PAX Centurion - Fall 2017

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • Fall 2017 • Page 57 Joe O’Malley: “just the best-est guy” Founding member of BPPA Retired Officers Division passes away, “the end of an era” By James Carnell, Pax Editor R etired BPPA Officer’s Division founding member and director Joseph O’Malley, 77, recently passed away after a long and courageous fight with cancer. With Joe’s passing truly ends in era in community policing, but with the emphasis being upon the “community OF police officers”. Born in Dorchester in 1940 and serving in the USMC in the early 60’s, Joe joined the BPD in 1965. Much of Joe’s career was spent inAreaA in Charlestown, where he and his sidekick (the late) Officer Tommy Trainor provided an ongoing replay of “Abbott and Costello” comedy routines with every call they answered together. If you were Joe’s friend, you knew it instantly. Joe was as gentle as a lamb, but strong as an ox, the best guy to show up if you called for an “O.T.”. He constantly amazed people with his ability to walk on his hands, even after occasionally consuming moderate quantities of amber-colored fluids at off-duty events. Back when a real BPD intra-departmental softball league existed many years ago, which resulted in true camaraderie and lifelong-friendships, Joe invented the sacred “Five S’s”- “S ummer, S unday, S oftball, S uds, S ick-line”. It was a tradition that ended slowly, shortly after Joe retired in 2003, the victim of mandatory overtime shifts and unpredictable work and family schedules. As much as Joe loved the BPD, he valued family and friends much more. “Christmas is for kids,” Joe would say, but Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and Super Bowl Sunday were no-holds- barred family events that began shortly after sunrise and lasted well into the night. When confronted with the choice of a family holiday and an overtime shift, the choice for Joe was clear. Family and friends first, money a distant second. Do your share, lift your part of the load, but keep your priorities straight. I specifically recall the night of 9-11- 01, that horrible, terrible day we were both on duty in Charlestown. After 4 PM rollcall, we both found ourselves on the long pier in Charlestown behind the cement factory, cursing the barbarian savages who had killed so many innocent people in those terrorist attacks. F18-USAir Force fighters circled through an empty sky. Not a single car passed over the nearby Tobin Bridge. For the first time in memory, not a single radio call was heard the entire tour throughout Charlestown; not a gang call, or a family fight or a car accident. The world had stopped. Joe remarked that we’d never see another night like this again, for the rest of our lives. And he was right. We didn’t. We will all miss you, Joe. We will miss that guttural, un-imitable, un-describable, “noise”- that emanated from your gut and exited your raspy throat at softball games and barbeques that let people know, unmistakably, that Joe O’Malley was present. We’ll miss the Fourth of July and the Super Bowl parties and your presence in the Blue Goose with your sidekick, Bill Flippin. We know where you are now, beyond the cement factory, past the end of the pier and over the Tobin Bridge, with Pauline and Stephen and Tommy and a whole slew of friends and family. Until we meet again, keep the cooler cold and full. Police Officer (Ret.) Billy Flippin says farewell to his friend P.O. Joe O’Malley.