken down cars and he will be reunited with friends like Brian, Teddy, Tommie, to name a few, and with my mom, who will keep them all in line.

As you leave today, I know you are filled with sadness and pain. We all are. However, look around as I have, and feel the love in this church, the love at the Funeral home and the love at the hospital.

It is rare, it is real, it is wonderful and it is George.

God bless and thank you, from the bottom of my heart for being George’s “people” and for coming today.

I now turn this over to a real writer, George’s dear friend Eddie Conlon.

Delivered by Edward Conlon

There are hundreds of people who lost their best friend last week. All of them—all of us—have so many stories about George. The problem is that the best ones can’t be told in church. Don’t get me wrong, Father, he was an absolute gentleman and as true a Christian as I’ve ever met. Let’s just say that if there never was a patron saint of Slip-and-Slides before, there’s one now.

Still, there are more than a few I can tell here. Tony Quinn told me this one: “I met him June 19th, 1993, at the Old Shebeen in Montauk. He was on the door as a bouncer, but I didn’t know him. After the bar closed, a few of us were on the deck in the back of the bar. A water fight ensued. At the end of it—around 6 am—I was sitting there, shivering. George saw me, and went and found a huge Aran sweater, from where I’ve no idea. That began a twenty-four year friendship.”

Jenny Monahan told me she’d been dating Brian since they were sixteen, but they were young, and they’d broken up a lot. One summer, when they were maybe twenty and on hiatus, Brian called her up and said, “You know, I met this great guy, George, he’s an absolute riot. We should hang out sometime.” Jenny said she never stopped laughing that night. George was the third wheel that led to a long and happy marriage.

Rocky Sullivan’s might have been the only bar in New York City where people from the projects and the precincts were completely at home. Rachel Fitzgerald told me George used to let homeless people in before he opened, to get them something to eat. He gave them towels and soap, and a place to wash up.

There was so much life in George. It’s so hard to let him go, so hard to make sense of his going. Mike McGrath told me about when he was driving a cab—he was the last New York cabbie who sounded like the cabbie in a Humphrey Bogart movie—and he took a fare to Newark airport in a snowstorm. The car skidded into the oncoming lane, where it was hit by a truck, which sent it back into the first lane, where it was hit by another truck. The second truck sent it back into the other lane, where it was hit by another car. The cab was crushed to nothing, and cops had to cut George and his fare out. Both of them were fine. After the other cabbies saw the wreck, they kept on touching him, for luck. Even when I saw him in the hospital last Wednesday, I thought, “You know, I’ve seen him look worse.”

There wasn’t anybody more loyal, more generous, more kind, more fun to be around. He always had your back. If he loved you, he told you. Often. He had a genius for friendship. If there was a Nobel Prize for Friendship, he’d have won it. If friendship was an Olympic sport, he’d have more golds than Michael Phelps, who would have drowned trying to keep up with him.

Someone once told me about George and another one of his pals—Oisin from Paddy’s—“If you locked the two of them in a room with a tennis ball and a case of beer, it’d be twenty four hours before they knew they were locked in a room.”

I remember going out to Montauk with him, maybe twenty-five years ago. We got coffee in the morning, and the waitress knew him, so she wouldn’t charge us. George gave a ten-dollar tip, which meant she had to give us egg sandwiches or something, which meant he had to tip more, and it went back and forth. This was a guy who could have bought a steak dinner with what a free cup of coffee cost him.

Another time—this was in the late 90’s—we went to Puerto Rico with a bunch of cops from my precinct. I picked him up in Bay Ridge on the way to the airport. He wasn’t awake when I got there, and he rushed to pack. I think we were already in San Juan when he realized he left his cash in an envelope on his kitchen table. He had his wallet—he needed his license to get on the plane—but he didn’t have a bank card or a credit card. I was amazed—who didn’t have a bank account in 1998? What was he, some kind of Mountain Man?

