Peter Healey

1946 - 2024

Peter Healey

RELUCTANT ADULT DIES AT 78

Ashfield, MA - Peter Wilson Healey, of Ashfield, Massachusetts and New York City, died on November 26, 2024. He was 78, though still "felt younger," specifically 12.

Peter went by many names-P, Dad, Puppa, Mister Sir, Mr. Fix-It, Pierre McMootey. He was born in Boston on April 22, 1946, to Joseph P. Healey of Cambridge (namesake of the Healey Library at UMass Boston), and Irene Wilson of Belfast, Northern Ireland, who once called a man "Chip Tooth Pork" for who knows why.

Peter spent much of his childhood in costume (cowboy) and shadowing his grandfather, a downtown Boston building superintendent. Thanks to his father's friendship with President John F. Kennedy, Peter once got to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office - a peak of public power he was disinterested to top. Peter graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1964, served in the Army Reserves as a cook, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In 1973, he married fellow Museum School student Ticia Kane of New Rochelle, New York, with whom he built a lifelong feedback loop of love, collaboration, and stupid in-jokes. They remained married for 52 years. In 1983, Peter and Ticia moved to Ashfield, where they renovated three homes, balancing a passion for historic New England architecture with the practical need for indoor plumbing and doors people could fit through. He filled two barns with boats in various states of operability, and dusty machines that would cut your leg off if you looked at them wrong.

They raised their son, Colin, in a stubbornly supportive, creative, and odd home. Peter was proudly neither urgent nor organized, and his son, who is writing this very late death notice, is an apple at the stump of the tree.

Peter was a photographer who spent years at UMass Medical in Worcester documenting anatomical research. He hoarded so many photos of brains, we called him Brain Man (even before he got a brain tumor). Later, he ran his own photography studios in Western Massachusetts and helped create the Cecil B. DeMille Film Festival in Ashfield.

Peter loved the outdoors, hardboiled detective novels, pop music no newer than 1972, New England sports, Godzilla figurines, peaty Scotch, tweed, lobster from the dock, and pretending to eat tiny invisible things off hotel front desks to make other guests nervous. He was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland, and technically a Scottish lord, thanks to one square foot of land gifted from his daughter-in-law.

In later years, Peter endured lung cancer, brain injury, Covid, dementia, and having his car keys taken by his traitorous family, yet remained his trademark mix of grumpy and chipper. Hospitalized weeks before death, he said he was "doing great" and gave "two thumbs up." Though he barely ate the hospital food, he still recommended it to anyone who walked in. He spent his final days at peace and watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Ticia and Colin by his side.

Besides his wife and son, Peter is survived by daughter-in-law Mary Ashton; and grandsons Iggy and Fleet. Though an only child, he is also survived by four beloved double-first-cousins - Maureen, Madelon, Carol, and Paul - and their families. He had a way of making family out of friends, from Hell's Kitchen to Australia, and is looking forward to all you people joining him for a glass of wine in the clouds.

Here's some advice he might dish out, whether you asked or not: go do what you wanna do. Don't worry so much about what people think. Just have fun and do what you can, in the places you wanna be, with the people you love. And in saying that, he'd wave and shuffle off wherever he feels like. Don't tell him what to do.

A memorial will be held in Ashfield June 14. For details or to share a memory of Peter, contact pierremcmootey@gmail.com