Charles F. "Chuck" Kearney

The world was unexpectedly deprived of Charles Francis “Chuck” Kearney on November 4, 2022 at the age of 60. Born in Boston on September 9, 1962 to Evelyn (McLaughlin) and the late Charles Kearney, Chuck dedicated his life to the causes and activities that he was passionate about while maintaining his own successful general contracting business for decades, and most recently working as a carpenter with Pine Street Construction.

In his teens he built and sold small dories and prams with his father, something he would return to throughout his life for select people. Chuck attended and graduated from Boston Latin School, where his curiosity about both the built and natural environment took shape and his mechanical inclination and genius for problem solving became evident. Soon after, in his early twenties, he discovered the lakes region of New Hampshire where he embraced the cottage-by-the-lake-lifestyle. He eventually bought, built, and maintained a flotilla of various boats, and spent as much time as possible boating, snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, and exploring with his extended family and circle of friends on the waterways of New Hampshire and throughout New England. Chuck embodied a sense of good-natured irreverence and an outdoorsy, humble, rugged individualism that has become rare in the modern world. He was one of the very last of a dying breed who could both recite a Shakespearean soliloquy and literally build a house with his bare hands. Irreplaceable begins the description.

In addition to his Mother, Chuck is survived by his loving sisters and their spouses; Evelyn Fahey and the late John Callaghan of Cumberland, RI, Louise Maloney and her husband John of Chester, CT and Liz Kearney-Lang and her husband Fred of Billerica, MA, his loving nephews; Eric and his wife Rachael, Chris and his wife Melissa, Dan and his wife Kat Fahey, Corey Lang, his nieces; Erica Lang -Tirrell and her husband Brendan, and Devin Maloney, and 4 great nieces; Hailey and Harper Tirrell, and Evie and Charleigh Fahey and many loving cousins and friends.

Visitation will be held on Thursday, November 10th from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at Gillooly Funeral Home, 126 Walpole Street, Norwood. Funeral Mass will be held on Friday, November 11th 10:30 am at St. Timothy Church, Norwood, with interment to follow at Knollwood Memorial Park, Canton.

In lieu of flowers, Recycle. Fix something that’s broken. Don’t tell someone you love them, show them. Look at the stars. Help someone and refuse acknowledgement. Learn. Be a patient mentor. Float in a body of water. Build something. Share your knowledge. Listen.

Memorial contributions may be made in Chuck’s memory to Purr-fect Cat Shelter, PO Box 548, Medway Ma 02053 or MSPCA- Angell, https://www.mspca.org/donate-now/ or plant a tree in his memory https://www.alivingtribute.org/

Words of Remembrance

“How do I talk about this man right now? How do I take all of these little components of his life and weave them into something that expresses the gratitude that we all feel for knowing him?”

What about that Chuck Kearney guy?

Thank you everyone for coming today to help celebrate Chuck. I am Chuck’s oldest nephew, Eric, and I have to say that I came along when Chuck was already 15 years old, so I don’t have the benefit of knowing what he was like as a kid, but from what I DO know it sounds like he was pretty awesome then, too. So what I’m about to talk about applies across the board.

By the time I was able to understand what was happening, Chuck was uuunnntooouuuccchaaabbble to me when I was a kid. I am the oldest of my generation in this family, so I remember you all in your prime back in the late 1900’s, and you were incredible. All of you.

But Chuck? In his prime?

I was a four-year-old boy and lived upstairs from Chuck in 1981. I lived on the third floor of a triple-decker and he lived on the first. And in 1981, when he graduated high school, he absolutely filled the driveway with a 1979 Trans Am, he absolutely filled the basement with weight equipment and the smell of fiberglass resin from boatbuilding, and he absolutely filled my ears with early punk, new wave, and metal music. So, here I am, I’m 4-, 5-, 6-years-old and this beast of a man, this king-hell savage, muscle-bound biblical monster of a human being is quietly down there being the coolest uncle in all of Jamaica Plain, just. for. me.

And here I am selfishly relating Chuck’s story through the lens of my own, but I have to give the context that I was born into in order to convey his importance to me and to all of us.

Like I said, I lived on the third floor and there was a superhero living on the first.

That makes an impression on you, and that is why I’m here.

So, with that, we begin.

