Ray Flynn
After scrubbing gravestones for three hours on Saturday at St. Augustine’s Cemetery with 50 other concerned citizens and sipping on a bottle of cold water, a Rabbi from New Hampshire, who was part of the restoration team, looked over at me and said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like Ray Flynn?” Almost too exhausted to reply, I had to catch my breath before I could say anything. But Mary Joyce, realizing that the Rabbi didn’t know who I was, said, “that is Ray Flynn.” I politely introduced myself and asked his name and where he was from. I might have asked him why he was at this brutally hot Catholic cemetery and part of the upcoming 200th anniversary celebration scheduled for Saturday, September 15th in South Boston.
But listening to him tell the fascinating history of this oldest Chapel and Cemetery in Massachusetts, while other people joined in with so many other interesting stories, once again reminded me of the loyalty and dedication that people have for their faith. No matter how many negative things they hear or bad stories they read, they are not about to give up on what they believe. This wasn’t just sitting in an air=conditioned Church attending a half hour Mass, this was a 9 am to 2 pm labor of love for the Church. We had committed citizens, Congressman Steve Lynch, Councilor Ed Flynn, local media and Fr. Casey all helping out in a show of unity.
The gravestones go back over 150 years and some weren’t even recognizable, so a lot of hard scrubbing was going on by everyone. All the volunteers, myself included, will sleep soundly tonight. The pride that the people of the community have for this historic Cemetery is remarkable.
But one scene I will never forget is just after getting our scrub brushes and cleaning chemicals, my Special Needs grandson Braeden, wanted to get right to work. Looking out at all the unrecognizable epitaphs on the head stones that needed work, he spotted this small but severely disfigured statute of Jesus Crucified. He immediately went across the Cemetery and spent the next 2 hours scrubbing the statute. When he got finished, one of older volunteers said to us, “I have been coming to this historic chapel since I got discharged from the Army after the Korean War. The statute of Jesus looks beautiful. Who did it? “But the question in my mind is, of all the gravestones in the Cemetery, why did Braeden pick the most damaged one of Jesus?
Ray Flynn is the former Mayor of Boston and U.S. Ambassador.
