Obituary for
Maurice J Dooley
Maurice Joseph Dooley, born in Liverpool, England, in 1927, died last Friday afternoon, 7 October. He had been a resident of Vero Beach since June, 1987, when he arrived from Pennsylvania with his wife Rachael (d. 2002) to pursue his international business career from a place they both considered to be the ideal home base for his job, heading the Southern Hemisphere sales division of Martin Automatic, an American printing equipment company.
Surviving the Blitz as a child, Maurice enlisted in the British Merchant Marine and went on to hazardous convoy duty through the latter half of the Second World War, including the perilous North Atlantic supply route to Murmansk. After his 1951 marriage in Panama to Rachael DeGraff, an educator from New York State, and subsequent induction into the U.S. Marine Corps, Maurice undertook jobs in locations around the U.S., initially with shipping firm W.R. Grace in New York, and later in management with several business machine firms. Sojourns in NY, Chicago and Cleveland working for Addressograph Multigraph (AM), were followed by a return to the UK as regional director, and a voyage to Rio de Janeiro as Vice President of Sales--in this case responsible for introducing automated consumer payment options throughout South America. Next came periods in Massachusetts, Texas, and Pennsylvania; the last in the field of robotics, before taking his final job with Martin Automatic.
In the meantime he and Rachael raised the three children who survive him: Brian, Brendan (with his spouse Barbara), Michelle (with her spouse Chris and their son Theodore). Friends, family and associates appreciated his humor and his rich vein of anecdotes drawn from of a lifetime of personal experience in travel on six continents; and from wide interests, ranging from literature to twentieth-century history to household carpentry. He is greatly missed; and memorial donations may be made in his name to the Alzheimer's Association (www.alz.org). Online condolences may be shared online at www.coxgiffordseawinds.com.
