Slan go Foil\u00a0 - Goodbye \u00a0Slainte Mhaith \u2013 Good Health<\/h5>\n

By Maureen Rossi<\/a><\/p>\n

The Kings Park American Legion was packed to the rafters Tuesday<\/span> night with life-long Kings Park residents, business owners, politicians and fellow American Legion members.<\/p>\n

They gathered to big farewell to the unofficial Mayor and first Grand Marshal of the Kings Park St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade \u2013 Mattie O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

Legislator Rob Trotta presented Mattie with a Proclamation from the County.\u00a0 Proclamations are something it seems Mattie collects as he has received quite a few in his day.\u00a0 Supervisor Patrick Vecchio got up to give him yet another Proclamation \u2013 it was an enormously humorous one joking about the number of Proclamations and costs therein for ink, paper etc.\u00a0 The entire crowd was roaring. Vecchio joked that all Mattie\u2019s proclamations have put a drain on the Town Budget.\u00a0 When Mattie posed with the Supervisor for a photo the jokes did not stop.\u00a0 \u201cGet you hand out of my
\npocket you got enough of my money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Supervisor then had former Councilman Kevin Malloy read the serious version.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Vecchio had nothing but the kindest of words for Mattie.\u00a0 \u201cHe always seemed to be the guy who solved all the problems, I can tell you all the goodness of this man, I mean that from the bottom of my heart,\u201d he shared.\u00a0 \u201cHe is what\u2019s good about life and human beings,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

When Vecchio said he was given a Proclamation for being the First Grand Marshal of the Parade, Mattie quickly replied, I sold it!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Laughter abound, without A\/C the crowd was warm but jubilant.
\nMattie O\u2019Reilly is headed to Florida to live with his son.\u00a0 He has resided in Kings Park almost all of his nine-two years.\u00a0 He served this great nation in WWII and has a host of medals to prove it.\u00a0 A humble man, he\u2019ll never speak of his many accomplishments.\u00a0 He once worked at the Kings Park Psychiatric Center and was a fellow scribe, he put out the newsletter for the hospital.\u00a0\u00a0 He was married to his wife Helen for fifty-nine years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Eddie McElhone (the owner of Clayton\u2019s funeral home) calls and says how are you doing Mattie, I say fine and click I hang up\u201d he shared.\u00a0 \u201cI see you back there,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Gerry Creighton (former Grand Marshall of the St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade herself)\u00a0 presented Mattie with a Shillalagh (a wooden stick used to walk, an Irish cane).\u00a0 Mattie got emotional as did many in the crowd.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful night with laughter abound but it was also quite sad as many had to bid their friend farewell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vecchio said it best \u2013 Mattie O\u2019Reily is what\u2019s good about life and human beings!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slan go Foil\u00a0 – Goodbye \u00a0Slainte Mhaith \u2013 Good Health By Maureen Rossi The Kings Park American Legion was packed to the rafters Tuesday night with life-long Kings Park residents, business owners, politicians and fellow American Legion members. They gathered to big farewell to the unofficial Mayor and first Grand Marshal of the Kings Park St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade \u2013 Mattie O\u2019Reilly. Legislator Rob Trotta presented Mattie with a Proclamation from the County.\u00a0 Proclamations are something it seems Mattie collects as he has received quite a few in his day.\u00a0 Supervisor Patrick Vecchio got up to give him yet another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,340,213],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-town","category-communityspotlight","category-whatshappening"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/mattie-crying.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6dZB9-MD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3020,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions\/3020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithtowntodaynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}