No, he was George. And money didn’t matter to him, or around him. His generosity was so relentless that you felt you owed him, big time, every time you saw him.

You couldn’t just call him up and say, “Let’s get dinner.” There would be a counter-offer: “Tell you what, let’s eat at your house. Invite a bunch of people, I’ll buy all the food and do all the cooking.” He was a great cook, so I never said no. And if ten people came, there would be food for twenty.

I met George in maybe 1991, at Paddy Reilly’s, where he was working at the bar and for the band, Black 47. It was an amazing scene—Irish and American, old and new—with Larry and Chris, Geoff, Hammy and Fred. It’s hard to exaggerate how exciting it was, but I did that, for the Daily News, when I wrote that Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan showed up every Thursday. There was such great music—Pat McGuire, too, and Paddy a Go-Go—and such great friends from those days.

But it was George I followed much more closely, as time went on. From Paddy’s on Second to Rocky Sullivan’s on Lex, and then uptown to Marty O’Brien’s. And then Rocky’s again, in Red Hook, and Rocky’s, again-again, which is the last time I saw him, in May.

In all of those places, people wanted to be around him. They came to see him, spent money just to sit near him. He could have started a cult. He did, really—he started dozens of them. There were so many little separate cults of St George—Belfast people and Boston people, Jets fans and Mets fans and Rangers fans, people from the Upper East Side, Gramercy, Red Hook, and Bay Ridge. I just found out that the manager of Glasgow Celtic met him once, and made him their sergeant at arms.

Since so many people knew him from work, it makes me wonder how many of them never saw him in natural light. A lot of his friends probably couldn’t picture him anywhere but in the half-dark, behind the bar. But George was made for the summer and the sunshine. He was at home in the water as a Labrador retriever. He loved crashing through the surf, and he loved going fishing with his Dad. All the places he loved best were beaches—Gerritsen Beach, Rockaway Beach, Montauk, Florida. I saw more than a few sunrises with George, but the days were the best, calling him up at random in Rockaway.

“You wanna eat?”
“Yeah, let’s go to the place behind the gas station, on the bay.”
We get there.
“You want clams?”
“Yeah, I’ll eat clams. You want clams?”
“I’ll eat ‘em if you want ‘em.”

And so we’d sit there, talking about everything and nothing. He could talk about books, movies, history. Danny Swift, John Kenny came with us once. And we sat there as the brilliant day went on—the sailboats gliding past, the launches chugging along, the gulls wheeling overhead, the soft water lapping on the shore. Movie lines popped out of his mouth: “Never get off the boat.” That was from Apocalypse Now. “Don’t point that gun at that man, he’s an unpaid intern!” That was from The Life Aquatic, with Steve Zissou. I watched that one about a dozen times with George. “They made soup out of my research turtles!” Even his favorite movies were set on the water. The sun moved west, over the city. Across Jamaica Bay, you’d see Coney Island, the Parachute jump, and the Cyclone, where people have been having fun for a hundred years. George knew how to have fun. But past Coney Island, on the farther horizon, just to the right, was the Freedom Tower. George had friends there too, buried in its foundations. To look at both of those things, at all of those things—the beauty of it could break your heart. George took things to heart, he felt things so deeply—joy and beauty and pain and loss—and you could see it in him, even when he kidded with the waitress and then turned back to us.

“Should we get more clams?”

I wish that day never ended, but George had to go to work. He wasn’t always the last to leave a party, you know. As Dr Seuss once said—the only doctor George trusted—“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

We were so lucky to have this man. I thank God for him, I truly do. The time with him seems so short, and it was too short, but every single second was a gift. The crazy thing is, he was like a brother to me, and I knew him for twenty-six, twenty-seven years, more than half my life. But I might not be in his top twenty friends. I hope so, I think I am. Definitely, top fifty. But this was a man with a thousand brothers.  All I can say is I was blessed to have been one of them.  

God bless you, my brother George.  You were such a blessing to all of us.