With his open smile and Eastern Junior High School baseball uniform, Terry Finnigan looks like every teenager embracing a summer filled with fun. His face is frozen in time in a small In Memoriam photograph that will be published Saturday in The Item along with these words composed by his family:
“It’s been 50 years since you passed…
The world changes
From year to year,
Our lives from day to day,
But the love &
Memory of you,
Shall never pass away &
Will live in our hearts forever.”
The Finnigans never let Terry slip into the dim recesses of their memory. He lives on in their hearts and in the stories his brother, John, and sister, Margaret, told their children over the years.
John Finnigan and his family gather on Saturday at his Lynn home to remember Terry — in the words of John Finnigan and Margaret Finnigan Wright — “as one of Lynn’s hometown boys.”
On July 9, 1971, Terry joined other kids jumping off the ledge running along the Lynn Shore Drive seawall and into the waves rolling onto King’s Beach.
“Terry dove in and missed the wave,” recounted his siblings.
The dive left him paralyzed with a severed spinal cord. Terence Finnigan died on July 17, 1971.
“He was the pride and joy of his family; he had large hopes and dreams and was looking forward to a beautiful summer,” said John and Margaret.
Terry’s death crushed his family, leaving his father, Terence, and mother, Catherine, with only memories to keep their love for him burning bright and to assuage their grief and the loss felt by their surviving children.
They told stories about how Terry’s Little League team practiced with Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro and how Terry wrote poetry and looked forward to summer camp, then high school.
On the first anniversary of his death, Terence and Catherine Finnigan memorialized their son in the first In Memoriam they published in the Daily Evening Item.
“It meant a lot to them and it helped,” recalled Margaret.
They have never missed a year publishing the tribute. Their mother continued the tradition after Terence Finnigan died in 1995 and John and Margaret carried it on after Catherine Finnigan died in 2010.
When a new Finnigan generation grew old enough to hear stories about Terry, they learned about a shy kid who loved sports and school. John Finnigan named his firstborn son Terence, carrying the name onward and memorializing his late brother.
A sales and strategy analyst for State Street Bank, 29-year-old Terry Finnigan vowed to honor his uncle’s memory by running the Boston Marathon on behalf of the Travis Roy Foundation and its work helping spinal-cord injury survivors.
COVID-19 and its spate of public event cancellations shelved Finnigan’s goal, but he was undeterred: On Sept. 12, 2020, Terry Finnigan ran 26.2 miles through Lynn, Swampscott and Nahant to honor his uncle. The personal marathon ended at the King’s Beach seawall where fellow Finnigans gathered to embrace him.
Terry Finnigan — son, uncle and brother — will be alive in the hearts of his family on Saturday and time will never dim their memory and love.
