Judging By His Obituary, Chris Connors Was the Most Interesting Man in the World

Photo via iStock/OlegEvseev

He was a Golden Gloves boxer who delighted in well-made fires, whiskey, and rugby. A night spent with him would leave you either in jail or with a hangover. He swam in the ocean in January. His trip around the world ended early, temporarily stranded on a life raft off the coast of Panama.

These details are not pulled from the obituary of prototypical manly man Ernest Hemingway of literary lore, but that of Chris Connors, of Quincy.

Connors’ death notice—titled “Irishman Dies from Stubbornness, Whiskey” and posted this week on Seacoastonline.com following his bout with ALS and stage-four pancreatic cancer—reads like a Bill Brasky yarn. He once got into a fight in a Jewish deli dressed as a priest. Chief among his regrets was “eating a rotisserie hot dog from an unmemorable convenience store in the summer of 1986.” He got a job on Wall Street with no financial background. At the ripe age of 64, he climbed to the base camp of Mt. Everest. And he told unprintably dirty jokes right up until the end.

“He was a rare combination of someone who had a love of life and a firm understanding of what was important—the simplicity of living a life with those you love. Although he threw some of the most memorable parties during the greater half of a century, he would trade it all for a night in front of the fire with his family in Maine,” the obituary reads. “His acute awareness of the importance of a life lived with the ones you love over any material possession was only handicapped by his territorial attachment to the remote control of his Sonos music.”

The York Fire Department, whose water rescue team Connors was instrumental in founding, mourned his death on its Facebook page. A “celebration of life” will be held at the York Harbor Inn on December 19 at 4 p.m., in case you’re in the neighborhood.

You can read Connors’ full obit here.