LYNN — Former Pine Hill resident, and well-known softball and baseball coach, Richard J. Dooley died peacefully at his home Sunday, Sept. 12 while surrounded by his family.
He was 93.
Former neighbor, David Solimine Sr., said Dooley was the finest gentleman he knew growing up. Although they were seven years apart in age, Solimine recalls crossing the street and hopping the fence into Dooley’s yard, where he and his siblings would play in the neighborhood with the Dooley family until sundown.
Growing up, Solimine said Dooley was the guy that all of the younger kids looked up to.
From attending Dooley’s high school games to watching him practice the famous Doug Flutie drop kick for hours with the old wooden goal posts at Frey Park, Solimine recalls always seeing Dooley with a smile on his face — one that warmed you and you couldn’t help but love.
“He would be there practicing all day, and the neighborhood kids would just sit and watch him in awe of his dedication,” Solimine said.
Dooley was on the 1946 Classical football team that went to the Orange Bowl in Florida; Lynn legend Harry Agganis was also on the team.
“Even though he grew up in the Agganis era, Dick was just as good,” Solimine said.
As they grew older, Solimine said they would run into each other and talk softball, which Dooley spent the majority of his life coaching.
Dooley helped coach his daughter, Joanne, when she played softball at Salem State University (SSU), and also helped coach for the Lynn English softball team. Although Dooley himself never played baseball, Joanne said his biggest enjoyment came from coaching, which he loved every moment of.
Former English softball coach Alisa Fila met Dooley when she was 19 and playing on a slow-pitch team; she was also on the SSU team with Joanne. That team, Fila said, turned into a family that is still connected to this day.
Dooley helped Fila coach the English softball team for a few years — before he left to help coach his grandson AJ in baseball — and Fila said she was lucky to have him involved in the program.
“He was like another father figure to me. I’ve always looked up to him,” Fila said. “He has shaped a lot of peoples’ lives, including mine. It’s a big loss for everybody.”
Dooley coached a number of baseball and softball players throughout the North Shore, including this writer, and made a great deal of friends with the people he worked with.
Retired writer-at-large for The Item, Steve Krause, recalled the first time he met Dooley while at his son’s game.
Dooley’s grandson, Glen, and Krause’s son, Andrew, are the same age; Krause was coaching one team in Pine Hill Little League while Dooley was coaching the other.
“He’d have this stick that he’d hold and have his hitter swing at it. He felt he could simulate the movement of pitches better with the stick than with a pitched ball,” Krause said. “He had other rather unorthodox drills that he’d run, but that was the one that made the biggest impression on me.”
Krause recalls Dooley as being unfailingly pleasant and soft-spoken, passing his athleticism down to his daughter — whom Krause said was one of the best female athletes to have played in the city — and his grandson, AJ, who made it to the Little League World Series with his Peabody West Little League team around the time of Dooley’s 80th birthday.
Another former writer for The Item, Joyce Erekson, recalls meeting Dooley at Gallagher Park when she was 11 or 12 years old and just learning to play softball.
“Whether you were a star player or someone like me who loved the game and just wanted to play, he would work with you,” she said. “I remember summer nights on the old Pine Hill B Farm field when he would hit fly ball after fly ball to anyone who wanted to stick around. He didn’t stop until it was too dark to see the ball. He instilled a lifelong passion for the game in so many girls in Lynn and beyond.”
Whether it was from softball or baseball or just living on the North Shore, people who knew Dooley recalled him as a caring, loving, and great man.
Solimine said he is honored and humbled to be able to honor Dooley’s life at his funeral home on Saturday.