To describe him in street racing terms, another of his earlier passions, Chuck was a sleeper. A sleeper is a car that looks pretty stock, nothing crazy on the outside. But when you race a sleeper off the line, you find out that under the hood is where all of the effort has gone. Chuck was that. If you saw him on the street he’d be just like any other guy. But put him at the end of a ski rope. Put a hammer in his hands. Put him on a body of water and give him an oar. Ask him about the structural peculiarities of the SR-71

Blackbird or ask him to help you build a human-sized working robot for a science fair in 5th grade. You’d find out where all of Chuck’s effort went. Chuck was all substance and no flair. He was raw power. And when the job was done and while no one was looking and it was time to have fun, Chuck would grab onto life by the lurching, heaving haunches and hold on for as long as he could.

And now that he’s gone, Chuck’s absence will be a presence every day for the rest of my life, and I know I am not alone in that. I know it’s easy for someone to say they’ll miss someone forever and it sounds trite, but for me and my mother, his mother, his sisters, my brothers, cousins, family, and his friends it is real.

I was his nephew for only 45 out of the 60 years of his life. Sixty years is not enough time for a person as kind and dedicated as Chuck was to inhabit this earth, and 45 years was not close to enough time for me to learn the things he had to teach. I feel like I just started.

When someone dies younger than it feels like they should have, it’s easy to focus on the idea of living without them rather than appreciating the time you had them here. And over this past week I’ve felt myself slipping into that thought pattern of “how will I move forward through life knowing that I don’t have Chuck for backup?” But in searching for things to say about him, I couldn’t help but come around to remember all of the things Chuck has done and all of the things he has taught me. His legacy is everywhere for those who knew him, both tangibly and intangibly.

For me personally? Sure, I worked alongside him and learned endless bits of information and gained insane expert-level experience, but those things don’t remind me of Chuck.

Trees remind me of him. Cars remind me of him. The night sky does. Summertime. Wintertime. Coca-Cola. Work boots. I can drive by houses that we have built together and show people how good he was at whatever he felt like doing.

And all I can convey is my perspective, but Chuck went above and beyond to take care of all of the people around him, whether it was saying goodnight to his mother on the phone every night or delivering loads of firewood to his nieces and nephews or going above and beyond in his carpentry projects, or cleaning literal boatloads of trash out of the rivers he would explore. He would always be thinking of his impact on other people and how to maximize the positive and minimize the negative. I’ve never known someone so quietly selfless as a core personal tenet. Everyone that I know has SOME degree of selfishness in them but leaving us so soon is the only selfish thing I’ve ever known Chuck to do. And so he gets a pass for leaving us. I forgive you Chuck. We all need to forgive him because of how much he put himself out for all of us, how much he did to make everyone else more comfortable in this world.

Chuck, take a break before you start to educate and clean up whatever world is lucky enough to have you now. Sit down for a minute and have a Coke and some M&Ms.

Generally when you hear people give a eulogy or a toast or some other planned speech, they’ll add some poignant quote from a famous person or scripture or literary canon to leave everyone hopeful and inspired. I don’t think I’ll end this tribute to Chuck that way. Instead, I’ll do it in a way that I think he would appreciate. If you got close enough to Chuck as a friend he would quote movies with you, it’s just something he did, and you might not even realize he was doing it, because he had perfect movie quotes for any situation that would just fit seamlessly into conversation. There’s no singular quote from a famous orator or literary canon that will do this man justice, so I’d like to share a slightly paraphrased quote from one of the earliest movies I can remember quoting with him called Where the Buffalo Roam. I think if Chuck were still out there next to one of my brothers or cousins or his friends, he would lean over and murmur under his breath in his best Bill-Murray-as Hunter-Thompson impression, “You couldn't invent someone like Chuck Kearney. He was a... he was one of a kind. He was a mutant. A real heavyweight water buffalo type... who could chew his way through a concrete wall and spit out the other side covered with lime and chalk and look good in doing it.”

I think he’d be ok with that description. But I would like to add to it that Chuck was also a second father for some of us, he was our older brother, our interpreter, our muscle, our professor, our mentor, our backup, our example. Chuck was everything, he is irreplaceable.

And he was my superhero.

So Chuck. Thank you. For everything. Literally everything.

I will carry your example of quiet patience and calm, steadfast strength with me forever.

It has been an honor to inhabit this earth alongside you for as long as we had you here.

Thank you all for listening and for being a part of Chuck’s life.