LYNN — Each year, St. Mary’s honors an individual who demonstrates consistent and exemplary service with the William F. Connell ’55 Service Award.
The award, named for a graduate whose boundless generosity to the school included a $5 million bequest, was presented on Wednesday to Tom Bourke, St. Mary’s Class of ’65.
Bourke’s most visible and longstanding connection with St. Mary’s has been his landscaping efforts. He began working the grounds days after his 16th birthday. He loved the part-time work and quickly took ownership of all the landscape maintenance.
When the parish and school faced financial challenges in the mid-1980s, Bourke agreed to continue his service as a volunteer. He noted that he could not have done it without the modestly compensated help of his son, Eric, and his friend Mike Doyle, a teacher at St. Mary’s in the 1970s.
During his time at St. Mary’s, Bourke was a student-athlete, running track, serving as captain of the baseball team and becoming an MVP in football, a (Lynn) Daily Item All-Star and an Agganis All Star. He was a finalist for the Archdiocesan system-wide Student-Athlete Award.
At Providence College, Bourke worked with his Spanish professor helping to resettle Cuban refugees, tutored students in writing, was a Big Brother to inner-city children, and was elected president of Delta Epsilon Sigma, the Providence College Chapter of the National Catholic Honor Fraternity. Awarded a graduate teaching fellowship, he was involved in civil rights and social justice activities at the University of Michigan and earned his master’s degree there.
Back in Lynn, Bourke taught at St. Mary’s before moving on to North Shore Community College in 1980, where he brought together a small team of dedicated Lynn staff who, in a labor of love, grew enrollment from under 100 at the old Lynn YMCA to more than 600 at the GE IUE building, providing momentum for exceeding 1,000 at the current campus on the Lynnway.
He advanced professionally to become dean of students, and with his guidance, the student life component provided countless services to the Lynn community — including food and blood drives, Lynn Woods cleanups, the establishment of a child care center, a women’s center, health and intercultural fairs, and many theatre and arts programs. He retired from North Shore Community College in 2007.
Bourke also served on the Lynn School Committee from 1986-90 and worked to successfully bring Lynn into compliance with the state’s special education guidelines and federal Equal Educational Opportunity requirements. For many years, he served as treasurer and a volunteer for the Stephen Bourke Fund, named for his nephew, who died of leukemia at age 4. The foundation has raised more than $500,000 for the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center, funded a research lab and established the first parent-advocate position.
Bourke and his wife, Madeline (Fraher), Class of ’65, celebrated 50 years of marriage last year. The couple had their first date at the St. Mary’s Sophomore Social in 1963. They are proud parents of Jessica and Eric, and grandparents of Ainsley, Reese and Mairin Tully, and Ella and Emry Bourke, all of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
