Thomas Connelly, lawyer who fought for civil rights, dies

Thomas J. Connelly, 77, an attorney who lived in Brightwaters and spent his life fighting for civil rights, died Saturday after a long illness.

During the 1964 Freedom Summer, Connelly helped black Mississippians register to vote. He left only after local police said he was not welcome and locked him in a gas station.

Connelly, born in Brooklyn and raised in College Point, Queens, then returned to his North Babylon law practice. He had earned a law degree from New York University while driving an ice cream truck and working as a night watchman in Harlem.

On Long Island, Connelly worked with the NAACP to desegregate fire departments. He and Dr. Yale Solomon of Huntington were in a group that founded Suffolk's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1960s.

"I think his courage was in not allowing the unpopularity of an issue to deter him from representing a case in the public forum, in the court," Solomon recalled.

Connelly battled police misconduct and housing discrimination and argued for the right of opponents of the Vietnam War to peacefully demonstrate.

"Our noble profession has lost a valiant warrior for the rights of the oppressed," said retired State Supreme Court Justice Michael F. Mullen.

In 1999, Connelly won a $10.7-million award from the Long Island Rail Road for a Seattle man who, in 1981, at age 9, fell between a platform and a moving train. At the time, it was believed to be the largest sum awarded by a Suffolk County jury. Connelly's son Peter, of North Babylon, was his law partner.

"He did all different kinds of cases, including criminal cases, accidents," said Connelly's son Matthew, of Manhattan.

Connelly and his wife, Maureen, were married for 55 years and had 22 grandchildren. A devout Catholic, he would discuss the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas at dinner.

Survivors include two other sons, Thomas, of Raleigh, N.C., and Patrick, of Chester, N.H.; three daughters, Maura Watters of Ramsey, N.J., Annamarie Monks of Mansfield, Mass., and Jeanellen Vapsva of Berkeley Heights, N.J.; four brothers, Patrick, of Manchester, N.J., Terence, of Southport, N.C., John of Lakewood, N.J., Jerry, of Queens Village, and a sister, Ellen Nash of Ocean Isle Beach, N.C. Connelly's oldest son, Stephen, died in 1992.

A funeral Mass was celebrated Tuesday at St. Patrick's Church in Bay Shore with burial at St. Philip Neri Cemetery in East Northport.