Back in 2021 Adrian Flannelly was one of four U.S.-based recipients of the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad. Flannelly was honored in the "Irish Community Support" category.
The award category title gave little hint of the scope of Adrian's contribution to the Irish community in New York and well beyond over not just years, but decades. Simply put, Adrian was a force of nature who drew the community together, even as he challenged not a few of its failings and shibboleths.
Adrian Flannelly, the "dean" of the Irish American press corps, had an iconoclastic streak lurking behind the typically smooth presentation of an issue on his radio show. He was not a physically big man but, in figurative terms, his arms spanned an ocean as he pulled Ireland and Irish America closer together, sometimes when one or the other might have been reluctant.
His work as a journalist would have been sufficient to keep Flannelly busy at all hours. His talent as a musician might well have been an alternative to that working life in news.
But beyond both there was Adrian's role as a community activist, especially in the arena where the great battle over immigration was fought in the 1980s, 1990s and into the new century.
The man from Mayo was ever ready to do what he could to help new Irish immigrants secure a new life in America - just as he did as a young immigrant and at a time when securing legal status in the United States was not cruelly dependent on the luck of the draw in a visa lottery.
Adrian was ready for the fray when it came to championing a memorial to the Great Hunger Irish. That memorial today occupies precious ground at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
Adrian Flannery was quite simply unique, sui generis. We sometimes say that we will never see a person's like again. In Flannelly's case this is true and then some.
We once honored him as our Irish American of the Year. Adrian was that and more: a man for all years and seasons, a man for all causes and challenges, a family man, and a man with an expanded family that we call the diaspora. That family now mourns his passing. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.
