Adventurous Man’s Hilarious Obituary Goes Viral, Raises $10,000 for Charity
“Irishman Dies of Stubbornness, Whiskey” is the headline of an actual obituary making the rounds online this week, and its subject, Chris Connors, may just be one of the most interesting men that ever lived.
Connors passed away on Dec. 9 in York, Maine, after suffering from pancreatic cancer and Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 67. While in hospice he avoided writing his own obituary, asking his daughter, Caitlin Connors, a copywriter, to “make it funny.”
She did. “Chris Connors died, at age 67, after trying to box his bikini-clad hospice nurse just moments earlier,” begins the death notice. It turns out that wasn’t far from the truth, since his hospice nurse, a close friend, would administer his medicine while wearing a bikini.
The outlandish life of Connors is filled with countless such moments, most of them apparently true. Connors’s life reads like a mashup of The Hangover and Indiana Jones. In his 20s Connors made a failed attempt to sail around the world; he ended up floating in a life raft off the coast of Cuba for 40 hours. Just a few years before his death, he climbed to the base of Mount Everest.
In his 1930s Connors had walked into a job on the New York Stock Exchange, despite having no background in finance. Apparently, he’d been painting a fence one day, and a trader who liked his personality gave him a business card and suggested that he follow up.
Before that, Connors had lived up to the title given him posthumously: “Ladies man, game slayer, and outlaw.” His exploits included episodes in which he dressed up like a priest and got into a fight at a Jewish deli, was stabbed while saving a woman from a mugger in New York City, and regularly swam in the Atlantic ocean in January.
Connors’s life, however, was more than wild parties and adventures. After his brother was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, Connors rode a bicycle 530 miles to visit all three crash sites. In 2003 he bought the York Fire Department a boat for search-and-rescue operations.
Charitable work in his name continues with the Chris Connors Fund, and some $10,000 in donations have already been pledged since his death.
“He was a rare combination of someone who had a love of life and a firm understanding of what was important — the simplicity of living a life with those you love … ” reads the obituary. “His acute awareness of the importance of a life lived with the ones you love over any material possession was only handicapped by his territorial attachment to the remote control of his Sonos music.”
The family has asked that in lieu of flowers mourners “pay the open bar tab” or donate to the Chris Connors Fund.
Connors is survived by his second wife, Emily Ayer Connors, and sons Chris Connors, 11, and Liam Connors, 8, and daughter Caitlin, 33.
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