Falconeiri’s Life Was Quite a Ride; Cars and Coffee

ITALIAN BLEND: Herb Chambers will have his 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spyder at next Saturday’s Cars ‘n Coffee in Sharon. Herb Chambers

By Bill Griffith

June 7, 2015

4 minutes to read

When you write about people for a newspaper, the telling of their stories certainly leaves memories, but there’s a deeper component, too. Somehow, they become a part of your own life.

If you add in their cars, their families, and their travels, the interweaving becomes even deeper. You find yourself making that “one more call,’’ ostensibly to check a fact, something that easily could have been left out of the story, but really to chat one more time.

That’s how a large puddle of automatic transmission fluid under my 1978 GMC Caballero, a late-night call from Jay Leno, and the death last month of a good guy named Dominic Falconeiri all are related.

Dominic came into my life in 2012 when he and his pals in the Austin Healey Club of New England donated a replica of the famed Dunlop Bridge at LeMans to Jay Leno’s Garage.

They had built the wooden bridge as a Photo Op prop when their club hosted an Austin Healey international convention in Burlington, Vermont.

Leno graciously returned a call for a comment on the story and it turned out that he and Dominic were related. Their grandmothers were cousins with the same surname (Garofalo) who grew up in Flumeri, Italy.

Part of the story was that the group had stored the bridge in Dave Altman’s warehouse in a winter of particularly heavy, wet snows.

While the bridge was in storage, a heavy snow caused part of the roof to collapse and the bridge was damaged.

All that meant was that Falconeiri, a master woodworker and South Shore homebuilder, summoned his team to rebuild it.

The crew then had not one but two memorable visits to Leno, his “Tonight Show,’’ and his garage.

It made for a good Globe story and an ancillary benefit was that I’d found a place where I could store my Caballero in the winter.

However, I didn’t know the full story.

That came a month ago, when Altman emailed that my car had a big puddle of transmission fluid underneath it and I might have a problem. (It turns out that all was OK on that count.)

His real news was that they were in New Orleans and Dominic was in trouble.

It turns out that Dominic had been repeatedly exposed to Agent Orange while serving with the Air Force in Vietnam and, seven years ago, he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis and given only a few years “at most’’ to live.

Doing things “right’’ was one of Dominic’s guiding principles. He got his affairs in order, sold the business to his son Matthew, then got to work on a personal “bucket list.’’

One project was being active in Building Homes for the Troops, recruiting friends in the trades to donate their efforts.

The other was traveling with his friends. The core group was Dominic and his wife, Mary Lou, Dave and Maggie Altman, Peter and Cindy Sturtevant, John and Maureen Kelly, and Bob and Jill Abbott.

In preparation, Falconeiri would spend days creating itineraries, arranging logistics, researching restaurants and must-see sights, and making reservations. He did it for at least 14 group excursions in the past decade.

One trip saw the group shipping their Healeys to Belgium for a 23-day driving tour through Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

“We made one mistake,’’ Falconeiri would say later. “We should have stored the Healeys in Europe and returned to do it again.’’

Instead they took annual trips around the United States and Canada, and returned to Italy to tour in rented Alfa Romeos.

This spring, they shipped their “regular cars’’ to New Orleans with plans to visit the National World War II Museum.

Unfortunately, Dominic fell and broke his hip just before they were to visit the museum. He died three days later, after being flown home to Boston.

Maggie Altman emailed the news to friends, ending with “It’s the end of a traveling era. We saw a lot of the world with him. R.I.P. Dominic.’’

Etc.

Today, Marlborough hosts its 7th annual Main Street Classic car show for pre-1974 vehicles from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Given this week’s weather, the rain date is next Sunday. Organizers expect nearly 300 cars with proceeds benefitting the Shriners Hospital and Wounded Warriors Project … Next weekend brings a nice selection of cars shows in the region. You can start off Saturday, June 13, by swinging by Herb Chambers’ Cars ‘n Coffee at his Lexus of Sharon on Rte 1 from 7-10 a.m. The public is welcome to bring classic, vintage, and special interest cars to the event. Chambers will be displaying his 1972 Ferrari 356 GTB/4 Daytona Spyder … That’s a nice jumping-off point to continue to the Cape and catch Saturday’s Heritage Museums & Gardens annual show. Featured this year are cars made in Massachusetts and a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Ford Thunderbird. The show runs from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. … Next Sunday is a big day. Among the events are Corvette Day (9 a.m.-3 p.m.) at Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline and the 22d annual Tulley show at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack, NH, (8 a.m.-3 p.m.) featuring Buicks, Pontiacs, and GMC … A new show on the circuit debuts next Sunday (10 a.m.-2 p.m.) at Essex Tech on Rte. 62 at the Danvers-Middleton line. Besides hot rods, antiques, and special interest vehicles, spectators will be able to tour the school’s auto technology and collision shops. The school’s culinary department will be running the food concession.