Jack Conway always had an eye for the action, and when covering boxing for the Boston Record-American no longer provided enough of a kick, he moved into a much tougher arena – real estate.
Conway opened his first real estate office, a storefront in Hingham, in 1956, building it into the second-largest independent real estate brokerage in the state, which today has 40 offices and 600 sales agents. His dominance of the South Shore market led him to dub the area “Conway Country.”
“My father touched so many lives in a positive way,” Carol Bulman, Conway’s daughter and current CEO of Jack Conway & Co., said in a statement. “He will be missed by our family, our entire company and all those he helped through his lifetime of giving back to the community.”
As an entrepreneur, Conway was a pioneer, launching his own associated mortgage brokerage and training academy and becoming one of the first local brokers to create a multi-office company. To the real estate community, he was a leader; his many leadership posts and awards include president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and Realtor of the Year in 1971.
“Jack Conway was a powerhouse in the residential real estate community,” said Inez Steele, executive director of the Realty Guild. “One couldn’t be in the room with him without absorbing some of his incredibly positive energy.”
But for hundreds of local agents, he was a mentor, known especially for hiring and promoting female agents at a time when real estate was still a man’s game.
“He was larger than life,” said Nora Moran, who started her real estate career with Conway in 1981. She is currently a senior vice president with Hammond Real Estate in Concord. “I went to work at his Beacon Hill office, and I think I was there six months when he promoted me to manager.”
‘The Original Connector’
Marybeth Mills Muldowney, broker/owner of TradeWinds Realty Group LLC in Norwell and Plymouth, and another Jack Conway & Co. alumni, chose Conway to induct her when she was made president of the Plymouth and South Shore Association of Realtors in 2010.
Working with Conway was an education “not only about the business, but about people in general,” said Muldowney. “I just felt that Jack was just a very, very special person, ahead of his time.”
“What really sticks out in my mind is how Jack would walk into a room, and he would recall so many details about so many people,” she said. “It may have been an agent that only had one sale a year, he’d know the agent’s name, their daughter’s name, their dog’s name, what school their child went to. With networking nowadays, they talk about people who are ‘connectors.’ Jack was the original connector.”
Beyond his real estate business, Conway was a strong supporter of several local charities. The MainSpring Coalition for the Homeless named its Middleboro family shelter “The Conway House” in honor of Conway and his wife, Patricia. Brockton Area Multi-Services’ Conway Children’s Advocacy Center for abused children also is named in their honor. Additionally, Conway founded the Ambassadors of Holy Cross, a group that supports the mission work of the Congregation of Holy Cross in the poorest areas of Peru.
“I can’t tell you how many people have been helped that people don’t even know about,” said Dick Cahill, a regional vice-president at Jack Conway & Co. and Conway’s friend for 38 years. “You can’t imagine how many people his life touched. It’d be like counting the grains of sand on a beach. If he saw a need to help, he’d go in with both feet and both hands, and whatever it was he was willing to straighten it out and provide comfort.”
A Boston native, Conway attended the University of Notre Dame and served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.
Conway is survived by his wife, Patricia (Carroll) Conway of Scituate, a son, Jack Conway Jr. of Florida, and two daughters, Barbara Conway and Carol Bulman, both of Scituate. He was the grandfather of six and great-grandfather of four.
