Valley Stream's super couple Jack and Catherine Sharkey were ‘God’s special parents’

During his father’s final days, Mike Sharkey, 59, couldn’t help but fixate on his father’s hand, specifically the right one.

The thumb was oddly bent, having suffered lifelong muscular degeneration caused by an injury sustained in the Korean War when he served in the Air Force.

Despite the nerve pain, Jack Sharkey, “a proud Irish man,” wouldn’t complain, Mike noted. Instead, so much of his compassion was expressed and articulated through that hand, Mike said.

Mike had watched his father reach out to grip a football with that hand countless times to play catch with him and his brother Darren over the years. Jack had reached out to embrace countless children he mentored as a Valley Stream Green Hornets Youth Football organization coach, imparting words of kindness or wisdom meant to soothe and encourage.

He’d blow his signature whistle from the bleachers during numerous football games, using both index fingers to pierce the sky, conveying praise to his sons and, eventually, grandchildren on the field. 

“The crowd would be roaring, and I could still distinguish my Dad’s whistle from the stands while I played in Iona football and hear him cheering for me,” said Mike. “His presence was amazing.”

Jack Sharkey died April 4 at age 92 from complications related to lymphoma, one day after his wife Catherine died from heart failure at 87.

Even as his body was betraying him, Jack — who was managing to get around delicately on a cane — poured compassion onto others. Just two years ago, he was kissing and thanking everyone for rededicating the broadcast booth at Firemen’s Field in his name.

“Take home in your hearts that you’ve made a very happy man,” Jack told the public in tears. But that was only half-true. He was quietly depressed by the thought of his wife Catherine, Mike admitted, who was declining in health and in extended care in her final days.

The two met through mutual friends in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, eventually marrying in 1956.

To give — and to give generously — was in the couple’s DNA, noted Mike, especially when faced with life’s personal lows. Early in their marriage, a lost child and Catherine’s hysterectomy had crushed any hopes of the couple conceiving children. They emerged from the heartache and, looking for new hope, found it in the form of their adopted sons Mike and Darren.

“My brother Darren was a crier, especially when other people tried to hold him, but when my father held him, he didn’t cry and my father knew that was his next son,” said Mike.

“A woman once told me that my brother and I were God’s special children because we gave happiness and life to a couple who couldn’t have children,” Mike added. “If you think of it that way, then my mom and dad are God’s special parents because they loved us to the tee, and if it wasn’t for them taking me and my brother Darren, who knows where we’d be.”

Settling away from their tight-knit, fun, and intimate crew of friends and cousins in the Lower East Side proved emotionally hard. They moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Woodside, Queens in 1962 before deciding on a house in Valley Stream in 1967, living there the remainder of their lives.

The Sharkeys wanted to stay relatively close to their family and friends in New York City, and Valley Stream was a prime location because it was situated right on the border with Queens, noted Mike. But in time, the village would become something of a second home, where Catherine and Jack shined as an inseparable duo for decades.

The Valley Stream Green Hornets were central to their lives. At the Hornets, Jack’s voice became airborne from high atop the bleachers in the radio booth, where he’d announce the play-by-play of games. Generations of players knew him as “Mr. Sharkey” or “Coach.”

“His warm smile and welcoming personality were truly his trademark, and his dedication and commitment to the youngsters were beyond measure,” said Sharon Daly, a fellow former Green Hornets president. “He was admired by countless individuals” and was something of a father figure to them, she added. Jack eventually rose to become the president and Catherine, serving as a member and eventual president of the Green Hornets Mothers Club, was right there with him.

“She was just a sweet soul,” said Darren of his mother. “She would chase me around the kitchen table with a spatula, but you never saw her angry or mad. She really cared for the kids at the Green Hornets, and few went as far to help them as her.”

The two had become pillars of the community, and they soon entered the world of politics. It was a world that Jack, serving as deputy mayor in 1987, would imbue with humanity and decency for four years, serving as mediator among political rivals and “getting them to talk to each other,” noted Mike.

“Jack used to call me his little brother. He was my big brother,” said former mayor John DeGrace. “When I was the mayor, he was so involved with his position on a daily basis. Jack would never lose his temper. He listened. And he knew how to talk to people.”

“Jack wouldn’t hesitate to offer comments and suggestions about village policies — always in the humblest, even fatherly way,” said Mayor Ed Fare. “Jack and Catherine both embodied what it meant to put service above self, and that will be impossible to replace.”

Despite the couple’s iconic stature in the minds of many — from mayors to the grocer down the block — and despite the rare and impressive legacy they leave behind, the Sharkeys were first and foremost committed to family. Over the long stretch of their married life, they loved going on shopping trips and dining out with the family at Mia’s restaurant in Valley Stream. They loved babysitting their grandchildren, and Catherine loved spoiling them with envelopes filled with cash.

Jack and Catherine were by each other’s side for 67 years and only were truly apart in the last months of their lives, with Catherine in Park Avenue Extended Care Facility nursing home and Jack in Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital. But even until the last, their heads were buzzing with thoughts of concern and longing for one another, said Mike.

“It was a beautiful love story,” said Mike. “I was at the hospital with my father. He was unresponsive but I told him to go. ‘Mom is up there. Mom is waiting for you.’ And in a few hours when I was back on the road, I got a call from my cousin that he was gone. He didn’t want to be without her.”   

Jack and Catherine Sharkey are survived by their two sons, Darren and Michael Sharkey, as well as Jennifer Sharkey, their daughter-in-law; and their grandchildren MicKayla Sharkey, 16, Colin Sharkey, 18, and Caitlyn Johnson, 32.

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