WILLIAMSBURG — James F. Cahillane, a longtime Northampton business owner who played a key role in creating the city’s Industrial Park and reviving the downtown commercial area in the 1970s, and who in his later years became well known for penning a monthly column for the Gazette and writing books about his family’s history in the city, died Oct. 4. He was 90.
Cahillane, of Williamsburg, was the son of Imogene (Smith) Cahillane and James Cahillane, an immigrant from Ireland who was Northampton’s mayor from 1954 to 1960. He leaves his wife, Maureen, and five grown children.
Honored in 1986 as the city’s Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year, Cahillane, then president of Cahillane Motors Inc., was described as “quiet, intelligent, an astute businessman and a talented writer.” The recognition came from his five years as chairman of the Northampton Redevelopment Authority, including overseeing the 1974 Pleasant River downtown study for restoring commercial activity, and building and selling the city’s new Industrial Park off Damon Road.
Rich Cahillane recalled that his father went through a lot with respect to the Industrial Park, such as an angry farmer who waved a gun at him, upset about the city’s use of eminent domain to acquire his potato fields. But the end result benefited the city. “It gave Northampton a better tax base, and better jobs,” Cahillane said.
Following four years in the Air Force during the Korean War, a period during which he met his wife in England, Cahillane returned to run the South Street auto dealership with his brothers, bringing business acumen that included becoming one of the first dealers in the United States to set up a defined contribution pension plan that helped the business hire and retain workers.
While his father served as mayor, Cahillane entered the political fray in other ways, successfully endorsing Edward McColgan for a seat on the City Council in the 1960s, and then supporting his friend Sean Dunphy for mayor. Cahillane occasionally did speechwriting and wrote advertising copy for Dunphy during his tenure leading the city in the 1970s.
In 2012, then-Mayor David Narkewicz approached the Cahillane family about borrowing a painting of Mayor Cahillane standing next to U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy, who met with local leaders at a Prospect Street home in 1958. The painting was inspired by a photo in a book that Jim Cahillane contributed to, “The Irish Legacy: A History of the Irish in Western Mass.”
Cahillane was present, along with family members, during a brief unveiling ceremony. “I’m very honored and my dad will be honored to be back in the mayor’s office,” Cahillane said.
Narkewicz and his wife, Dr. Yelena Mikich, offered condolences and love to both Maureen Cahillane and the entire Cahillane family.
“Jim loved our city and contributed to its success in so many ways as a businessperson, as chair of the Northampton Redevelopment Authority, and as a chronicler of its history in his many books and columns,” Narkewicz said.
“I’m personally grateful to Jim for the wise counsel and support he offered me during my time as mayor,” Narkewicz said.
Cahillane played competitive sports for decades, including tennis at the Holyoke Canoe Club and Hampshire College, basketball in the City League and volleyball at the Northampton YMCA. Basketball was a main love, and he played briefly for St. Anselm College in the fall of 1950 before he curtailed his studies to join the Air Force.
It wasn’t until 1989 that he became a graduate of the University Without Walls program at the University of Massachusetts.
In 1992, Cahillane began writing a monthly opinion piece for the Gazette that continued for the next three decades. He credited his prowess with the written word to his grandfather, an Irish folksinger who performed songs that each contained an average of 30 stanzas.
His columns often had tidbits, sometimes reflecting on his own childhood, like one printed in February 2019: “Life began at dad’s gas station on King Street. I spent years watching — even helping — Dad and his one worker, Westy, man the pumps, clean windshields, repair tires, change batteries and perform minor repairs … In this kid’s eyes, my smiling Dad appeared to be the one-eyed gas king of King Street. He kept spare ration coupons in the register. Hopeful swains would beg his gracing them a few gallons for weekend wooing.”
Jim Foudy, a former editor and publisher at the Gazette, said Cahillane “had the great Irish gift of gab” and that there was a following for his columns about growing up in Northampton, politics, his family, the business community and his Irish heritage.
“He loved to tell stories. After a career in business, he went back to school and got an MFA in writing at UMass. I think poetry was his primary focus at UMass, but his column for the Gazette was an offshoot of that,” Foudy said. “The MFA encouraged him to turn his gift into published storytelling.”
At UMass, one of those he became friends with was Tony Cousins of Australia, who visited his home for dinner one evening. Cousins wrote a poem as a tribute to Cahillane.
“From that point began a long and very happy friendship, which saw my family and I enjoy Jim and Maureen’s hospitality more than once,” Cousins said. “We also got to know their family and, in his regular emails, Jim would tell me all the family news.”
“There’s an old saying about something being ‘an honor and a privilege’; well, it was just that to have been counted among Jim’s friends,” he said.
Among the books Cahillane wrote was “The Best Place of All: An Irish American Memoir of Pluck, Luck & Automobiles” that recounted his parents’, siblings’ and other family members’ time in Northampton.
Cahillane’s volunteer work included the Northampton Arts Council, a University Without Walls Scholarship Committee at UMass and, most recently, being a board member of the Williamsburg Council On Aging, the community in which he and his wife made their home.
Whenever new members of the family, such as spouses and significant others, met his father, Rich Cahillane said they would often be greeted with an envelope from him containing printouts of his columns. During family gatherings, aspects of the family history would also be discussed, and if someone didn’t remember correctly, Cahillane would often quip, “You’d know that if you read my book.”
The family is suggesting memorial donations be made to the Irish-American Scholarship Fund in care of Dollars for Scholars, P.O. Box 60382, Florence 01062-0382.
Calling hours are Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Czelusniak Funeral Home in Northampton. A funeral Mass will be Thursday at 10 a.m. at Our Lady of the Hills Church, 173 Main St., Haydenville, with burial to follow at St. Mary’s of the Assumption Cemetery in Leeds.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
