Father Mahoney

Yesterday's mass was phenomenal!!!! The church was packed. I was so happy for him. The service was beautiful. The bagpipes, the honor guard, the firefighters.

The Globe did a whole article on him that you can read here. You will see I am not the only one who loves and admires him.

My favorite stories are about the fire at the temple in Everett....Mahoney's best-known rescue was not of a person, but of the five Torah scrolls of Temple Tifereth Israel in Everett, which was destroyed by fire in 1982.

''The Torahs had to be saved," recalls Samuel Spivack, a member of the congregation who now lives in Salem, N.H. ''We had a young rabbi who wanted to go in and a few of us wanted to go in with him, but the fire department wouldn't hear of it."

Mahoney and others at the scene braved thick smoke to enter the sanctuary, and a backdraft knocked them to the ground as they reached the ark where the Torahs were kept. They got up, broke through windows near the ark, and threw the Torahs from the inferno to the waiting congregants.

Saving Mike Mucci's dad.........

"The young priest's first act of firefighter-like heroism came in 1959, when a house near the church was engulfed by flames from a natural gas line explosion. Nine-year-old Michael Mucci escaped the blazing home with his mother. Now Major Michael Mucci of the Massachusetts State Police recalls vividly how ''Father Mahoney broke through the back door, found my father wandering around dazed, and walked him out. . . . He saved my father's life."

and the bridge dedication story.....

"Mahoney almost missed the dedication, where access was tightly controlled due to the hosts of political leaders present and the hypersensitive post-9/11 security environment. The license number of the priest's fire department vehicle was not on the list being checked by the state trooper at the entrance to the bridge.

The trooper called his supervisor, Mike Mucci. ''Dan Mahoney?" said the son of the man Mahoney had saved a half-century earlier. ''He can park anywhere he wants."

His is my friend, my pastor and my hero.

Congratulations Father. I love you.