Mary Helen (O’Gorman) Mulligan, whose life spanned the struggles of her immigrant family during the Great Depression, a career in the glory days of commercial aviation and the raising of her own large family, died August 7, at age 82.
Mrs. Mulligan, the eldest of five children of the late Patrick and Bridget (Connolly) O’Gorman of Cranston, R.I., died in hospice care in Milton, near her beloved home of more than 50 years – most of them with her late husband, John E. Mulligan Jr., and the children they brought up.
Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan met as crewmates in the early 1960s for Eastern Air Lines, then the world’s largest carrier of commercial passengers. The young Miss O’Gorman was a stewardess, as flight attendants were known in those years. Mr. Mulligan was a pilot. They were married in 1969 and raised a family that was to number eight children.

Mrs. Mulligan grew up in Cranston’s Edgewood neighborhood, where her parents had settled after emigrating during the tumultuous early years of Ireland’s independence. Their Smith Street home was frequently a neighborhood gathering place at a time when Irish dance, song and story-telling were staples of social gatherings.

Mrs. Mulligan attended the St. Paul’s Parish School and the old St. Patrick’s High School near the State House in Providence. She was an avid student and a voracious reader. At a young age, she displayed the keen ambition that was to propel her to higher levels of a society that offered limited career paths to young women of modest means and education. She was bitten by the aviation bug as a teenaged receptionist at the grand downtown hotel then known as the Sheraton Biltmore. It was often at such small-city locations that the airlines recruited the stewardesses of that era. Mrs. Mulligan made it her business to seek recruitment and career tips from the women who periodically passed through the Sheraton Biltmore on the way to interviews with the airlines.

In 1958, she landed a job at Eastern, then a leading carrier owned by Eddie Rickenbacker, the famed World War I flying ace. Commercial flight was seen as glamorous in that post-war era, and Mrs. Mulligan compiled a treasury of anecdotes of her encounters in the airways with prominent politicians, athletes, entertainers and newscasters of the day. Her droll wit and encyclopedic recall made her a glittering conversationalist.

Mrs. Mulligan was predeceased by her husband and her parents, as well as by a younger brother, Thomas, and a nephew, Michael. She is survived by her children, Rosemary Oldread and her husband, David Oldread, of Wilbraham; Patrick Mulligan and his wife, Jaime, of Milton, and Maeve Hart and her husband, Kevin Hart of Milton; stepchildren John Mulligan and his wife, Nancy, of McLean, Va., Thomas Mulligan and his wife, Irene, of Pound Ridge, N.Y., Gregory Mulligan and his wife, Robin, of Barrington, R.I., Tara Mulligan of Framingham, and Joseph Mulligan and his wife, JoAnne, of Walpole; a brother, John O’Gorman, and sisters, Kathleen and Loretta O’Gorman; 20 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Visiting hours will be from 4:00 – 8:00 p.m. Thursday, August 10, 2017 at Alfred D. Thomas Funeral Home, 326 Granite St, Milton, MA. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at noon on Friday, August 11th at St. Pius X Church, 101 Wolcott Rd., Milton, followed by burial at Milton Cemetery. In Lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Colin and Declan Carlson Fund, c/o Canton Cooperative Bank, P.O. Box 186, Canton, MA 02021.