Elizabeth Flaherty
Nurse, Hospice Volunteer, Florist, Advisor

When Betty Flaherty passed on Friday, Sept. 21, she was three months short of her 99th birthday. After living a full life, surrounded by her children, she succumbed to cancer.
When Elizabeth Flaherty was born in December 1919, World War I had not officially ended and women were still unable to vote.
Betty – the name she was called most often (there’s a story there) – was born on a Johnstown, Pennsylvania farm, one of eight children. She never knew her father who would die in a steel mill accident when she was an infant.
After leaving Johnstown, Mrs. Flaherty became a nurse. Her nursing jobs included everything from working in a home for unwed mothers to the residence of the British ambassador in Washington, DC, prior to the start of World War II.
During WW II, Betty was a nurse at the largest aviation plant in the world at the time – the Glen L. Martin operation in Middle River, Maryland. The huge facility was a small city completely covered by camouflage netting to hide it from enemy bombers. “We saw everything -- factory accidents, badly burned test pilots, casualties from overseas,” recalled Betty when she talked about her war time experiences.
It was at the Glen Martin plant where she met a sailor, Jim Flaherty, who had been sent there to install radar -- then a secret weapon-- into B-26 bombers being made and flight-tested at the plant. They were married in nearby Baltimore during the war.
After the war, Jim Flaherty joined United Airlines and the couple moved to New York, then Denver, and finally San Carlos, California, a bedroom community south of San Francisco. As Jim became a United executive, Betty watched with her feet firmly on the ground – she remained terrified of flying her entire life.
She volunteered for a variety of causes, centered around the activities of her six children and St. Charles Church, the local Catholic Church. Whether it was hot dog day, the Carlosian women’s club, ‘yard duty’, or the concession stand at high school athletic events, Betty was there -- usually the one keeping track of the money.
In the 1980s, gay men in San Francisco began dying of a mysterious disease later named AIDS. Betty Flaherty joined a group of volunteers who began to establish clean and friendly hospices for the rising number of young men dying from the disease. “She was proud of her work helping to create the AIDS hospices,” said her daughter, Betsy. “Years later, she would show us the pamphlets printed up that told the gay community there was a place they were welcome and that would help them in their final days.”
Helping people and dispensing advice was one of Betty’s professions. Her children’s ages covered a 20-year span. Over that time, friends of her kids, nieces and nephews, sons and daughter in-laws, and many others – created a steady stream of people sitting at the kitchen table and talking to Betty as a friend and frequent surrogate mother. One of her son Jim’s friends called her to come and bail him out of a Redwood City county jail in the middle of the night. She never told anyone.
In Betty’s lifetime, she was called nearly a dozen names. “We once counted ten of them,” said her daughter, MaryAnn. “There was Mom, Ma, Boodie, Elizabeth, Betty, Bets, Maude, Edna, and of course, Grandma and Great Grandma. She answered to every one of them.”
At an age when most people retired, Betty agreed to help out a family friend, Jim Maffei, at Granara’s Flower Shop. She soon became one of the well-known florist ladies. A steady stream of people would order flower arrangements, and ask for advice on relationships – how to start them, keep them, or repair them. “Betty knew who was getting flowers from who, said her daughter, Teresa. “Whether they said ‘Happy Anniversary,’ ‘Happy Birthday,’ ‘I love you, or ‘I’m sorry,’ and whoever they went to, your secrets were safe with her.”
When four of her children moved to New England, Mrs. Flaherty moved to Massachusetts, and then Kennebunk. Although she became the oldest resident at Huntington Common, she continued to volunteer to help other residents at the senior living community.
Mrs. Flaherty is survived by daughter, Kathy Taylor and her husband, Doug, and their four children, Eileen, Michael, Matthew, and Sara; daughter, Betsy Slocombe, and her husband, Tom, and their two sons, Christopher and Michael; son, John Flaherty and his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Megan; son, Jim Flaherty and his wife, Maureen; daughter Teresa Lane and her husband, Scott, and her four children, MaryAnn, Christopher, Veronica, and Elizabeth; daughter MaryAnn McClintic and her partner, Steve Ruuska, and her three children, Jonathan, Allie, and Lucas. Betty also has thirteen great-grandchildren with another on the way. Her husband, James Flaherty died in 1991.
A funeral mass will be held by the family at St. Martha’s Catholic Church in Kennebunk on Thursday, October 4th, at 11:00 AM. Arrangements are in care of Bibber Memorial Chapel, 67 Summer St., Kennebunk, Maine.
A second memorial mass will be celebrated by the family at St. Charles Church in San Carlos, California at a later date in October.