Joe Feitelberg, who spearheaded bringing Battleship Massachusetts to Fall River dies

Joe Feitelberg didn't just speak to people. He engaged them. Rich, poor and everything in between. He asked questions. He absorbed the answers. He knew everyone he met had a story and he wanted to hear it.

That approach served him well, in both business and life.

Enormously loved and respected in Greater Fall River and beyond, Joe Feitelberg, civic leader and insurance entrepreneur, died on May 10 while in hospice care in Lincoln. He was 89.

“We lost a good one,” said John Feitelberg, the third of Joe's six children and his father's successor as president of Feitelberg Insurance on Milliken Boulevard in Fall River.

John said his dad, a devoted Catholic, would most want to be remembered as a man of great faith. “He would say to us, 'This life is not the main event.' His favorite word once he got sick was, onward,'” John said.

“He was a pistol,” said Mark Feitelberg, Joe's youngest child. “He was always full of good advice. His favorite saying was never worry about what's behind you, only worry about what's in front of you.”

The third-generation leader of Feitelberg Insurance, Joe brought the company to new heights as it went from six employees to 60 by the time he retired. His expertise was recognized and sought far beyond the confines of southeastern Massachusetts. Feitelberg served on multiple national and international advisory boards in the insurance industry and, John noted, Joe pioneered in establishing the best practices of insurance agents standards which are still used today.

Those who worked for the with Joe Feitelberg said he had a crystal ball, that he could anticipate the future twists and turns in the insurance industry and position his company to best navigate the new waters.

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The U.S. Navy veteran, he spearheaded the drive to bring the USS Massachusetts battleship to Fall River and was president of the USS Massachusetts Memorial Committee (Battleship Cove) for 10 years.

“He was just a great mentor to me,” said local businessman Carl Sawejko, who served on the Battleship Cove board and then served 11 years as president. “I'm forever indebted to him. He would take the worst situation and make something good of it. Go to him with a problem, and he would fix it. He was always a networking guy.”

Joe Feitelberg was a natural and habitual networker. John said his dad, when attending an event with his wife, Sheila (Dunne), would almost immediately start working the room, always claiming to Sheila, “I'll be right back.”

John said his mother would joke that she would put “I'll be right back” on Joe's gravestone.

Brian Murphy, of Somerset, retired from Hub International (formerly Feitelberg Insurance) on March 29 after 46 years and five months. Like Joe Feitelberg a graduate of Holy Cross, Murphy specialized in serving auto dealerships and municipalities, and became extremely successful at it. When Joe Feitelberg retired, Murphy took charge of the company's Ernie Boch account.

A recognized star in his specific fields, Murphy was recruited, through job head hunters, by other companies with sweet career offers. Murphy noted that Feitelberg, going against the so-called insurance industry playbook, had hired Murphy straight out of college and then supported him through struggle-filled early years on the job. Feitelberg had told him soon after the hiring, he knew Murphy's family and was impressed with Murphy's character.

Years later, when the head hunters came calling, Murphy did not budge.

“Loyalty,” Murphy said, “is a two-way street.”

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Real estate developer Jim Karam, of Tiverton, got his professional start working insurance for Joe Feitelberg and Tony Abraham. He considers Feitelberg a mentor, with the lessons of integrity and professional education carrying over from insurance to real estate for both him and his brother and fellow developer Bob Karam.

“He set a high standard of how you should act in business,” Jim Karam said. “He was a great human being.”

The castle-like ivy-covered granite-walled home home on Highland Avenue, just north of Charlton Memorial Hospital, is perhaps the most recognizable house in Fall River. The Feitelbergs lived there from 1974 until 1994. Joe and Sheila moved to Westport, and in 2003, the Feitelbergs added an apartment on Huntington Ave. in Boston. Sheila died in 2016 and in 2018, Joe sold the Westport house off River Road and moved fulltime to the Boston building, where fellow residents would include former Celtics coach Doc Rivers and former Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon.

Though he had his father as his business mentor – and was subjected to Joe's famous red-pen corrections – John Feitelberg's best memories of his dad involve his fascination with people.

Set to graduate this week from UMass Dartmouth with a degree in sociology, Polly (O'Neil) Feitelberg, John's wife, took a class in sign language. During that class, she had a Joe moment with a deaf woman during a course-related event.

After communicating by sign for a while, the two women broke out their smart phones to show family photos. The deaf woman recognized Joe Feitelberg, from her long-ago days working at Fall River National Bank. She said that many bank customers would ignore her because she was deaf but that Joe was “always the nicest person” when he came in.

John noted that Joe had a brother, John David, who had Down Syndrome. “I think that made him an even more empathetic person,” John said.

John said that his dad always introduced himself as Joe Feitelberg, never as Joseph.

Joe Feitelberg's health started to deteriorate last September. He spent the last six weeks of his life in the hospice facility in Lincoln.

One memorable day, pre-hospice but into the serious stages of cancer, Joe was taken to a hospital by ambulance. John rushed to the hospital, concerned and anxious for updates on his dad's condition. Well, upon John's arrival, selfless Joe Feitelberg had more important information to share with his son. About his nurse.

“I walk in the room,” John said, “and my father says, 'This is Andy. He was formerly a CPA in the Philippines. He's now a traveling nurse in Boston. He has two kids at Roxbury Latin High School.'”

At the hospice facility, John one day said hello to the janitor, surprising the man by not only using his name, Emerson, but adding that, thanks to his father's inquisition, he also knew that Emerson spoke five languages.

John said that Emerson and two of Joe's hospice nurses, all teary-eyed, made it a point to pay a final farewell visit to Joe Feitelberg's room one night when it became clear death was very close.

Joe Feitelberg's wake is scheduled for Sunday, May 19, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Waring-Sullivan at Cherry Place, 178 Winter St. in Fall River. The funeral will be the next day, at 9:30 a.m., from Cherry Place, followed by his funeral Mass at 11 a.m. at Holy Name Church, 709 Hanover St. in Fall River.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Fall River businessman Joe Feitelberg dead at age 89