Francis T. Sheredy

With sad and heavy hearts, the family and best friend of Francis T. “Fran” Sheredy mourn the loss of our beloved husband, dad, brother, brother-in-law, grandpa, great-grandpa, and sidekick. After a year-and-a-half-long struggle with lung cancer, Fran passed away on January 21st. He resided with his wife Cathy in Endicott and Binghamton for many years. They moved to Lisle, NY four years ago to be closer to their daughter and her family. Fran was 81 years old.

When he learned, a week before he died, that his cancer had spread, Fran embraced his fate with grace and humility, ready to meet his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In a demonstration of intelligence, generosity and courage that will remain forever an example to his daughter, sons and younger brother, Fran participated fully with them in the difficult decision to suspend further treatment and begin his transition to comfort care

Fran was born in 1943 in Throop, Pennsylvania in the home of his parents, Mary (née Burakova) Sheredy and Joseph Sheredy. He was the fifth of his parents’ six children who survived infancy. Fran was a toddler when his father moved the family to Johnson CIty after finding work in the area’s shoe factories. He received nine years of parochial school education, K-8, attending St. Cyril’s and St. Patrick’s Schools in Binghamton. He served for years as an altar boy at St. Cyril’s and St. Ann’s parishes. Fran graduated from Binghamton North High School in 1961.

Fran was a hard worker from an early age. On his 12th birthday he began a six-year career as a newspaper boy, delivering The Binghamton Press seven days a week to more than 70 customers in his family’s neighborhood, ”Polish Heaven,” in the Town of Dickinson. By the time Fran started high school, he and his older brother Ed were awake before dawn every Saturday morning to work on the delivery truck for Glenwood Bakery, a successful business in Binghamton’s First Ward owned by Stanley Okoniewski, whose son John married Fran’s sister Maryann when Fran was 11.

Fran was just eight years old when his father died – a tragedy that deeply shaped the rest of Fran’s life. Joe Sheredy suffered a massive stroke at the age of 48, and his sudden death turned the family upside down. Mary Sheredy, bereft of her husband, the family’s sole breadwinner, was left with three younger children – Ed, just 12, Fran 8, and their newborn brother Bernie, only 4 months old. Fran’s sister Maryann was 19, a year out of high school. His brother Paul, 21, was a third-year seminarian at St. Bernard’s in Rochester. The oldest brother, Joe, was 26, married, and about to become the father of twins. It fell on Maryann to support the family. She dutifully took on this responsibility and continued to do so for two years after she married, until the next sibling in line could take over.

And thus began a family tradition of extraordinary devotion and sacrifice, forging the Sheredy siblings’ ethic of hard work in ways very few of their schoolmates experienced. Maryann set the pace with a roll-up-her-sleeves, have-at-it attitude that won her a promotion at IBM. She passed the torch a few years later to her brother Ed, who gave up his college dreams after high school to accept a full-time job with IBM instead. The younger Fran recognized his fate from an early age and – despite the long, crosstown bus ride from Polish Heaven to Binghamton’s North Side – chose North High School’s mech-tech program to train for a job in industry. It landed him his first full-time job as an apprentice at GE. And so the Sheredy siblings – save the youngest, Bernie, who was privileged to attend college and ultimately became a professional writer and actor – each in her or his way took on the sobering role of family breadwinner years earlier than they might have done had their dad not died so young.

Young Fran – who saw his destiny, embraced it, and enrolled in a curriculum that guaranteed him an apprenticeship after high school – was molded by the responsibilities forced on him. And so he became the selfless and devoted husband, father, brother, grandfather, great-grandfather and best friend whose loss we now mourn. In the course of his working life Fran became, in more than a half dozen jobs, a foreman for General Electric in Johnson City and DeKalb, Illinois; a life insurance salesman for Harry Prew’s insurance office in Binghamton; and a career therapy aide working with adolescent and geriatric patients at Binghamton State Hospital.

