“If you don’t like it, come home,” his father advised, advice that was unnecessary, as it turned out. 

William was on his way to a life in the priesthood, and never looked back.   Msgr. William Glynn, now nearing 90, still serves his church and community even as a retiree and resident at The Village at Duxbury.

 Msgr. Glynn’s parents were born in Ireland, his father in Galway, his mother Nellie in Kerry.  They met in Boston, married, and started their married life in Cambridge – Michael working as a motorman for the Boston Elevated Rail Road, on the Harvard-Dorchester run. Msgr. Glynn was the second of three sons; a daughter, Mary, completed the family.  Times were hard. The family moved from Cambridge to Dorchester, where they lived at four different addresses until buying a three-decker in Dorchester Lower Mills.  They lived on one floor, and rented out the others.  Later, the family home would be in Milton.

Son William went to Boston Latin School. 

“If you attended there in those days you were either Irish or Jewish,” he said.

A classmate was Sumner Rothstein, later to achieve fame as media mogul Sumner Redstone.

 “Holy days were more serious then,” recalls Msgr. Glynn.

His Latin teacher, John Cray, would enter class on a holy day and say, “Yes or no?”  That was understood by all to mean, “Have you been to church?”

“If the answer was no, you got right up and went to the nearby Mission Church,” said Msgr. Glynn.

One day during Msgr. Glynn’s sophomore year, John Cray asked if he ever thought about going into the priesthood.  Cray proved to be more of an influence on the young man’s decision than his family was.

On May 1, 1947, Msgr. Glynn became one of 36 from the seminary to be ordained.  His first assignment was St. Mary’s, in Beverly, a town he’d never visited.  He recalls going there by train, and then knocking on the door of his new home.  It was opened by a young woman named Anne Kane, later, Englehardt, who was employed by the parish.  They would become lifelong friends; recently he officiated at her brother’s funeral.

Four years in Beverly were followed by calls to St. Mary’s in Wrentham, six months at the mission office of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, on Franklin Street in Boston, 20 years, St. Catherine’s in Somerville, six years, and in 1978 to St. Gregory’s in Dorchester. 

This was toward the end of Boston’s school busing, which the Monsignor says had such a disastrous effect on the city’s schools that “most of the city of Boston will never be the same.” 

In a period of about five years enrollment in his parish declined from 1000 to 500.  The religious education program dropped from 300 to 45 students.

“We didn’t have money to repair the heating system,” the Monsignor said.

 He and his fellow priests were often cold. In winter, funerals were held downstairs in the lower church, where it was warmer.

Then, in the fall of 1981, Msgr. Glynn came to Holy Family in Duxbury, where he would remain until his retirement 26 years later.  The church here was bursting at the seams, the number of parishioners having grown along with the town’s population, thanks in part to the construction of Route 3. 

The church was located where the Ellison Center for the Arts now stands.  Said Msgr. Glynn, “Father Uglietto, who drove me down, looked at it and said, ‘You’ll have to build a new church!’”

There was already a committee in place to look into building a parish center, as there was no room for meetings, and in 1984-85 they got serious about it. It happened that the Herrick family, who were car dealers, owned land on Tremont Street.  When the family business ran into trouble, the parish was able to buy the land. 

“The location was ideal,” said Msgr. Glynn. “We were fortunate; otherwise we might have been on a side street somewhere.” 

There were numerous donors for the new building, and few problems with the town. In 1988 the new Holy Family Church opened.

The church bell arrived in a roundabout way. It dates to 1855 or thereabouts, when it rested atop a Protestant church in Cambridge.  After fire destroyed the church, the bell found its way to the Cambridge Dept. of Public Works, where it remained for years, until said Msgr Glynn, “The people got tired of looking at it. They put out the word, ‘Does anybody want this bell?’  We acquired it, and had it electrified.”

 It was installed, but as the years went by its wooden footing rotted.  About ten years ago, a storm tore it loose, but it was saved from a fall through several stories, which would have caused extensive damage. 

“Now it’s in steel, thank goodness,” says Msgr. Glynn.

“Oh, baseball – oh my goodness,” says the Monsignor when asked about one of his favorite topics.  Anyone who knows him is aware that he may be the most devoted fan of the Red Sox. 

“My father took me to my first game,” said Msgr. Glynn. “I enjoyed baseball as a child, and played as best I could.”

His first allegiance was to the Boston Braves, who played at that time at what is now Boston University field.  In the 1940s, there was a section on the field where fans could get in free.  Msgr. Glynn, in high school, was part of the “Knothole Gang” who were regulars in this area.

With the departure of the Braves, he gave his loyalty to the Red Sox, where it has remained.

“When I left St. Catherine’s in Somerville, they gave me a season ticket to the Red Sox.”  Along with his childhood friend Joe Henderson, he traveled to his team’s games in Cleveland, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and to Winter Haven, Florida for spring training.  A Red Sox flag flies at Holy Family. 

“I started that about 12 years ago.  Father Bryan Parrish would put up the Bruins flag.”  And every spring at The Village, on opening day of the baseball season, Msgr. Glynn raises the Red Sox flag at the front entrance.

Msgr. Glynn is the sole surviving member of his family.  In 1953, his father retired; on his last day of work, he returned home to find that his wife had just died of a heart attack.  The Monsignor’s sister, Mary, now deceased, never married, but took care of her father until he died in 1969.  Both brothers, James and John, have also passed on.  The younger, also in the priesthood, was a navy chaplain in Vietnam, although he seldom talked about it, and later became a bishop in the Catholic Military Diocese.

Msgr. Glynn retired in 2007, and moved to The Village, which he’d learned about from his sister, who looked into it before she died.  Of his long life in the priesthood, he says,

“There are parts of it you’d miss.  But I’ll be 90 in December, and I’d have trouble getting up for a seven o’clock mass,” he adds with a smile. 

He celebrates masses at The Village on holy days, and will occasionally officiate at funerals elsewhere in the community, or go to services when invited.  He has not lost touch with his community, either. 

For example, as part of the drive to restore Duxbury’s World War I memorial, he recently purchased a brick in honor of his father, a World War I veteran.   “Msgr. Glynn is a much-loved man in this town,” said a Duxbury resident not long ago, a view that seems to be widely held.

One of his pleasures nowadays is golf. A frequent partner is Joe Castiglione, the Red Sox announcer, who lives in Marshfield.  A perfect alliance, one would think.

“We got friendly with him at spring training.”  Village golfing buddies include Bob Byington, who has since moved, Bob Fallon, and John Vensel.  “But,” he says, “We need a couple more golfers.”

Msgr. Glynn recently celebrated the Sixty-Fifth Anniversary of his Ordination to the Holy Priesthood.  A gala dinner was celebrated on April 28, 2012 and the parish hall at Holy Family Church was renamed in his honor.