Howard Finegan, Marine veteran and retired steamfitter of Rockville Centre, dies at 85

Retired steamfitter Howard Finegan, of Rockville Centre, grew up in the Bronx, went to a vocational high school and did not go to college. Yet he and his wife made sure each of their children would — and one of their sons married a woman who became a member of Congress.

Through it all, he remained true to his roots. "He was the first person to be there to help you with anything you needed," said Finegan’s daughter-in-law, Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre), a former Hempstead Town supervisor. "My neighbor was pregnant and her husband was in the reserves and deployed to Iraq, and her water heater broke. And he was a proud steamfitter union man and he came to her house and spent all day fixing her water heater. And when she offered him some money, he said, ‘Your husband is serving our country. This is my thanks for him.’ "

It was no one-off gesture. Lenore Furlong, his longtime next-door neighbor, recalled that she was alone with her 2-year-old and 6-week-old while her husband was away on business. "It was a winter like we’re having now," she said, "and our heat went out." Her infant was congested and needed warmth and a vaporizer. "Howard came right over. He goes, ‘I know, let's do this,’ " and together they devised a cozy makeshift tent for the child. Another time, "A major pipe in our house broke. He came in with two other neighbors to fix it."

Finegan died at home on Jan. 18, shortly before his 86th birthday, from complications of a hip fracture.

"He was a decent man," his son Chris Finegan, Gillen’s husband, said, a refrain Furlong echoed: "I really do wish everyone had a Howard Finegan living next door to them. The world would be a happier place."

Howard Edward Finegan was born in New York City on Feb. 5, 1940. The second of two sons of James John Finegan, a plumbing contractor who owned his own business, and Mary Ellen Howard Finegan, nicknamed Meryl, he was raised in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx. His father died of illness when Howard was 9, and the boys’ mother became a clerical worker for the chemical company Union Carbide. She briefly was married to Matty Mauer, who died when Howard was in his teens.

After graduating in 1958 from what was then the St. Helena Business School in the Bronx, Howard enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served stateside for two years, working in radio communications; he remained in the reserves through his honorable discharge in 1966.

He had married Joan Ann O'Donnell, whom he had met in church in their teens, in 1963. They started a family and moved to Rockville Centre in 1971.

A steamfitter and a member of the union’s Local 638, "He worked on building the two World Trade Center towers and the first renovation of Yankee Stadium" in the 1970s, "when he came home with a couple of [bleacher] chairs," his son said.

Finegan continued taking on occasional jobs after retirement, "like an overnight shift minding the pipes in the steam room for a control room at Kennedy Airport," Chris Finegan said.

Despite his lack of formal education, "he was one of the smartest men I knew, by his own studying," Furlong said. "He was an avid historian. He could tell you anything about any war, how it happened, where it happened, the date it happened."

"He was a big history guy," agreed his son, "and we went to Civil War battlefields and national parks for two weeks every summer in our [Chevrolet] Kingswood Estate station wagon."

He also was also a big Rangers guy. "But he embraced the Islanders because we have season tickets and he would come to the games all the time," Chris Finegan said.

Hockey, indeed, loomed large in the family’s life. "He didn't have a father to do things with him when he was young," Gillen said, "so he made sure his sons had a dad who would be there with them. He got Chris involved in hockey, would take him to every practice, drive him all over."

An avid swimmer, he was a member of the Malibu Shore Club in Lido Beach.

His wife died in 2013. In addition to his son Chris, of Rockville Centre, he is survived by sons Tim, of Point Lookout, and Michael, of Rockville Centre; daughters Jeanne O'Keefe, of Oceanside, and Elizabeth Finegan, of Rockville Centre; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Visitation was Jan. 23 at the Thomas A. Glynn & Son Funeral Home in Rockville Centre, with a funeral Mass the next day at The Cathedral of St. Agnes in that village. He was buried Tuesday at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in upstate Hawthorne.

Donations may be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Catholic Health Good Shepherd Hospice in Farmingdale; or the Tunnel to Towers Foundation in Staten Island.