When Fran retired in his late 50s, he became intrigued with the idea of volunteering at Danielle House, in Binghamton. Danielle House, at the corner of Laurel Ave and Riverside Drive opposite Lourdes Hospital, is a not-for-profit volunteer organization that provides living accommodations, on-site, for out-of-town patients and their families who come to Binghamton for medical treatment and who cannot afford to stay in a hotel. When Fran became a volunteer, Danielle House held a fledgling bottle-and-can drive to raise money. After a stretch at bringing his weekly haul of cans and bottles to Danielle House’s garage, on-site, to be sorted along with other volunteers’ collections, Fran had a bigger idea. He went rogue, taking the operation to a whole new level. He developed a route, with customers of a sort, mainly college kids who would otherwise throw their empty bottles and cans in the trash. Fran provided them with large, clear plastic bags to hold his growing hauls.

Soon he was bringing in such a volume of deposit-worthy throwaways that he needed a dedicated vehicle for his rounds. With his own money he bought a small, beater Toyota pick-up truck with a cap over its bed. He converted his family’s two-car garage on Frank Street in the 2nd Ward into his own collect-and-sort operation. Fran was soon organizing thousands of cans and bottles in several industrial-sized barrels before taking them in for redemption. (The aroma of stale beer from unrinsed containers soon filled the garage!) His efforts were rewarded with an extra penny per deposit. It doesn’t seem such a tedious effort could raise a lot of money, but Fran’s work ethic and mathematical smarts were in full gear. It’s staggering to consider that he raised more than $80,000 for Danielle House in the years he devoted himself to his operation. There’s now a plaque on the wall of Danielle House’s garage, honoring Fran for his remarkable fundraising efforts.

Fran was predeceased by his parents, his infant brothers John and Victor and infant sister Monica, and his brothers Joe and Ed. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Catherine (Cathy Camarda) Sheredy; his brothers Paul and Bernie and sister MaryAnn; his four children: Lori (and Tim Shrauger), Michael, Scott, and Nick; his six grandchildren: Ashley, Victoria (& Zak Allen), Sierra, Ben, Morgan, and Michael Jr.; one great-grandchild, Avery Grace; and more than twenty nieces and nephews. Fran also leaves behind his best friend of more than 45 years, Doug Layton. (Doug, we know your heart is breaking no less than ours. Your companionship meant the world to Fran. You have been as good and steadfast a friend as one could wish for, and we all love you for it. You are like family to us.)

Our thanks to Dr. Harris, Leann Terpstra, and the staff at UHS Oncology Services, for your professionalism and compassion, from Fran’s diagnosis through his chemo treatments and repeated setbacks and complications. Our thanks to Dr. Haq and staff at UHS Radiation Oncology, for your caring and attentive bedside manner during Fran’s radiation treatments. Special thanks to the rehab staff at Willow Point Nursing Home for helping Fran recover from three major setbacks over the course of his cancer treatment. And our heartfelt thanks to all the nursing staff and palliative care team members at UHS’s Main Tower at Wilson Hospital and comfort care unit at Binghamton General Hospital, for keeping Fran pain-free while preserving his ability to communicate with his family for as long as possible, and for guiding Fran and us to take things one day at a time, making the best of the precious hours we still had together. We are forever grateful for your extraordinary compassion and good humor. You have been the finest of caregivers, professional to the core. Your gifts are divine, a comfort to the dying and the living. You are God’s angels on earth!

Fran’s family will receive well-wishers during an hour of visitation, from 11:00am to noon on Saturday, February 1st at Triumphant Life Church, 1511 Davis Ave, Endicott.

Following visitation, a prayer service and eulogies celebrating Fran’s life will take place at 12:00 noon, followed by a lunch/reception in the church basement at 1:00pm.

For those unable to attend, the noon service and eulogies will be live-streamed at:
https://www.facebook.com/ItsGreatHereTLC/
https://www.youtube.com/@triumphantlifechurchny3369
https://vimeo.com/tlcny

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Danielle House.
Danielle House
160 Riverside Drive
Binghamton NY 13905
www.daniellehouse.org