Mary McDonagh, whose passion for education stretched from the classroom to the advertising pages of the Daily News, died on Saturday. She was 67.
McDonagh had suffered from Parkinson’s disease, with which she was diagnosed in 2009.
Despite her medical struggles, McDonagh worked at The News for 15 years, retiring in 2020, but not before she was awarded prestigious Salesperson of the Year honors in 2007 and 2013.
She was also recognized with frequent Salesperson of the Quarter awards through the years, too.
If they had given out awards for punctuality and enthusiasm, she probably would have won a few for those, too, her colleagues said. McDonagh was often the first to arrive in the office each day, greeting each one who came in behind her with a broad smile and a hearty “good morning.”
McDonagh didn’t just sell ads. She sold ads for the newspaper’s Education Division, a section close to her heart as a devoted educator.
Family members said that as a child, McDonagh’s dream was to become a teacher, a wish she made come true. After graduating from Fordham University in 1981, she taught in Catholic and private schools in New York and later in Rhode Island.
In the mid-’80s, McDonagh spent time working with John Cardinal O’Connor, the archbishop of New York, as his office receptionist and assistant.
She traveled with O’Connor to Rome when he was installed as a cardinal. There she met Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and several heads of state and celebrities. She said they were the best two weeks of her life.
“She really loved all the work she did at the church,” her son Michael McDonagh said. “She really loved getting to meet the pope.”
The oldest of five children, McDonagh was born in 1958 to Mary Faherty and Tom Walker, an NYPD captain who wrote the groundbreaking book, “Fort Apache,” and later served as a consultant when the book became the Paul Newman movie in the early ’80s.
Around that time, McDonagh met and married her husband, Dan McDonagh, a Navy career man, whose assignments had their family living in San Francisco, San Diego and Rhode Island.
She is survived by a sister, a brother, two sons and a daughter.
A wake will be held Wednesday, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., at the Schuyler Funeral Parlor on E. Tremont Ave. in the Bronx. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. on Friday at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church on Co-op City Blvd. in the Bronx.
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